From our 'No joke, Sherlock!" department

[rcjordan]

Downloaders are Copyright Care-free [pewinternet.org]

Brilliant, Holmes ...a simply brilliant deduction!

[Sinner_G]

Well I guess they eliminated all the options that were impossible and got only that one, however unlikely it seems. ;)

[miles]

Whoever wrote that must have a masters degree or a phd. I wonder if common sence came with the money spent on all that education.

[TheDoctor]

Whoever wrote that must have a ... phd.

I hope not. I'd expect something more in the way of analysis from a phd.

I think it was put together by someone who was told to write up some pointless statistics, culled from a badly-designed survey, and who couldn't really care less. Neither, I think, can anyone else.

[rcjordan]

The Pew reports are top-notch, and I use them all the time to back up my ideas or consultations with others. I'm sure this needed to be in print for some group or another, but it caught me as the ultimate no-brainer when I first read it.

[edit_g]

Maybe it is because they know that it isn't the people who download that are in trouble - it is the people that share.

Besides - research is research - the obvious is the obvious.

If anyone had asked me if downloaders were worried about copyright two days ago I would have said "no, of course not". If they'd asked me how I knew I would have said "It's obvious". But now I have some research to back it up - so I we can say something other than "because"... :)