lawnrrd | As the Tape Rewinds

While reading this article in the NY Times (free registration required) about the values implicitly reflected in what the article calls "the culture of copying," I thought this passage was telling:

Last week's lawsuits against file-sharers are an attempt to get the public to treat copying not as a question of technological possibility or moral implications, but as a threat to the wallet. A study by Forrester Research found that 68 percent of burners said they would stop if they thought they might get in serious trouble. As in sampling, the moral questions should follow the financial ones, said Josh Bernoff, the principal analyst covering media and entertainment at Forrester.

But the process still had some hurdles to get over, Mr. Bernoff admitted. Recently he was discussing his research with an executive at a media organization that has been very aggressive about trying to discourage file-sharing. When Mr. Bernoff asked the executive how he had gotten the report, which Forrester sells for $895, the man hesitated.

"They got a copy from one of the studios," Mr. Bernoff said. "Here is an organization that's saying that stealing hurts the little people, and they took our intellectual property and they shuttled it around like a text file."