Illinois State University Dean of University Libraries Cheryl Asper Elzy has announced the latest findings of their Digital Citizen project, which examines how students on campus use technology and the extent to which that use is infringing. (Dean Elzy discussed her research at our Copyright Alliance Academic Symposium in December.)

Not surprisingly, the study found that more than half of dormitory residents with a university broadband connection had downloaded or uploaded infringing content. However, it also found this:

Most students comply with the rules by removing the pirated material
from their computer the first time they are contacted by the university
and even more students do not partake in illegal file-sharing in the
first place.

That suggests that once students are contacted about their infringement, the total number of students continuing to infringe is actually a minority on campus. Zero would be ideal, but as with DRM, international legal compliance and other areas of copyright, absolutes are elusive. It's good to see that repeat infringers can be a marginal community on a college campus, although the Pareto Principle suggests you only need a few students to do major damage. 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 11:26 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under education, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.