back to article Wealthy youngsters more likely to be freetards than anyone else – study

The well-groomed throng of bourgeois protesters that shunned the weekly Waitrose shop and headed for London’s Parliament Square on Saturday had something in common other than a common desire to remain in the EU. The demographic that closely mirrors keen Remain voters is more likely to download content illegally than any other UK …

  1. d3rrial

    You mean the demographic of which a whopping ~36% turned up to vote?

    1. goldcd

      That just reflects badly on us.

      I can't think of any policy from any governmental flavour, that's actually helped them.

      Labour gave them tuition fees, and the conservatives gave pensioners their triple locked pension.

      Labour presided over/caused the house-price bubble, and then the Tories pitch to remain was "your house price might go down".

      If you're 20 and without a house - well I suspect your immediate reaction is to hope for house-price-apocalypse.

      Bluntly - "They don't give a fuck" and I can see why they wouldn't.

    2. sabroni Silver badge

      re: You mean the demographic of which a whopping ~36% turned up to vote?

      Keep repeating a falsehood and eventually it becomes true.

      http://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/04/looks-like-youth-turnout-eu-referendum-much-much-higher-first-thought/

      I realise that looking at an actually left wing news source might be painful, but there are links in the article to the sources at Sky, which may make it easier to stomach.

      Or read the original tweet https://twitter.com/SkyData/status/746701717299924992 and the comments below pointing out it's a guess.

      1. Manolo
        FAIL

        Re: re: You mean the demographic of which a whopping ~36% turned up to vote?

        From the article at thecanary:

        " 'After correcting for over-reporting [people always say they vote more than they do], we found that the likely turnout of 18- to 24-year olds was 70% – just 2.5% below the national average.'

        Bruter and Harrison also suggested that turnout for 25- to 29-year-olds was around 67%.

        While the media wasted no time in criticising young people for their perceived lack of voting – some even going so far as to blame them – it seems that actually, they went above and beyond. "

        Uhm, no. If they were below national average, I wouldn't really classify that as "going above and beyond".

        1. sabroni Silver badge

          Re: I wouldn't really classify that as "going above and beyond".

          Yeah, they spin stuff in a lefty way, but personally I find that quite refreshing, and there's no reason to treat the 36% figure as being any more accurate than the 70% quoted in the Canary, which was the original point I was making.

          I normally read the Guardian and Daily Mail websites for general news (and listen to Radio 4, obv.), the Canary is much more tabloid (and left wing) than the Guardian, but still not as mental as the Mail.

          I take the lot with the same pinch of salt.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Young people most likely to vote for an integrated society, have the wherewithal to use Bittorrent and, despite higher than average salaries, have a greater proportion of their earnings go on things like student debt & rent.

    Quelle surprise.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      despite higher than average salaries, have a greater proportion of their earnings go on things like student debt & rent.

      The argument you seem to be making is "poor, hard done by ex-students, forced into servitude by the betrayal of the Libdems and wicked Tories...but for that, they'd be high spending consumers voluntarily paying premium prices for content".

      And the argument I'd like to proffer back is "Bollocks. Whiney, lazy tw*ts with a sense of entitlement where they've never actually done a proper job. Apparently it's OK for dustbin men and lavatory cleaners to spend any left overs from their meagre salaries on Sky, but if you're a milennial just come out of a three years dossing at university, it's always somebody else's fault".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "to spend any left overs from their meagre salaries on Sky"

        Yes, poor Rupert needs the money.

        1. IsJustabloke
          Facepalm

          That whooshing sound....

          "Yes, poor Rupert needs the money."

          ... you heard was the point flying high over your head.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: That whooshing sound....

            On the contrary, you missed the subtlety in the comment.

      2. heyrick Silver badge

        "Whiney, lazy tw*ts with a sense of entitlement where they've never actually done a proper job."

        Or to look at it another way - whiney lazy twats that just got thoroughly fucked by a load of racist old codgers.

        Wanna insult the young? It's just as easy to insult the old.

    2. John Lilburne

      Hard done by students earn a great deal more than school leavers, and rents don't increase because one has a degree. Now I left school at 18 and by the age of 21 I had something like 300 LPs (Cds, albums to the Kevins here). You buy what is important to you, if it isn't important don't buy it and don't feel justified in stealing it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > Hard done by students earn a great deal more than school leavers,

        Are you saying that someone who starts working on the checkout at Tesco when they leave university is going to be earning more than someone who has already been working on the checkout for 5 years and is probably a department manager?

