College students today are savvy and know how to find what they want online including copyrighted music, music, and software downloads. But just how pervasive is this problem and how are accessing these file?
Syracuse iSchool Associate Dean for Research Jeff Stanton and Ph.D. student Isabelle Fagnot led a study at Syracuse University to find out. They interviewed a small sample of nine undergraduates to do some preliminary information gathering, and then conducted a larger anonymous paper survey of 164 students, and an even larger web-based survey of 404 students.
They asked students a series of questions hoping to determine whether they were downloading copyrighted material, uploading this material, or sharing files only with friends on an individual basis.
They discovered that about 3/4 of students were participating in peer-to-peer downloading, about ½ were downloading software, 1/3 were sharing with friends, and about 13 percent were uploading copyrighted content for others to download.
One of the most interesting findings of his study was that students who were most aware of the illegal nature of downloading copyrighted materials were also the most likely to engage in the behavior. Also, the better educated a student that he was in information security, the more likely he was to share files with his peers.
Stanton also asked students to suggest ways that the university can help prevent students from doing this, and passed that information along to university.
Attendees at the iConference also suggested ways that universities can prevent this, including following the library model, of licensing music that students could access.
Syracuse iSchool Associate Dean for Research Jeff Stanton and Ph.D. student Isabelle Fagnot led a study at Syracuse University to find out. They interviewed a small sample of nine undergraduates to do some preliminary information gathering, and then conducted a larger anonymous paper survey of 164 students, and an even larger web-based survey of 404 students.
They asked students a series of questions hoping to determine whether they were downloading copyrighted material, uploading this material, or sharing files only with friends on an individual basis.
They discovered that about 3/4 of students were participating in peer-to-peer downloading, about ½ were downloading software, 1/3 were sharing with friends, and about 13 percent were uploading copyrighted content for others to download.
One of the most interesting findings of his study was that students who were most aware of the illegal nature of downloading copyrighted materials were also the most likely to engage in the behavior. Also, the better educated a student that he was in information security, the more likely he was to share files with his peers.
Stanton also asked students to suggest ways that the university can help prevent students from doing this, and passed that information along to university.
Attendees at the iConference also suggested ways that universities can prevent this, including following the library model, of licensing music that students could access.
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