The World Needs More Ninjas

So, first the attention grabbing conclusion: people that download music are more likely to shoplift and cheat. Now let’s see how well their statistics support the conclusion.

The illegal downloading has cost retail music stores more than half a billion dollars in lost sales since 1999, a study by Pollara for the recording industry estimates.

I don’t have the data, but I’m guessing that they’re being very liberal in their estimates of lost revenue. If a million songs are downloaded illegally that would have cost a dollar apiece, then one million dollars in revenue is lost, right? Wrong. That’s not how markets work. The more likely behavior is that if there was absolutely no means of obtaining the songs illegally, then only a fraction of the music that would have been illegally downloaded is legally downloaded. They are probably drastically overstating the lost revenue. How do you count that which you never sold as lost?

Canadians between 12 and 24 years of age are responsible for 78 percent of illegal music downloading, even though they make up only 21 per cent of the population, it says.

What they don’t tell you is what percent of legal downloads come from ages 12 to 24. In all likelihood, if iPods are any kind of empirical evidence, then this age group downloads a lot more music, both legal and illegal, then the rest of the population.

Canadians between the ages of 18 and 29 are much more willing than other age groups to make illegal copies of software programs, cheat on exams or even shoplift, an Environics poll suggests.

Nearly 27 percent of younger people surveyed said they would consider cheating on a test or exam, compared with 10 percent of the general population.

OK, this is just terrible use of statistics. First off, notice that they say younger people are more likely to consider cheating on a test. This is substantially different than actually doing. If you suffer from road rage, you may consider giving the jerk in front of you a little bump, but it’s probably extremely unlikely that you’d actually do it.

But my bigger problem is this: How many important exams do you take before age 29 compared without how many important exams you take after age 29? For a vast majority of people, the exams taken before age 29 are much more important (e.g., tests determine admission to college, graduate, and professional school as well as scholarships, many licensing exams are taken prior to age 29). So, essentially, the incentive to cheat is much larger for this group, and it should be expected that more in that age group may consider it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a statistical difference in the integrity of the two groups. I would guess that the same person who is 50 and says they wouldn’t consider cheating on an exam (having not taken an “important” one in over 25 years) may well have said that they would consider cheating on an exam when they were, say, 20 years old.

What if we ask the following question: would you quit your job if it kept a friend from getting laid off? Probably a lot of people under 29 would say yes since people job hop a lot when they’re young, they’re probably not to attached to the job and have yet to reach an upper tier position, and they probably don’t have many dependents or long-term financial obligations. By contrast, a lot of people over 29 would probably say no for the same reasons: they’ve probably been in the job a longer time, they’re more likely to have obtained a “good” position, stability is important for the sake of caring for the family and meeting financial goals. Does this mean that those over 29 are more selfish and cut-throat in the rat race than those under 29? Probably not, it just means the two groups have perspectives shaped by different environments.

This is the reason why board rooms across America aren’t filled with tie-dyed hippies today. Whereas Woodstock, smoking pot, and sticking it to “the man” may have been important when they were 20, those same people may find the Wall Street Journal, PTA meetings, and becoming “the man” are more important when they’re 50.

Of those asked, 6 per cent of younger Canadians said they would leave a store without paying for a piece of clothing, compared with 2 percent of the population at large.

First, 4 percent is probably close to the margin of error in the poll. Second, again, clothing is generally going to be much more important to younger people than older people. For a young person, having the latest fashion can have a much more significant affect on popularity.

“Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada’s economy and values at the core of our society,” said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which commissioned the polls.

Nope, you’re just playing games with statistics.

37 percent of respondents used a CD burner to record music within the last six months, up from 18 percent in 2001.

Uh, OK, and you’re point? There’s lots or legitimate uses for burning music to a CD…backup, fair use, etc. Plus, most legitimate music downloads let you burn to a CD in some limited capacity.