Inside the Mind of a 9 Year Old File-Sharer
Written by enigmax on October 21, 2007Everyone knows that a significant number of file-sharers are teenagers and young adults and they get their share of press. But what about the true kids - the under 10’s ? TorrentFreak makes itself feel old trying to keep up with the agile mind of a 9 year old file-sharer.
Like most publications, here at TorrentFreak we regularly interview adults. However, when a recent conversation with a child turned to file-sharing, we took the opportunity to give the P2P kids a voice. We had a little chat with a 9 year old girl who wants to be called “Hannah” (after Hannah Montana) and she talks to us about LimeWire, BEBO, YouTube and her perception of the rights and wrongs of copying - even her frustrations with DRM.
“Never work with children or animals” said WC Fields. TorrentFreak takes a chance:
TF. Hi Hannah! How old are you?
- I’m 10 in 12 days
TF. What sort of music are you listening to right now?
Sean Kingstone, Shayne Ward and High School Musical 2
TF. Where did you first get into music?
- On the music channels, on MTV.
TF. When did you get a PC?
- People had computers but I couldn’t go on them but my Dad bought me one last year. I have internet.
TF. What do you do on the internet?
- MSN, talking to friends and cousins, games and dressing-up games [dolls]
TF. When did you first start using the internet to get music?
- My cousin showed me YouTube and then LimeWire and I was like “whoa cool!”
TF. What was cool about it?
- Because you can put anything in and it will come up and you don’t actually pay for it. Well you have to pay for the internet and LimeWire comes with the internet but you have to pay for that so LimeWire isn’t really free.
TF. Ok…I see….Do you get music from anywhere else?
- My cousin gets it from BEBO. She copies it from other people’s pages and puts it on her own.
TF. Do you think it’s ok to copy the music?
- Yes it’s ok because she only does it to make her page better.
TF. So you’re sure that it’s ok to copy it? What do you think about copying?
- I suppose it’s not ok to copy but people copied it off her site so she just copies theirs. It’s like, you’re copying my t-shirt so i’m copying you on shoes.
TF. Ok, so a bit like copying school work?….Hmm….ok, let’s talk about copying on the computer again. When you started using LimeWire, did anyone ever mention that if you did certain things you might be breaking some laws?
- Why would they put it [music] on the internet and invent mp3 players if it was against the law?
TF. Confusing isn’t it?….You mentioned you like Sean Kingstone - what if I told you that Sean Kingstone’s boss might send you a letter asking for money because you shared his album on LimeWire? What would you say to him?
- W.E! [whatever!]
TF. Come on, play along with me. What would you say if he did?
- I’d say “tooooo strict!” and anyway he can’t make me do anything. He’s not the boss of me, he’s the boss of Sean Kingstone.
TF. What do you think might happen if you didn’t pay him?
- Nothing. I’m too young to be charged by the government so he can’t charge me.
TF. Would you carry on using LimeWire after he sent the letter?
- Yeah!
TF. Why?
- Because you can get good albums off there. Duh!! My CD’s don’t work in my mp3 player so LimeWire is the only way to do it. I bought High School Musical 2 on CD but it won’t go on my mp3 [player]
TF. How would you make LimeWire better?
- To speak to the person sending the music to make sure they send the right one, sometimes they send stuff that doesn’t even play.
TF. Do you know what a pirate is?
- They have parrots [effects 'arrrrr']
TF. Do you think its legal or illegal to copy a CD or DVD?
- Some men right, they sell you a DVD at the market but when you get home it doesn’t play, that’s illegal.
TF. Why is it illegal?
- Duh!! Because they tell you it works and when you get it home it’s rubbish and jumps in the middle and its a waste of money!
TF. Do you think you should be paying for stuff off LimeWire? You have to buy CD’s from the shop…
- You have to pay for CD’s because they’re actually on a disc not on the computer. My cousin, right, she uses LimeWire when she doesn’t have any money for CDs.
TF. Did you ever download anything by anybody and then go to see them?
- I got stuff by Lee Ryan and Simon Webbe and then I went to see Blue. Why don’t you ask me what my favorite hobby is?
TF. Ok, what’s your favorite hobby?
- Dancing to music, it’s fun!!
Thankyou, Hannah. That’s it! Have a nice birthday!
Previously: ShareTV Evolves Into a TV Torrent Community
Next: How To Bypass Comcast’s BitTorrent Throttling
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A
this interview is becoming a shot in spain :)
hi girls and boys
Just who ever said that music was supposed to be a “business” and people should do it for a living?
That idea is common in the world of today where everything is supposed to have a price and be about money, but if you think of the past and how music began, you can see that today’s idea of “play for pay” is totally effed up.
