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Piracy The Internet Technology

Risky Online Behaviour Such as Piracy 'Almost Normalized' Among Young People, Says Study (theguardian.com) 156

Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalized among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. From a report: An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK. A survey of 8,000 young people found that one in four have tracked or trolled someone online, one in eight have engaged in online harassment, one in 10 have engaged in hate speech or hacking, one in five have engaged in sexting and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. It also found that four out of 10 have watched pornography.

Julia Davidson, a co-author of the research and professor of criminology at the University of East London (UEL), said risky and criminal online behaviour was becoming almost normalised among a generation of European young people. "The research indicates that a large proportion of young people in the EU are engaging in some form of cybercrime, to such an extent that the conduct of low-level crimes online and online risk-taking has become almost normalised," she said.

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Risky Online Behaviour Such as Piracy 'Almost Normalized' Among Young People, Says Study

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  • Only 40%? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by methano ( 519830 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:27PM (#63105384)
    Only 40% have watched pron. That's amazing. That's gotta be 100% of the boys and 20% of the girls.
    • Re:Only 40%? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:28PM (#63105394)

      That yields an average of 60%, just saying...

    • Re:Only 40%? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:35PM (#63105446)

      No.

      40% admitted to an adult they watch porn. Guarantee even the least curious has seen at least one if they're online. Most have probably fapped themselves raw to it.

    • Re:Only 40%? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:41PM (#63105482)

      All of these numbers seem like nonsense. I guarantee 999 out of 1000 have watched porn and the other one was blind. These numbers are ridiculous for piracy and other activities as well. Virtually everyone trolls, pirates, etc at some point.

      The whole thing probably was conducted so they could have an excuse to sit piracy next to a bunch of trigger topics and somewhat bad activity and lobby for taxpayer paid copyright cartel enforcement.

      • I guarantee 999 out of 1000 have watched porn and the other one was blind.

        That one probably went blind in connection with the porn. Hairy palms too, I bet.

      • The whole thing probably was conducted so they could have an excuse to sit piracy next to a bunch of trigger topics and somewhat bad activity and lobby for taxpayer paid copyright cartel enforcement.

        Really. I hear you. When individual youngsters try to hack into or spy on a big company, it's jail time.

        But when a mega-corporation bases its entire business model on spying-on these same youngsters, or planting malware that spies on them (hacking), it's A-OK? Is 'shareholder value' the only thing in this world

    • Re:Only 40%? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:55PM (#63105590)
      In other news 60% of respondents refused to admit they have watched porn.
    • It's a shitty survey.
      "Found evidence" my ass.

      It's like when they ask little boys if they've had sex and of course they all say "Yes, loads of times". Cue shock headlines.

      Fuck social "science".

    • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      It's telling that watching porn is the only activity in that list that harms absolutely nobody, and yet it's equated with everything from harassment to piracy.
  • by Sowelu ( 713889 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:29PM (#63105396)

    One in four have "tracked or trolled someone online"? It's dangerous, even criminal behavior? Did a definition change behind my back?

    • by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:40PM (#63105474)

      It might mean something if they offered a definition of "trolling". As far as I can make out, it means saying anything that someone doesn't like. Especially if it is contrary to the establishment line.

      Socrates, the Cynics, Rousseau, Voltaire, Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and countless of the livelier and cleverer spirits since engaged in constant trolling. As Socrates put it when on trial for his life, he was like a gadfly that stung the big, sleepy horse of Athenian society into action - even if the action was just to execute him. Any teacher at school or university ought to spend a good deal of time and effort trolling.

      The hope of every constructive "troll" is to wake people up and get them thinking. As Oliver Cromwell famously ranted to Parliament, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, bethink ye that ye may be wrong".

      • I will be using this. Well done.

      • But if Im forced to think that the universe may be right and I may be wrong, I will be confronted with the uncomfortable truth of my fallibilityâ¦â¦that is unacceptable

      • by tsqr ( 808554 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @06:35PM (#63106002)

        The hope of every constructive "troll" is to wake people up and get them thinking.