    3. Barry Rueger

      Young people most likely to vote for an integrated society, have the wherewithal to use Bittorrent

      Trust me, people who were downloading illegal content thirty years ago using zmodem are equally capable of using Bittorrent.

      Hell, ten years ago I had a 65 year old mother-in-law who was trading bootleg Disney computer embroidery patterns on the 'net.

      Probably still is.

      Age is in no way a determinant of technical comfort or ability.

      Especially among those people who created personal computers, software, and the whole damned Internet before you were born.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        > content thirty years ago using zmodem

        Ahh.. zmodem. Haven't heard that name for years (thankfully). I seem to recall it was pretty unreliable (although that might have just been the fact I was using my parents phone line and my mum kept picking up the phone to see if I was still online..)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's missing is how this changes over time...

    Speaking personally (and hence anonymously) as a younger person I used to download a lot and never thought of paying for it. Now the only times I download stuff through non-official channels is when the producers decide that for reasons of geography I should not be able to. I'm very happy to pay for the convenience and I am lucky enough to have the means to do so.

    As a lifetime consumer Apple and Amazon should be pretty pleased with me...

    In related news, I'm very grateful to the dodgy downloaders for keeping the content providers honest - the time it takes for things to become available and the disparity between regions has come down a lot, and not because those people suddenly became nicer...

    1. joeW

      Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

      I'll add one on to that - when I was younger I spent damn near every waking moment in front of a screen. I pirated more then because (a) I had practically infinite time to watch/play/listen to stuff and therefore needed a lot more media, and (b) I had practically infinite time to hunt out decent dodgy sources for pirated media.

      I'm older now, and my time is more valuable to me.

    2. Ogi

      Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

      Yes, it is a big deal. Before P2P became a big thing the media companies had no competition (home taping just couldn't scale, and you would get degradation with each generational copy), so they could charge as much as they wanted for the worst of service/value for money.

      Now they have to compete, and not only that, they have to compete with "free". So they have to provide a better experience, an experience worth paying for over getting it for free. It seems that their primary tools are convenience and instant streaming, both which save time.

      There is no need to wonder dodgy ad/virus laden sites, download $x number of copies of "new_movie_X" (and wait for the download to complete) until you find one that is actually decent, and is not a poor cam version with Chinese hard coded subtitles (not to mention cost of local storage of said media, unless you just delete it, but then will have to find a decent copy again).

      It does also mean that if they ever go back to their old ways, people will just switch back to P2P, and so a balance is achieved. Some will never pay for content, because the content is more expensive than their time to find it online (i.e. lower income, and people in poorer countries), others make enough money that the time spent digging around P2P is not worth it, and it is better to just pay for an official stream and be done with it.

      Where that "Should I buy or download it" cut off point is, will vary with market conditions and how much the companies squeeze the patrons until they switch sides, so we are in an equilibrium for now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

        The only problem with that narrative is legal sites are MORE time consuming and hassle.

        With torrents you see a title from a release group you trust. Click. BAM! Got it.

        With legal you have to find the companies with the content you want, subscribe to them all. Cancel subscriptions you no longer need it. Leak all your data when the company gets hacked. Run a virtual machine because their shitty DRM doesn't work on Linux. Watch unskippable trailers and be bombarded with ads. Have things you wanted to watch randomly "expire" and disappear. Agree to a "privacy policy" which you'd reject if you had any choice. Have your money exit the economy, and go to a company with a weird name in Panama.

        1. Ogi

          Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

          Yes, but computer savvy people are not the target market for them. Yes, we can run ad-blockers, we know (or hear about) which torrent sites are good and not scams, we can generally work out whether a movie is a cam rip, or BDrip, we recognize our preferred release groups, and so on. We can even use VPNs, encrypted torrent clients and all that to bypass filters, or traffic shaping, etc...

          Coupled with the fact we run "alternative" OSes and configurations, means the "seamless experience" that apparently can be provided by online streaming services are useless to us. Compared to an unencumbered standards compliant file, there is no competition.