Music is deep in the human soul and people should sing or play from the joy or pain in their hearts to share their feelings with others. Wanting to get paid for that is as weird as wanting to be paid for hugging your kid!
im gonna teach my 9 yr old sister how to use torrents and how to be a good seed! if you control the youth you control the future, lol. honestly, i see no problem with this. i used my schools t3 lines for years, i hope all kids can still dream big and grow up to do whatever, including pirates
[quote comment="191601"]LMAO too right, Hannah
good one about Seans boss
I wanna parrot:’(
Happy Bday xoxox TorrentFreakLover3211[/quote]
hello hannah
[quote comment="205300"]hi girls and boys[/quote]
hello jasmine are you ok how old are you are you my friend at school this girl at school said im a bully now that is mean please send a reply on;rebecca@TorrentFreak.com
[quote comment="208258"]hello jasmine are you ok how old are you are you my friend at school this girl at school said im a bully now that is mean please send a reply on;rebecca@TorrentFreak.com[/quote]
Very interesting look at the psyche of a child file-sharer!
I was wondering when someone in my era - I’m 30 would ask - why wasn’t there a big uproar when “high speed dubbing” came out - you could make a copy of your cassette (most kids don’t even know what these are) like 3 times faster than normal. We did this all the time. We would also record songs off the radio. Will it be illegal to sing your favorite cong soon? My only issue with the recording industry as a whole is the price they have been charging for technology. Tapes use to be fairly cheap. Then CD’s came out - which where by far cheaper to produce in large amounts. But, they charge ~ $ 20 each. Most people probably feel justified in downloading a few songs beacuse the industry raped us on the all the CD’s we actually bought! just my 2 cents
What was the piont of all of this. This is dumb.
this 9 year old is a bich cuz you are not hannah momtana ok and if you sang me a song it won’t be good so YOU ARE GUST A LITTLE 2 YEAR OLD WHO LIKE HANNAH MONTANA.
P.S. I AM HANNAH MOMTANA BYE FANS I LOVE YOU
HEY FANS HOW ARE YOU. LOOK 9 YEAR OLD SHUT UP. CUZ YOU ARE NOT HANNAH MONTANA YOU ARE A BICH. I AM HANNAH MONTANA OK I WISH PEOPLE WOULD STOP SAYING THEY ARE THE REAL HANNAH MONTANA CUZ YOU ARE NOT A AM
P.S I PROMIES I AM HANNAH MONTANA
A BIG FAT CRIP LIE
i’ve seen grad students and on do things that drop my jaw, like getting a separate cd player so they can listen to music while they work at the computer, who are stunned when i ask why they don’t just use the computers cd drive to listen to their disc.
hell i’ve seen worse, so it happens.
observation on the scale necessary for real protection of a child online can lead to serious backlash and problems as well(try to think of having your grandmother sitting behind you and you mistakenly try dicks.com loking for the sporting goods store…). unless they are very well versed and more importantly widely experienced dealing with the technology, they will likely have their opinions formed more from what they are fed by the news stations.
in social sciences classes i’ve taken they try to instill the ability to at least acknowledge that every group, individual, or organization has its own agenda, and intentional or not, creates its own slant and spin.
add the drive to garner money and imagine how strong that slant and spin can be in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
the rift comes in of course when you grasp that an individual who does not have to pay out of pocket for that news, will quite simply be conditioned not to make that connection.
to them broadcast television is “free”.
its the same kind of conditioned dissociation which has helped foster the mindset of the pirate.
it helps along the basic desire to have what one wants, and is reinforced by having it when one wants.
couple these points of impetus with what can be considered outrageous limitations, prices, and inconveniences:
-the price per mb for a retail cd is what?
-the tax to offset piracy on all manner of blank media.
-the price to replace damaged media the way the company wants.
- the odds that a legitimate replacement for a number of materials may simply no longer be available due to discontinuation of the data or the medium.
- ever run into a nasty return policy on opened movie/game/app/music for any legitimate reason?
-how many tracks of any given cd have you heard offline, say radio? 1 of 8-20? maybe two or 3.
-how many movies have you been suckered into by a sub 60 second spot, that you wished you had your money back.
the list goes on.
hell take a music business class.
most of the passed on cost is not going to royalties for the artist and or songwriter.
so they of course have the least to lose per unit lost cd wise.
online downloads. mm. paying to provide my medium, data transportation, et. and when i buy the music, what have i bought ? access? and if my playback device is incompatable with the current drm implementation then what?
why am i wasting space, however much that i’ve paid out for on drm data?
i’ll tell you what. it’ll stop when it stops being a capital venture, or when the masses realize that if they dedicated their processing time to brute forcing every possible combination of 1’s and 0’s to the length of a 700mb cdr and pass them to the copyright office as a lump, that every piece of audio possible -not already copyrighted of course- in cdda format, would be forever public domain for the cost of the media, and the per media copyright fee.
sure with single core machines clocking 2ghz it’ll take a 100 years or so. with moores law and the now quad core sytems, wouldnt take too long… to force freedom, and make the artist the person you pay to see PERFORM.
in the time it took to reread this, the same machine i used to do so managed a few hundred thousand or so permutations of that keyspace…. and every one would be valid for helping to stonewall future wallet vampirism.
end rant and bighint to groups like seti@home, grid.org, etc.. and the people who run their clients..
i love boys
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