70% of the Public Finds Piracy Socially Acceptable
A recent study on moral standards and whether some law breaking is socially acceptable has revealed an interesting stance on file-sharing among the public. Of those questioned in the study, 70% said that downloading illicit material from the Internet is acceptable. Three out four, however, felt it was completely unacceptable to then sell that product for profit.
During the last decade the entertainment industries have tried numerous strategies to thwart Internet piracy. One of the most common, especially with the music industry, was to sue some file-sharers into submission thereby creating a climate of fear designed to deter others. Needless to say, that didn’t work particularly well.
The movie industry has largely concentrated their legal efforts largely on taking sites down but have also been active in trying to educate Internet users through various schemes that piracy is ‘wrong’ and causes real damage. On the whole, that hasn’t worked either, and a new study just released appears to back up the assertion.
The study, published by the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, questioned participants on morals and ethics, and included discussion on which laws they believe are socially acceptable to break.
The Danish study, which ultimately concluded that moral standards are just as high as they were 10 years ago, covered issues such as tax evasion, insurance fraud, the morality gap between men and women and, to the interest of TorrentFreak readers, piracy.
In the piracy section respondents were asked to rate, on a scale from 1 to 10, whether they thought unauthorized downloading for personal use is a socially acceptable act. The researchers found that 7 out of 10 of those questioned felt, to a greater or lesser degree, that it is socially acceptable. 15-20% of the total group believed that piracy is totally acceptable.
A minority of just over 30% of the respondents voted at the very bottom of the response scale, an indication that they feel piracy is completely unacceptable.
Interestingly, despite the never-ending anti-piracy campaigns of the last decade, the attitudes of the public don’t seem to have changed much. When questioned for a 1997 study on whether it was acceptable to use pirate software, the same proportion – 3 out of 10 – said the activity was unacceptable.
However, in the new 2010 study, there is an interesting common moral denominator among respondents. When questioned on whether it is acceptable to download something and then sell it to a friend for profit, 3 out of 4 said that would be completely unacceptable.
The results of the study show that it is nearly impossible for copyright holders and anti-piracy groups to change the attitudes of the public in their favor. If they want piracy to decrease, their best bet is probably to focus on lowering the incentives for people to pirate, there seems to be more opportunities in that area.
[source : torrentfreak]
[source : torrentfreak]
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The Top Five Most Expensive Beatles Collectibles
A new site launched recently called wikicollecting.org, and it's aim is to hip you to how much your memorabilia is worth. It also is a clearinghouse for things like the most expensive Beatles collectibles.
Luxist has a rundown of the top five, and it'll make you feel poor: The most expensive was John Lennon's Rolls Royce, which sold for $2.23 million in 1985, which means it's probably way more expensive today. Also on the list are handwritten lyrics, drum heads and a guitar.
Top Five Most Expensive Beatles Collectibles
- John Lennon's Rolls-Royce Phantom V – $2.23 million
- The piano John Lennon used to write Imagine - $2.1 million
- John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to "A Day in the life" - $1,202,500
- The drum skin which appears on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - £541,250 ($1,071,133)
- George Harrison's Gibson SG guitar - $567,500
[Source: Luxist]
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Why the Facebook Like Button Change is a 'Bait and Switch'
Sunday, Facebook rolled out a change in the functionality of the Facebook “Like” button on websites across the Internet, essentially giving it the same basic functionality as the “Share” button. The only difference is that pushing the Like button doesn’t open up a new window or give you any way to edit what you’re posting to your wall.
It just posts it. All of it.
One click and the details are posted on your wall as well as into the streams of your friends. You cannot edit the message. Whatever the website you’re Liking has in their meta tags, that’s the message you’re posting. The end result is similar to that of the Share button, but the process removes a person’s ability to edit or personalize what they want posted to their wall.
Facebook knows exactly what they’re doing. This is a classic “bait ‘n switch” move that was well planned and executed perfectly all the way down to the exact day that it was launched.
Here are some reasons why this stinks:
No Control
The Share functionality on websites is very simple. You push the Share button. A window pops up that allows you to personalize the sharing with a comment or question, or you can leave it blank just have the title of the page you’re sharing be the top message on your post.
