In the wake of Christian pirates

The Gospel Music Assn. has embarked on a campaign to counter music piracy after commissioning a study that found purchasers of Christian music are as likely as other teens to engage in the practice.

Overall, the online survey of 1,449 teenagers found 80% of teenagers surveyed had engaged in at least one kind of music piracy -- such as making copies of CDs for other people, downloading unauthorized free music or uploading music files to the Internet to share with others -- in the last six months. Only 8% said unauthorized downloading and copying CDs for others was morally wrong.

But it was the more specific findings about Christian youth that association officials found disappointing, if not surprising.

Researchers found that 77% of born-again Christian teens engaged in music piracy, compared with 81% of all other teens. Statistics for teen buyers of gospel, worship or contemporary Christian music were in the same range.

“On a gut level, we had hoped that it would be true that Christian teens did have a little bit more of a moral stake in this issue,” Tricia Whitehead, spokeswoman for the Nashville-based music association, said in an interview. “We hope that we can set ourselves apart a little bit, and, in this case, we didn’t.”

With sales flat this year and down 5% last year, members of the Christian music industry suspected that they, along with the rest of the music world, were the victims of piracy, she said.

The association used the survey to help shape a new effort it kicked off on Sunday at the start of its annual GMA Week, a time when members of the Christian music industry gather in Nashville for meetings and an awards ceremony.

“This furthers our resolve that we -- meaning the industry, parents and spiritual leaders -- need to do a better job educating the hearts and minds of young people to the basic biblical principle ‘thou shalt not steal,’ ” GMA President John Styll said at a news conference announcing the “Millions of Wrongs Don’t Make It Right” campaign.

The association has developed a five-page brochure -- something they do want to be downloaded -- that can be posted on artists’ websites and be available at their concerts.

“Most of us would never even consider stealing something -- say, a picture or a piece of clothing -- from a friend’s house,” the brochure reads. “Yet when it comes to stealing digital recordings of copyrighted music, people somehow seem to think the same rules don’t apply.... Contrary to popular opinion, illegally downloading or copying copyrighted music is the same as stealing; there is no difference.”

The brochure goes on to list criminal penalties -- as high as $250,000 in fines or five years in prison -- and recommends uninstalling peer-to-peer software mostly used for illegal downloading, such as KaZaA, and opting for authorized websites instead.

It also features quotations and photographs of artists Steven Curtis Chapman, Stacie Orrico and Shaun Groves, who give their perspective on the matter.

“Students I’ve spoken with adopt a Robin Hood complex, saying they’re stealing from wealthy people and therefore it’s not wrong,” Groves said. “The reality is that my wife and two kids live in an apartment. We drive 10-year-old Camrys, not BMWs.”

Chapman and Orrico said that the money paid for CDs doesn’t just help the artists and record companies but also everyone down the line in the CD-making process, from the engineers to the truck drivers who transport the music to the stores.

While Christian music industry officials reacted especially to the survey’s findings about Christian teens who are involved in piracy, a key researcher on the project was concerned about the overall findings.

“I was surprised that there was not a higher proportion of teenagers that believed music piracy was wrong,” said David Kinnaman, vice president of the Barna Group in Ventura.

His company designed the survey and analyzed the results. Harris Interactive, a market research firm based in Rochester, N.Y., collected the data for the survey in February that had an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Researchers found that teens were rarely getting moral advice about downloading or copying from parents or church leaders.