          Thing is, the average person cannot do this. They go online, probably type "download movie_X free", and go god knows which arse-end-of the internet website where they will click on some fake download button and get infected with something that sends the contents of their computer to Nigeria. Even if they have heard of "Bittorrent", there are plenty of scam bittorrent sites out there as well. For these people, having a single place where they login, put in their payment details, click "watch" and off they go is enough, in fact better for them than the alternative (not everyone has a friendly nerd with a massive home file server full of media nearby). Things like DRM and that whole battle they may not even be aware of until it bites them in the arse, at which point it is too late.

          I know where you are coming from, I would not touch any of the paid streaming sites with a barge pole myself, for the reasons you mentioned. However I know I am in a minority in the world, and that I am not their target market.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

            The convenience is really important - I bought a couple of titles on sony's service a while ago and it was terrible. I'm really happy with itunes, Amazon, Netflix and HBO though - my wife can use them easily and my mother in law can even do quite well (in case you care - my wife is my canonical example of an intelligent person who is averagely tech savvy and my mother in law the intelligent person who is not tech savvy....)

      2. John Lilburne

        Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

        Big media still don't have any competition. P2P hasn't created any new content it has just leached, and like all parasitic systems has destroyed the least capable of defending against it. So bands are now asked to pay to perform, venues are closing down, and the music scene hasn't progressed since the 1990s.

        1. goldcd

          Following this argument

          Media publishing "hasn't created any new content".

          They merely seized upon a technology only they could afford, to give cents on the dollar to those that did create anything - a parasite.

          P2P affected the publishers more than the artist. P2P/Technology as a whole has shifted the power towards the artist more than anything.. well pretty much in the history of anything.

          1. John Lilburne

            Re: Following this argument

            Where did you get that crap from? The individual artist doesn't get a look in. Discovery/exposure doesn't happen much and when it does the artist gets nothing from it. The big publishers are risk averse and take on the most commercial of acts. The small independent publishers have folded up shop. What you are left with is individual artist websites and people here are complaining that they want a one shop place to go.

            I went into a record store today. It was rack after rack of pap. Quite depressing actually.

          2. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

            Re: Following this argument

            That is a classic troll. 10/10

            I love the internets.

        2. nijam Silver badge

          Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

          > ...and like all parasitic systems has destroyed the least capable of defending against it. So bands are now asked to pay to perform, venues are closing down...

          In the good old days, those problems used to be caused by record companies ripping off artists. Are you saying we no longer need record companies, because the damage they used to cause can now be blamed on ... well, anyone that Orlowski hates now?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's missing is how this changes over time...

      Yes, I agree completely. Napster was super convenient, and free, so it was the best of all worlds but obviously couldn't last. When it went away and you had stuff like Limewire and later bittorrent it becomes too much of a pain versus the convenience of iTunes and friends, unless you have lots of time and little money (i.e. typical college student) Now with streaming services basically giving you "all you can eat" for a monthly fee (or free if you're willing to suffer ads) even if you're skint broke and unemployed it hardly makes sense to go through the hassle of illegal downloads.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Surprised females pirate more than males.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Well I wasn't going to buy a Meghan Trainor CD, was I hun?

      1. Doctor Evil

        a warning is in order

        Tail-end baby boomer here: unfamiliar with the subject of your allusion, I went to YouTube to check her out (I think I gave it a fair shake -- the top 4 hits). And now I can never unsee and unlearn that again. Thanks a lot!

        1. MyffyW Silver badge

          Re: a warning is in order

          Happy to oblige @Doctor_Evil

          And for those who still think All About that Bass is Peter Hook's biography, learn from Dr Evil's mistake. Set a course for the alpha quadrant, maximum warp.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Age groups 18-24 and 25-34 generally voted to Remain in the Referendum

    The same demographic that are less likely to read newspapers.

    Or watch more likely to watch BBC3

    Or go clubbing

    Or to go to university.

    Or, or or .

  6. Justicesays
    Facepalm

    Given my dad

    Can still barely use his "recording device" (used to be a VHS video recorder, now a Tivo), or his computer, this is probably more down to ability/opportunity over any kind of moral or ethical superiority.

  7. kmac499

    C'mon El Reg sub-Editor(s) Did you allow for the detail outlined in another article on your organ about twenty-somethings having their ID ripped off.

