Criminal Friends of Entertainment: Analysing Results from Recent Peer-toPeer Surveys
Authors
Anniina Huttunen Herkko Hietanen
* Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology and Lappeenranta University of Technology School of Business. Research partly funded by EU ‘P2P Fusion’ -project. + Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. ∞ Research Team Leader, Nokia Research Center.
We conducted a survey to find out P2P (peer-to-peer) users attitudes toward copyright and P2P services. The survey results suggest that P2P users are aware that they are breaking the law and about half of the users even consider the use of illegal file sharing sites as morally wrong. Even though survey participants knew what amounted to copyright infringement, they had difficulties in recognising the legal uses of works that copyright law permits. The biggest payoff for the illegal file sharers was the immediate access to large catalogue of works which were free of charge and DRM-free. Yet nearly half of the respondents would be willing to pay monthly for a service that enabled unlimited music and video file sharing and downloading. Rights owners’ actions and amendments in the legislation have not had any noticeable impact on file sharing. File-sharers are aware of the punishments but the risk of getting caught was considered miniscule.
