RIAA Lawsuits Study Results

Manifest: A survey recently done with 1100 consumers 10% teens. It was designed to determine the public attitude as to whether or not the recent lawsuits filled by the RIAA against people who are illegally downloading music was perceived to be “effective” in getting music fans to stop and consider the ethics of their actions.  The sats below break apart the responses by teens ages 13-17 from all other respondents.  Thus giving you a point of reference for how teens, received to be the largest group of record buyers, feel as opposed to those with allegedly less disposable income.

Those who said it was against the law to download w/o artist/label permission.

Those who said “I think it’s wrong” when asked about downloading movies or music w/o permission.

The data in this slide was reprinted with permission by www.epoll.com. To see this and other great PowerPoint demonstrations about the music industry and digital media, visit www.insidedigitalmedia.com

Brief description: E-Poll provides a convenient online forum to express your opinions on a variety of issues that affect your daily life. From their website: “Our goal is to give you an effective tool to project your voice through interactive surveys. Earn valuable reward points that can be cashed in for gift cards or other exciting stuff when you become an E-Poll member.”

Conclusions of this survey:  As you can see by the sats, there is little doubt that people are beginning to understand that intellectual property is just as sacred as real property.  Whether or not this means that they will continue to break the law is another story, but the RIAA’s message is getting through and demonstrates a good first step in awareness.  But is the price for this awareness too high?  Has the RIAA “educated” the public at the risk of alienating them?  Time will tell. There is still probably a lot of confusion about what is “free”, what is promotional and what is “for a fee” because of that that more piracy will proliferate and create a disruptive market.

Another obvious result of the stats is that the film industry has done a better job than the music industry educating the public about respect of copyrights.  This is likely due the fact that the music industry has spent the second half of the previous century making music “feel free,” where as film has always maintained a “pay-for-play” philosihpy with the public from the start.

Other results from this survey:  Most people don’t perceive that the prices of CDs have been reduced.  Maybe that’s because stores have not actually lowered their prices and have maintained that they will not sell items in stock for Christmas 03 for less than they agreed to when ordering that stock.  This put a hole in UND’s plan to sweep holidays sales with cut-prices.