The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

Napster Nation

3. Research and Destroy

But back to the foggy landscape of scientific studies.

This time around, the subject is the Recording Industry Association of America's decision to start suing individuals for unlawfully sharing copyrighted music over the Internet. The trade organization filed 261 separate lawsuits against alleged pirates on Sept. 8, and promised it was just getting started.

Does the RIAA bask in the glow of a supportive public? Or are its assertions of intellectual-property rights being ignored?

Yes, and yes, apparently. Of course, it depends whom you talk to. And when.

Let's start with the RIAA. Only two days after its first round of lawsuits, the RIAA issued data that it characterized as "belying speculation that the recording industry's aggressive legal strategy might result in a consumer backlash."

According to a survey conducted for the RIAA by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 52% of Americans were supportive and understanding of the RIAA's courtroom tactics, while 21% were unsupportive and negative.

The research lab -- which the RIAA supplied with detailed information about the relevant question and its answers -- has a few observations to make here.

First, if you look at all the different ways the RIAA slices the data -- age, race, education and Internet usage, for example -- you find that the least supportive demographic group by far is people from the Northeast. Which, we suppose, confirms the rest of the nation's suspicions about the low moral character of city folk Back East. Or Up North, as the case may be.

Second, as you'd expect, teens and young adults are less supportive of the RIAA than are their elders aged 30 to 64. But, we were surprised to see, support plummeted back to teen-age levels if respondents were 65 or older. So it's true: People do mellow in their old age. Or maybe the RIAA just ended up talking to a bunch of doting grandparents.