September 21, 2003

Turn On. Tune In. Download.

retty much from the moment that music ''file swapping'' made its way into the public consciousness by way of Napster, there has been a vaguely ''Reefer Madness'' quality to the discussion of what the practice has meant to its college-age-and-younger participants. We have heard again and again that this new generation is coming to believe that music is something you don't pay for but rather simply take. That idea is in the air again since the major recording labels recently started filing what they say will be thousands of lawsuits against people who have used file-sharing software like KaZaA to download songs they have not paid for.

And the implication of that argument is ominous and meant to alarm us: file sharing is like a gateway drug that will make users unlearn their willingness to pay for movies, video games, books. What the music industry is doing might be thought of as administering a dose of tough love, an intervention that will remind wayward youth not just that stealing is wrong but also that we have a system here wherein goods and services carry a cost. It's called capitalism, kid, and chances are very high that your favorite recording artist -- and every other cultural figure you admire -- loves it. Better to learn this now and kick the download habit before it leads to harder stuff, like a general unwillingness to pay for material goods of any kind, or a failure to grasp the magic of a great brand. If these consumer delinquents don't get scared straight back to the mall, the cost to us all will be much greater than lost revenue for the music business. The very morals of a generation are at stake.

For that to be the case, a couple of underlying assumptions must be true. One is that file sharing is at its heart a problem of reckless youth who simply do not understand that what they are doing is wrong and dangerous. Another is that the habits of college are the habits of a lifetime.

We can dismiss right away the notion that most file swappers would stop if only they understood that what they're doing is wrong. One of the most amusing research results from the various studies of music piracy is the finding that most file sharers apparently don't care if they're violating copyright laws. But this attitude doesn't mean disdain for the marketplace. Earlier this year Forrester Research surveyed 12-to-22-year-olds and adults 23 and older and found that while about half the kids had downloaded songs in the past month (compared with 12 percent of the grown-ups), nearly half of the young downloaders said that they were buying as many CD's as ever. (Members of what Forrester dubs Young Samplers on average bought 3.6 CD's in the past 90 days.) What's more, while 67 percent of the young cohort think ''people should be able to download music for free,'' the same percent claim they are very likely to buy a CD as a result of a recent download.

If there isn't much evidence that young people are not having their acceptance of the free market permanently unwired, then why do they seem to dominate the download phenomenon? No doubt a facility with technology really does set this generation apart. But other, probably more important factors are not new at all. Younger people with fewer responsibilities have much more time to devote to pleasure seeking of all sorts than they have disposable income to pay for it. And at college especially, they are part of a tight-budgeted community, and the culture of sharing is stronger at this age in their lives than it will ever be again.

But the biggest factor, as any baby-boomer politician will tell you -- in fact, as most baby-boomer politicians have already told you -- is that youth is a time of experimentation. If everyone carried their college-age behavior patterns into adulthood, then half our elected officials would be current recreational dope smokers. Which is probably not the case. Certainly we have all absorbed the lesson by now that it's possible to party, get crazy and shrug off responsibility all through college and still grow up to be president.

The lawsuits do make downloading riskier, but a major component of youthful experimentation is a liberal attitude toward risk that mellows over time. Just as important is run-of-the-mill rebellion. An unnamed 16-year-old female in Forrester's report summarizes her defense of downloading this way: ''RECORD COMPANIES ARE UNFAIR AND ARE PART OF THE SYSTEM, GO AGAINST THE SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!''

Well, sure. Who didn't feel that way at 16? On the other hand, how many people feel that way forever? And even now, it's worth pointing out, the radical anti-system ethos that supposedly underlies file sharing is not all it's cracked up to be. The fact is, most participants do a lot more taking than ''sharing''; one study found that nearly half the songs accessible through major peer-to-peer networks are contributed by just 1 percent of users, and nearly 70 percent of downloaders do not share a thing. One of the more revelatory aspects of the record industry's strategy is that it's picking targets based less on how much music they've downloaded than on how much they are offering up to the world. (Of course, this won't do much to counter the industry's reputation as the architect of an Evil System -- nor will the fact that the most prominent of the early targets was a 12-year-old honors student.)

The urge to cast downloading as a kind of black-and-white moral issue that simply needs to be made plain to the kids so that they will knock it off is understandable, but it's also wishful thinking. An estimated 60 million people have downloaded songs illicitly, which makes the phenomenon bigger than a youth fad. It's more like speeding or marijuana use -- activities that many people in a wide range of ages know are ''wrong'' in a technical sense but not in a behavioral sense. By now, even if the music industry is right on the legal argument, it can't win the moral one.

Rob Walker is a columnist for Slate.