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Teen Attitudes on Illegal Downloading: A Microsoft study
February 13, 2008
Today Microsoft released
a survey of 501 teens, grade 7 through 10.
The study concluded:
teens are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online.
About half of those teens, however, said they were not familiar with these laws, and only 11 percent of them clearly understood the current rules for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software. Teens who were familiar with downloading rules credited their parents, TV or stories in magazines and newspapers, and Web sites — more so than their schools — as resources for information about illegal downloading.
In response, Microsoft launched Intellectual Property Rights Education, a pilot curriculum for secondary educators to help students better understand "how intellectual property rights affect their lives and sparking discussion to clarify the
gray areas in protected and shared content."
The curricular content includes the beta site
MYBYTES, a website that encourages young people to develop, share, and assign usage rights to their own intellectual property. The site includes a Music Mixer, on-the-street video interviews, the viewpoints of artists, stories about how intellectual property affects everyday life, and online polls.
The
PDF version of the study should provide interesting fodder for class discussion. Especially interesting, though not surprising, are students' reasons why they are likely to continue illegal downloading despite their new knowledge:
- Most people see their friends doing it and figure "why not" (66%)
- Most people your age can't afford to pay for it (65%)
- Most kids your age do not know it is illegal to download this content without first paying for it or obtaining the owner's permission (65%)
- This type of information should be free to download (56%)
- The entertainment companies make too much money already (47%)
- Rock stars don't need the money (40%)
Commercial music and movies will continue as major arenas of IP contention. The technology to copy for personal use is available and easy and tempting. We can help by ensuring our students are at least aware of the clearer rules relating to illegal downloading, by modeling legal behavior ourselves, and by educating ourselves, as best we can, relating to
grayer areas of fair use.
Students and teachers must also be aware that some artists are choosing to share and adopt alternative licensing. For more resources, as well as alternative sources of content for student production, check out our
Copyright Friendly wiki and the wonderful materials available at Creative Commons:
Posted by Joyce Valenza on February 13, 2008 | Comments (1)
