Most college students wouldn’t dream of walking out of a music store with a compact disc tucked in their pocket, bypassing the cash register. But more than one-third of college students in a recent survey said they illegally download music online from peer-to-peer file sharing networks, even though they know it’s wrong.
The national telephone survey by the University of Richmond Intellectual Property Institute, sponsored by the National CyberEducation Project (law.richmond.edu/ipi/) showed three-quarters of the students understand free downloading is illegal, and 60 percent say it’s unethical.
Why do the law-breaking students do it? To save money. It’s a matter of economics over ethics, they say.
The survey shows 22 percent of the students believe downloading copyright-protected files without paying is legal and 39 percent think it should be.
“What we’re seeing here is an awareness of the legal and ethical implications of illegal downloading, which may result from the increased incidence of subpoenas,” Jim Gibson, professor at the University of Richmond Law School and director of the Intellectual Property Institute, said in a statement.
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