        As far as I can make out, you've listed a handful of well-known social and political philosophers and labeled them "trolls" as a way of trying to prove a point. Even if your point was valid, what percentage of on line trolls would you say are of the "constructive" sort? Almost all the ones I've run across are either whoring for attention or seeking to provoke outrage -- and I'm talking about the "Hitler was right" variety, not the vanishingly rare ones attempting to stimulate thoughtful discourse.

        Socrates was executed by the Athenian court on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, something that should be food for thought for the proponents of cancel culture on the left and book banning on the right.

      • by Falos ( 2905315 )

        Many historical figures qualify but I feel like Sam would've been particularly annoyed you didn't include Mark Twain. I'm not actually all that familiar with his life but still get the impression he'd wanted to be KNOWN for thumbing his nose where he felt it ought be thumbed.

        I'm also going to mention wikipedia lists him as "writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer" but not at any point "philosopher".

      • Ah, trolling. When done well, a time-honored tradition.

        Sir Isaac Newton trolled his nemesis in the Royal Society, a Robert Hooke, when he spoke the famous line about "When we reach our great achievements it is only because we have done so by standing on the backs of giants." Something to that effect; you know the quote.

        Hooke had been, at the time, accusing Newton of copying his work in his development of a theoretical treatment (I forget of what.). Newton acknowledged this false allegation – and also

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:57PM (#63105610)
      Look got to understand, these are kids that were raised on the corrupting influence that it was Night Trap on the Sega CD. Some of them might have played Mortal Kombat. These aren't kids anymore these are bloodthirsty killers out for kicks. Why, some of them may have even fallen into reefer madness. That's how I lost my friend Becky.
    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @07:11PM (#63106104)

      One in four have "tracked or trolled someone online"? It's dangerous, even criminal behavior? Did a definition change behind my back?

      I was curious too so I looked it up. The study https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net] uses these definitions (amongst others):
      * TROLLING: Start an argument with a stranger online for no reason
      * TRACKING: Track what someone else was doing online without their knowing

      It uses the existing research term "cyberdeviant behavior" to encompass these and others. The question of how to classify behaviors doesn't involve any value judgment, but merely a taxonomy. The authors had worked on such a taxonomy earlier https://www.mdpi.com/2673-6756... [mdpi.com], by trying to list the wide variety of terms that other researches had used (yes including "trolling" and "tracking") and trying to get definitions of them.

      Anyway, the current study emphatically did not say that trolling or tracking were dangerous or criminal behavior. All it did was a statistical correlation. It found a statistically significant correlation between levels of trolling+tracking, and other clearly dangerous activites.

      How do you interpret that correlation? Was it a foregone conclusion to you that the level of tracking+trolling someone does is statistically correlated with the amount of actually dangerous or illegal activity to you, or was that result from the data a surprise to you? Do you think there's a causal mechanism behind it? a common cause? Do you think that the common cause might just be that most people spend 20% of their online time doing an equal spread of trolling, tracking, and other actually dangerous activities? in which case the correlation is just that these people spend more time online? Or do you think there are clear clusters?

      The authors of the paper didn't make any such value judgements. They collected the data. And their conclusion was that people concerned with teenagers' wellbeing should consider online behavior as a spectrum, rather than (as others had done) two separate bins, one marked "okay behavior" and one marked "bad behavior" with little movement between the two.

      • by kmoser ( 1469707 )

        TROLLING: Start an argument with a stranger online for no reason

        Isn't that the very purpose of every discussion forum on the Internet?

