Teens and Illegal Downloading - Microsoft Edition

Teens and Illegal Downloading - Microsoft Edition February 13, 2008

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data, Opinion.
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Joyce Valenza has posted a review of a Microsoft study of teens and their online habits and attitudes toward illegal downloading. Microsoft has launched a new pilot curriculum (Intellectual Property Rights Education) to help teach students about property rights. There are some interesting conclusions:

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.

The complete study can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/download/press/2008/02-13KRCStudy.pdf

Joyce’s review goes on to include some terrific resources to facilitate learning about copyright alternatives and fair use.

While I’m sure the the study was well intentioned and the results fairly represent the current status for school aged children, I’m concerned about the launching of a new educational initiative aimed at curbing illegal downloads. I think that schools are unfairly being singled out in an effort to get them to fix a problem that the business world can’t. Schools have plenty of important initiatives already in place, such as literacy and mathematics. Trying to convince schools that they should fix a business problem seems disingenuous and would only dilute those educational imperatives. If students aren’t looking to schools as their primary source of information about illegal downloading, as noted in the conclusion quoted above, then focusing that effort on the schools also seems misplaced.

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/390021839.html?nid=3714

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