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Teens’ illegal music downloading going down

July 28, 2009 By Anne Leave a Comment

It’s great to get free music, TV, and film off the Internet, but it’s even better when you can get it fast – and that it’s legal too maybe be a bonus but isn’t a key issue. That’s my take-away from a passel of recent stories and blog posts. Which spells a turning point for the music industry: piracy may have peaked. Thirteen-year-old Josh in New York may’ve said it all. His dad, a VC and a blogger, asked Josh how he’s seeing all the episodes of his favorite TV show, “Friday Night Lights,” afraid Josh will say “BitTorrent,” the file-sharing technology millions of people use for free illegal downloading, but Josh just said “BitTorrent’s too slow.” He streams the shows with the family’s Netflix’s $24.95/mo. subscription. His dad wrote: “The good news is that, as the media business wakes up and puts all the media we want out there in streams available on the Internet (paid or free – this is not about free), we see people streaming more and stealing less.” [Brad Stone of the New York Times picked up this story.] The Guardian cites a survey showing that Josh is not alone: “The number of teenagers [14-18] illegally sharing music has fallen dramatically in the past year.” They’re “using services such as YouTube and Spotify [the latter with 6 million users in Europe and now trying to break into the US market].” The Times also mentions MySpace Music and imeem among popular sources of licensed media streaming. In December 2007, 42% of teens were illegally downloading music, down to 26% this past January, The Guardian adds. Another study by NPD Group in the US found that teens 13-17 “illegally downloaded 6% fewer tracks in 2008 than in 2007, while more than half said they were now listening to legal online radio services like Pandora, up from 34% the year before,” the Times reports. Here’s similar coverage from ZDNET.

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Filed Under: Law & Policy, music, Social Media, video Tagged With: BitTorrent, downloading, music industry, p2p, streaming media

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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