Reading the comments there were some points made I thought were good:
- College students never raise their hands in a lecture. Ever. (I teach college for a living, it's true). So there's some false negatives there.
- What's new? I had a substantial collection of cassette tapes in college I'd copied off friends. Traded them when in college. College students, and highschool students are frequently broke. When it's a case of choosing between unpaid for music, and no music... many will opt to not pay for it. If that behavior is endemic amongst the other students, who wants to be the one throwing stones?
There was another point made, that the students "hadn't been educated on the morality of copyright", and that I thought was largely bunk. I know I've seen trailers/previews at the movies trying to convince me not to download movies. I've seen ads against file sharing, and music downlading. And I'm.... less plugged in to such things than most teenagers/college students. The problem is not that nobody has tried, it's that the copyright industry's attempt to educate kids is stupid, and probably morally bankrupt. Copyright is different than theft. When you steal a CD, or DVD from the store, then the store is poorer by one CD or DVD. When you download a movie, or song, then someone may have been deprived of an opportunity to make money to sell it to you, but they are not poorer. That does not mean it's not wrong, but the two situations are not equivalent. And honestly, kids are smart enough to see that. So if you couch the argument (as the copyright industry does) in those terms, you're fighting an uphill battle.
Which brings me to the more general topic of morality and law. But that, I think for another day.