    Maybe the prirating is all done by mate Yuri who has cloned all these millenial remainians' phones while they were sat in 'Cafe Nerd' and crying into their Unicorn Milk Lattes.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AO: "feel they're entitled to engage in unethical behaviour because (reasons)"

    Missing quite a key reason, people "pirating" something they already own e.g. with the trend for computers without an optical drive, if you want to watch something you have on DVD on your PC / listen to CD you have, then without optical drive on PC, easiest option is to torrent what you own.. As its unethical (IMO) to make people pay all over again just to "format shift" a set of 1s and 0s

    Only things I pirate are things I own or (freeview TV) where PVR failed due to power cut & cannot watch the content online via the original broadcaster as they do not do catchup or catchup persistently falls in a big heap (I'm looking at you C4 & ITV where e.g. 30 minutes into a programme and glitch sends you back to the start & no way to resume, instead you have to watch all the adverts again, F*** that - I gave you a fair go but actually seeing an episode in one go without it sending me back to the start at some point(s) was the exception rather than the norm).

    1. RFC822

      I'm rather surprised at somebody on here thinking that ownership of the physical medium also confers ownership rights on the content. You don't "own" it, you merely have a licence to use it.

      1. Tony Paulazzo

        You don't "own" it, you merely have a licence to use it.

        And yet the record labels never sent me new albums when mine got scratched, they expected me to 'buy' another copy, or are you saying the license ends when the physical product ends, like tapes were worse than albums were worse than CDs. Buying the digital copy now means the license exists in perpetuity, was this not always the case? cause I don't recall any albums stating the license to use it was only temporary.

        In fact all I can recall is that home taping is killing music which turned out to be a big fat lie.

      2. nijam Silver badge

        > I'm rather surprised at somebody on here thinking that ownership of the physical medium also confers ownership rights on the content. You don't "own" it, you merely have a licence to use it.

        And I'm rather surprised that anyone thinks that, having paid for said licence, the publishers (and definitely not the artists) are entitled to make you pay for it again.

        1. RFC822

          Interesting that people seem to be in denial of what they ACTUALLY paid for (not perhaps what they WANTED to pay for), when purchasing music or other content.

          Regardless of what you would like to happen, you only purchase a (limited) licence to use the content. So you cannot pass on your iTunes collection when you die. And you cannot (legally) format change the content. Nor can you broadcast the content in public. Or sell a CD while keeping an MP3 copy.

          Of course, those who ignore the terms of the licence are probably too busy joining their fellow freetards and downloading pirated software to bother reading this.

          Downvote away...

          1. Ian 55
            Mushroom

            Paying to have a licence to use the content or paying to own a thing like an LP / tape / CD / file.

            Pick one, not both.

  9. Commswonk

    Someone forgot a Golden Rule

    The government’s annual study of online content consumption, conducted by Kantar for the Intellectual Property Office, shows a spooky overlapp between between illegal downloaders and voters keenest on the European Union.

    Someone forgot "correlation is not causation", so I'm far from certain that anything has been proved.

    And overlap has only one "p", and that's a second rule...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

      These sort of articles are just clickbait for people who need to feed their own confirmation biases.

    2. BlartVersenwaldIII
      Coat

      Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

      Indeed, I've not seen an AO article in a while, then Farage resigns saying he wants more time for himself and the very next day... notice how you never see the two of them at the same time?

      Nigel Farage is an anagram of Feral Ageing

      Andrew Orlowski is an anagram of I Land Worse Work

      Coincidence?! I think NOT!

      Now if you'll excuse me I've got to go and preach to me fellow brethren outside the local shade-grown organic smoothie market about how we can combat global temperature rises with more piracy. Proof here.

      1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

        Re: Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

        Rumbled.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

      Statistic show that when shark attacks occur more ice cream is sold.

      Therefore one has to conclude that ice cream is the main cause of shark attacks and nothing to do with more people being at the beach in the water on a hot day.

      1. BlartVersenwaldIII
        Terminator

        Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

        > Statistic show that when shark attacks occur more ice cream is sold.

        The obvious conclusion there is that sharks are incapable of distinguishing between a drop of blood and raspberry sauce dripping off your 99.

    4. DavCrav

      Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

      "The government’s annual study of online content consumption, conducted by Kantar for the Intellectual Property Office, shows a spooky overlapp between between illegal downloaders and voters keenest on the European Union.

      Someone forgot "correlation is not causation", so I'm far from certain that anything has been proved.

      And overlap has only one "p", and that's a second rule..."