      • by arete ( 170676 )

        On the one hand, I don't think that's a very good definition of trolling. On the other hand that might be the best definition you could hope to plausibly classify things as in a regular research study, so maybe that's why they chose it. (Although of course even in general, "no reason" almost never exists; it's a question of who is doing the discerning, how far they can see, and how remote it is to whatever topic is at hand)

        I'd describe classic trolling as something like: communication whose primary inten

  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:29PM (#63105398) Homepage

    I am in my late 60s. When I was young most people copied music cassette tapes and copied vinyl records to cassettes. I don't see any real difference from "digital piracy". This does not make it right but shows that today's "young people" are, in this respect, not really very different from their grandparents.

    • by Radical Moderate ( 563286 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:43PM (#63105496)
      Yeah, and in the 80s we were copying friends' games on floppies. Quelle horror!
    • I saw a difference. A copy of a copy of a cassette from a vinyl record was a mess. Digital copies are perfect.

      • I saw a difference. A copy of a copy of a cassette from a vinyl record was a mess. Digital copies are perfect.

        I'm gonna take a guess you didn't get into downloading MP3s in the mid to late 90s? There was a lot of music which was compressed using the absolutely horrible XingMP3 encoder, and it wasn't entirely uncommon to download songs that skipped or had clicks due to being ripped from a damaged CD.

        A properly done recording from a clean vinyl record can sound pretty good. Judge for yourself [mediafire.com]. That's Mannheim Steamroller's Carol of the Bells from an original 1988 pressing of A Fresh Aire Christmas played on an Aud

    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:45PM (#63105518) Homepage

      You had access to vinyl records? Lucky.

      I had to pirate my songs by taping them from the radio. Damn DJs talked over like half of my music collection.

      • Haha, recording radio and tv broadcasts for personal use is call 'fair use'. Look it up.

        It is only Piracy if you redistribute said recording. So if you are watching a TV show from a Piracy site (they are distributing, not you) - is it really Piracy on your part? If you don't pay for it?
        • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @05:17PM (#63105726) Homepage

          Haha, recording radio and tv broadcasts for personal use is call 'fair use'. Look it up.

          It was actually still a bit up in the air legally until 1984 [wikipedia.org]. Ironically, if the case was heard again by today's SCOTUS, it probably would be decided differently. Most recent rulings on similar cases have sided with the rights holders.

        • Haha, recording radio and tv broadcasts for personal use is call 'fair use'. Look it up.

          It depends on the circumstances. Time shifting so you can listen or watch later is likely a fair use. Building a library through home taping is less likely to be a fair use. Although in the case of radio, the AHRA may apply.

          It is only Piracy if you redistribute said recording.

          That's not true, though it does increase the odds you'll get caught and it increases the likelihood that someone might care.

      • Yep - And it always sounded different (usually a little better/louder) on the radio than it did when you got a copy from the actual album/cassette.

    • It doesn't make it wrong either. The copyright trolls are rich enough.
    • by jhecht ( 143058 )
      Late 60s was reel to reel. It's surprising how well those tapes have held up.
      • Cassettes were actually introduced in '65. And remember: OP didn't say he did this in the late 60s. he said he was in his late 60s.
        That puts his birth-year 1953 to 1957, which puts prime piracy years in the 70s.

        As for the reel-to-reels, I;d guess they were commercial grade at the start and they don't actually get played much.

        • That puts his birth-year 1953 to 1957

          Spot on - 1955

        • by jhecht ( 143058 )
          The reel to reel was a Sony 250A, purchased in 1968, and it was definitely a consumer-grade product, not professional. It and an FM tuner were the main source of household music from then until well into the '80s. Eight-track tapes were introduced in Fords in 1965, and were popular in cars until the early 80s. From my recollections of buying used reel-to-reel tapes in early to mid 70s, other people may have been upgrading to cassettes then, but I was too cheap.
    • by VampireByte ( 447578 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @05:25PM (#63105760) Homepage

      i bet the whole point of the study was to get press releases that equate digital privacy with scary stuff

    • Yeah I found that statistic troubling, as in it is too low a number. We are becoming too goody-goody.

