Source: altonivel.com.mx
“A generation […] is being raised to believe that “property” should be free” (Lawrence Lessig in “Free Culture”)
“We need to understand how kids who grow up digital think and want to learn…we are building a legal system that completely surpasses the natural tendencies of today’s digital kids” (John Seely Brown, chief scientist of Xerox Corp.)
Until fairly recently there was a growing belief that kids were growing up accustomed to illegal downloads oblivious to its consequence. However, latest developments within technology (smartphones!) and content delivery (Netflix, Spotify, etc.) have shifted digital natives’ behaviours, who now have a higher tendency to pay for content.
As a digital immigrant I am facinated by the natives, who seem to be born with a smart phone in their hand.
I also touched upon this issue in my blog about gamification: http://linux.otherspace.co.uk/principles/leenasalo/challenges-of-gamification/
For us illegal downloads were something of a holy grail, but it’s true that it is very commonplace for digital natives. It seem they know how to find any content for free and might not really care if it is illegal. But it is also true that digital natives also are accustomed to subscribing to different services and are willing to pay for it.
I think what brought this change was that companies like Netflix or Spotify just offer a greater value-for-money. I hope this will last as Netflix Inc . announced two months ago that they will raise prices for its U.S. subscribers.
Yeah…the price hike is not much though. It’ll still offer great value for money. The issue with streaming, more apparent with movies than with music, is that there isn’t one license to all territories and that’s why Netflix, for example, has a very different range of movies and series on offer according to each territory.
There’s always VPN allowing users to access other countries’ catalogues but that’s the recent Netflix announcement that made me sad: they want to disable that!