The Like functionality is even more simple. You push a button. No pop up. No dialogue box. No indication that anything has happened on your Facebook wall. What’s worse is that you cannot edit it at any point, neither from the page you’re liking nor on your Facebook profile itself (except in the case of the “Like with Comment” button which we cover below). Whatever message the website wants to send, you’re sending that message by liking it.
To Facebook’s credit, if you unlike the page from the source, it removes it from your wall. The reverse is also possible – deleting it from your wall gives you the ability to unlike it at the source as well.
This comes down to simplicity winning over functionality. By making it a one-click process, more pages will be shared on Facebook (in theory). There is also a one-way interaction between Like and Share buttons on the same page – Liking something counts as a Share, but Sharing something does not count as a Like.
Here’s where the functionality gets weird and a potential fix comes into play…
Some Like widgets have an option to add a comment. While it doesn’t allow full control over what is posted, it at least allows you to post a comment with your Like. The problem is that once you post that comment, it’s no longer a Like. Instead, it acts like a Share and no longer says you Liked a link. If you don’t post a comment with the same button, it shows it as a Like.
If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is.
The potential fix (and where Facebook will likely go with this) is to consolidate the process. Eliminate the Share functionality altogether by sending an update that makes the functionality the same across the board. Then, make the Like button open the comment dialogue as well as an option to “edit before posting.”
At the very least, Facebook needs to give users the option of editing the Like from their Facebook page to add a message and change the content posted from the website meta tags. Currently, you have to comment on your own post to be able to say anything.
They have an opportunity to improve this and take away the “stink factor” that will make users upset. The lack of a warning, on the other hand…
No Warning
Facebook and Google are very different from Apple and Microsoft. Apple and Microsoft normally talk about changes, additions, and products before rolling them out. Facebook and Google roll them out and then may or may not say anything about them.
This roll out is something that (from a user’s perspective) should have been announced ahead of time. There should be a message posted on Facebook once a user logs in. There should be posts about it (and no, leaking it to Mashable doesn’t count). Instead, they just made the change.
There’s a reason for this. When you want things to get attention, you roll it out Monday or Tuesday. When you want news buried, you release it late on Friday. When you want something to make an impact but without people noticing, you roll it out on Oscar Sunday, which brings us to…
The Motives
The Motives
Facebook wants to be important to everyone. They have the users. Businesses are paying attention. Websites are integrating. This move works towards helping 2 of the 3. The users, who this change doesn’t help, will be told that this switch is to make things easier for them. One-click sharing is nice.
Despite what they say, this isn’t to benefit the users. Sharing was something that people consciously did when they wanted to, well, share. Liking had a nice but less prominent functionality and that was just fine for most. The challenge that Facebook faces is that Liking didn’t do much and Sharing wasn’t being used enough.
This move is all about the page views. It allows more exposure for websites, boosting the importance of Facebook integration across the board. As traffic sent to websites goes up as a result of this change, more prominence and attention will be given to Facebook as a necessary tool for exposure, promotions, and marketing.
Even the roll out day was perfect. It’s a double-dipped ice cream cone for Facebook. More sharing was likely done during the Academy Awards than on just about any day other than the Super Bowl. More importantly, people will be talking about the Oscars tomorrow and not about a minor change they barely noticed on Facebook.
The longer that people are unaware that Liking posts directly to their wall, the better from Facebook’s perspective. They don’t want people to be selective with their Likes the way they are with their Shares. The more content that is posted to walls and news feeds, the better off Facebook will be.
Overall, this was a good move from a purely strategy perspective. It’s devious and may backfire, but chances are it will succeed to some extent in every aspect. The first day of buzz has been relatively light (just as they expected). If they can make it through the week with very few people noticing, they will probably come out of this with a significant increase in traffic sent as well as overall activity on their site itself.
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The Most Iconic Fictional Vehicle: The Death Star [Infographic]
The Galactic Empire was an authoritarian government that used fear to rule the galaxy. To maintain order and control, the Empire built a series of Death Stars, moon-sized battle stations with lasers that could destroy planets. What better for the Car Insurance Guide, in partnership with Geeks are Sexy, to chronicle than the Death Star? Throughout the Star Wars films, two Death Stars are built, the first is completed and later destroyed and the second is under construction when it’s blown up.
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