    • Perhaps. But to be fair, no-one's walkman ever became part of a bot-net.

    • I am in my late 60s. When I was young most people copied music cassette tapes and copied vinyl records to cassettes. I don't see any real difference from "digital piracy". This does not make it right but shows that today's "young people" are, in this respect, not really very different from their grandparents.

      Well, young people got one serious advantage - being younger, they most likely have more of their life ahead of them. You've heard that old saying ... "Youth is wasted on the young."

  • by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:30PM (#63105402)

    ... and their pets in academia, don't like when newer generations don't obey their bullshit intellectual property laws.

  • Piracy was way more prevalent in the age of physical media
    • Anecdotally, most of what I see shared these days (based on available seeds) is content from streaming TV services, because there's still a lot of people who don't want to subscribe to a specific service just for one show.

      Music piracy however, seems to be down substantially, since there really doesn't seem to be the same kind of exclusivity when it comes to music streaming services. They all basically seem to have the same stuff if you're into mainstream artists. One paid subscription to iTunes, Spotify,

  • Have they been hiding under rocks for the last couple of decades?

    • by GoJays ( 1793832 )
      Seriously, it was normal for my generation and we are now pushing our mid-40's.
    • by suutar ( 1860506 )

      Just because everyone knows it doesn't mean it's not worth studying. Sometimes it turns out to be false. Usually it turns out to be true, but sometimes there's aspects that can provoke more interesting lines of study.

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:38PM (#63105464)

    Given the track record of preservation of corporations, specially game corporations, piracy is pretty much the only way to keep much of the data alive.

  • Piracy?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fbobraga ( 1612783 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:42PM (#63105488) Homepage
    People steal ships? Or you are talking about copyright infringement?
  • by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:43PM (#63105500)
    Piracy has been around since forever. Back in the early 80's every town in my area had a local "librarian" that stored software. If you wanted to pilfer the library all that was required is that you added your wares to the pile. We could get any cassette tape, diskette, or dumped cartridge ROM to tape/disk that we wanted for any system, although it was mostly TRS-80 (Model I/III and COCO I/II) stuff. The librarians would then get together once in a while too. Then BBS systems started popping up. Then the Internet. What's next, who knows, but the pirates will be there. Normalized long ago Capt Obvious.
  • If you look back at 80s, you will find that a large proportion of young people shoplifted at least once, bullied someone on the playground or owned pron mag. Welcome to the digital age.
  • Like myself.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:47PM (#63105530)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • What they fail to understand is that pirates are cool. If we could add ninjas, zombies and robots somehow, nobody would buy any content anymore.

  • by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:50PM (#63105550) Homepage Journal

    Considering that my generation normalized promiscuity, drug and alcohol use, and drag racing, I'd say the Europeans are doing rather well. More than one of my acquaintances didn't live long enough to make it to college.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:52PM (#63105556)

    Why do we even allow trolls? I say trolls should not be allowed to access the internet. We need to bring back social credit scoring in this country. We need to check social credit scores before anyone can signup for a AOL, Microsoft, Google, or whatever it is people use to access the internet nowadays. We need a safe space for the exchange and articulation of ideas in a coherent and cordial manner; someplace not interrupted by idiots. When fools come into the picture that seriously fucks shit up. The quality of debate here on slashdot has been declining for quite a while now. I remember when esteemed think tanks and social policy institutes like the GNAA used to post insightful comments on here, only to be harassed by trolls.

  • by poptopdrop ( 6713596 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:56PM (#63105594)

    Give us a FAIR duration of the copyright *privilege* we allow creators, i.e. five years, and we can discuss (any remaining) piracy.

    Until it's fair, WE PIRATE WITH AN CLEAR CONSCIENCE.

  • Off the computer and go shoot a deer, coyote or whatever. Nothing like being outdoors and bagging that 12 pointer.

  • They ain't part of the EU anymore, so shut up.

