My Intuition

An interesting byproduct of the "free music" phenomenom, ie downloading and burning cds, I think, is that no one steals CDs anymore. I believe people used to be worried about their cars being broken into and having CDs stolen. I know thugs in high school used to steal CDs from parties - it was a fad.

While at Coachella a couple years ago, my friend had her car broken into. They stole my CDs, but I found them at lost and found. There are three theories:

1. They respected my CD collection so much, they felt compelled to return it.
2. They thought my CDs were crap and threw them out the window to be found by lost and found.
3. The CDs had no value on the market and hence weren't worth stealing.

I no longer worry about CDs being stolen from my car at all...because I don't think the risk-reward factor makes it beneficial for a thief to take the CDs.

I'd like to see a study.