      I'd go farther than that. I'd say it's complete arse-gravy. If there's a correlation between group A and group B, and between group B and group C, unless those correlations are very high (hint: they aren't in this case) you cannot say anything meaningful about the correlation between A and C.

      This article's subhead is complete rubbish, and I am sending a correction to El Reg now.

    5. PassiveSmoking

      Re: Someone forgot a Golden Rule

      http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

      I love the one about Nicolas Cage movies.

  10. lleres

    People that have not seen the cost of music fall since they were children are less likely to pay for something they have had easy direct access to since at least their teenage years and continue to do so via services like the unknown underground pirate den of Youtube. News at 11.

    Actual conversation:

    "These adverts on my DVDs are so annoying, I mean I already paid!"

    "Downloads don't have ads"

    And you wonder why they are popular. Hint: they provide a better service.

    Compete on quality of service, or die.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You've missed one key justification

    And that key justification is: they would not have gotten my money anyway. In fact, they would have gotten much less of it if not for piracy, for reasons described later. Every time there is a discussion about recording industry's "losses", almost invariably it is assumed that if the younger me did not have the ability to download 5000 albums illegally, he would have spent £50000 to buy them legally. Well, surprise, younger me did not have this kind of money, so the real alternative to illegal downloads wasn't sending wads of cash to the recording industry, it was simply "stick to the radio and the handful of albums that I inherited from my parents / received as gifts". Either way, they get zero pounds.

    Actually scratch that, in the "illegally download 5000 albums" scenario they eventually got tons of money from me, money than they would never have gotten otherwise. Why? Because I have grown to really like some of these albums, largely things I would never have had the chance to hear otherwise, and as soon as I could afford it, I have started collecting their legal versions. There probably exist some people in the world who are willing to spend £10 on an album of stuff like "Tuvan throat singing" without ever hearing more than a pitiful 30 second sample of it, but I am not one of them. The ability to "sample" tons of recordings actually increased my spending on music, not decreased it. And I'm hardly alone in this, numerous studies demonstrated that people who download the most media illegally tend to also be the people who spend the most money on buying legal media.

    (yes, if you want to point out that nowadays this justification doesn't really work because of Spotify, you are right, it now serves this purpose; however, the amount of money Spotify sends to the artists is so pitiful that it is barely any better than torrenting, just more legal)

    1. Alien8n

      Re: You've missed one key justification

      I've actually made this analogy before. There's a lot of my music collection that exists now (in legal form) due to some form of piracy in the past. My entire Iron Maiden collection (I own every album legally) came about as a result of being handed a copied tape on a school trip in the 1980's. I also now own a reasonably large collection of symphonic metal (think Nightwish) as a direct result of someone providing me a copy of an album many years ago that was only available in the USA at the time. Once it became available in the UK I bought the deluxe CD. Then add to that all the ticket sales for gigs and merchandise sales and they've probably made more money off me than any album sales they could have potentially lost.

    2. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: You've missed one key justification

      Indeed, there was at least one study a while ago that showed that those who pirate most also purchase the most legal content.

  12. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "So the message is: get legal services and affordable services out there, and the money should follow."

    Basically the same advice writer Kurt Tucholsky gave to publishers almost a hundred years ago. They just don't listen ...

  13. JLV
    Trollface

    News at 11...

    "Well-off youngsters most likely to be cocaine users. And to have voted for Remain!!!"

  14. This post has been deleted by its author

  15. BarryUK

    What is it you're trying to achieve Andrew? Your snotty, condescending attitude is never going to convert anyone to your point of view.

  16. Alienrat

    I'm a bass player

    but I also play 'not real instruments' too.

    I am also an ABC1 and a 50+ age group, and a remainer and above average salary, so don't know where I go in those stats.

    I try to buy a decent number of CDs a month, because I don't want to get into that 'oh all modern music isn't as good as it was in the <insert decade you were young in>' mindset that so many of the people my age have, however, a lot of those CDs that I have bought did start life as a pirated track, replaced when I got the album.

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Adrian Midgley 1

    Statistically dishonest

    Malign rather than incompetent I suspect.

    Editor ...

    The demographic group most likely to vote to remain in the EU contains many who voted to leave.

    The author should demonstrate a difference between remain and leave voters in downloading habits, or the article should be ditched or rewritten as reporting rather than axegrinding.

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