    On a more practical note.. if 'piracy' is so widespread, maybe it's time for content creators to switch to a more pragmatic model - like setting a financial target for a series and relying on pledges to get the amount they need to produce it, and then once produced, just make it public and let everyone download it.

    The copying of information is built into entropy and universal laws. Kids copy behavior, we copy ideas, cells copy dna. It's everywhere. Stop
    • They ain't part of the EU anymore, so shut up.

      So they should just take the EU's money and do nothing with it?

      Also, not the University of London.

  • ...and horrified, I tell you. Just the thought of all those poor young souls being led astray with all this criminal behaviour. Oh, the children, the children, will nobody think of the poor children!

    But on the bright side, at least they're not writing to the BBC to get "fixed" by Jimmy Saville any more. That really is risky, criminal behaviour.
  • It's only almost normalized now.

    Back when I was young, it was normalized. I'm fairly sure a bunch of kids didn't even know that it's possible to buy computer games.

    • I'm fairly sure a bunch of kids didn't even know that it's possible to buy computer games.

      Well, it no longer is.

  • next thing you know they will be smoking dope or drinking beer. They could be Jaywalking or getting into fights. The horror of today's youths.
  • Is that all? I am disappointed.

  • At the most you need an adblocker, and people who know how to pirate probably know enough to install uBlock.

    What else do you need to know? Don't download movies ending in.exe or .bin? If you're downloading a program make sure to read reviews and use something like VirusTotal?

    99% of the time piracy provides a cleaner, better product than the companies themselves are willing to provide, and privacy will continue until companies get a clue.

    Only people unable to think critically and especially prone to indoctri

    • by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      What else do you need to know? Don't download movies ending in.exe or .bin?

      Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly happens if you download a movie with a name ending in .bin ?

  • by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @06:06PM (#63105916)
    Piracy is popular because legitimate ways of obtaining content are a rip-off in most situations. The price that companies like DirecTV, Comcast, AT&T, Dish, etc charge for a full TV package can be up there with that of a car or rent payment. Not to mention that they openly engage in things such as randomly and frequently raising prices, adding non-obvious fees, charging rental fees for the equipment that you use, etc, etc. Streaming isn't much better. For a very brief time, you could get most stuff via Netflix but then everything split off into it's own separate streaming service and we are practically back to square one again.
  • OMG, what's next? Is "risky online behavior" a gateway to shoplifting? It's only a matter of time before they turn to drug abuse!

  • Piracy is praxis.
  • I'll stop when Mickey Mouse enters the public domain. Oh that keeps getting pushed back? I guess I'm still pirating then.

    • Actually, it hasn't been getting pushed back and we're almost there. Steamboat Willie hits the public domain in a little over a year from now (January 1, 2024) in the US.

  • Seriously, are these guys comparing pirating software and media to harassing and abusing others online? Damn, I love that (most of) Europe still fortunately doesn't give two shits about consumer-level piracy.

  • I'm sure the percentages of those who have done all of these things in real life are much higher, and have been since long before doing it online became popular.
    Kids used to lend VHS tapes to friends, something the movie studios didn't like but couldn't stop.
    Bullying among kids has ALWAYS existed and if anything moving it online is actually preferable to the existing physical kind - noone gets injured. Of course online bullying tips the balance of power slightly, with traditional bullies less capable of lev

  • by bobjr94 ( 1120555 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @10:37PM (#63106474) Homepage
    I was copying C64 floppy disks when I was a kid, later advanced to downloading games from BBS's. Without piratebay bluray disks would still probably be $60.
  • It's like people ever needed the internet to hoard bootleg copies of everything. An older friend of my mom's had over 700 VHS tapes amd bought a specialized machine to comvert them to DVD. I cant recall ever seeing him use any of them

  • by WillyWanker ( 1502057 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2022 @11:19AM (#63107682)

    Sounds to me like these kids are doing just fine. :shrug:

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