Here is another data point showing that people think that music and video piracy is ok and not much worse than cheating on their taxes. There is a widespread belief that the people surveyed in any of these kinds of studies tend to say the “right” thing, so there is probably a larger margin of error — meaning that most people view illegal downloading more like speeding rather than cheating on taxes.

The study found 69 percent of American households believe it is wrong to download pirated music and video from the Internet. By comparison, 77 percent believe it is wrong to cheat on taxes, and 44 percent believe it is wrong to drive a car over the speed limit.

One night last week I walked into my office at home only to find it had been converted into a movie set. Apparently my son decided he wanted to be a rock star and created a lip synced video worthy of such aspirations. But he ran into one very big issue - how to distribute a 120MB file.

He attempted to email it and got the dreaded attachment too large error message. It seems most email systems only allow a maximum 5MB file to be attached. He didn’t want to copy the files on CD and mail (USPS) them to his friends and grandparents and he didn’t want them posted on the internet where everyone might see them. In fact, he doesn’t even have an account on YouTube or MySpace - thank goodness. That’s when he came to me and asked what he could do to share his video.

I explained how simple it was using Avvenu, which he’d already downloaded and installed on his PC a few weeks ago. All he had to do was navigate to the file he wanted to send to his friends and grandparents, click on the “Share” link and enter the email addresses of each person he was sharing the video with. I explained that the video files were not being attached to the email, but instead a link was being sent that would allow his grandparents and friends to download the videos directly from his PC, completely securely without them seeing or accessing any other part of his PC. Half an hour later he told me he had shared his video with a variety of different friends and his grandparents.

A few hours later we got an enthusiastic telephone call from his grandparents letting us know how much they enjoyed having a budding rock star in the family - next stop Madison Square Gardens.