As more companies try and fail spectacularly to tackle the issue of piracy, fewer people now consider the act of downloading online content illegal or view unauthorised file sharing a crime compared with four years ago.
Despite continued efforts to raise awareness and educate the public on intellectual property (IP) rights, the trend seems to be that people just don’t find anything wrong in sharing files, TODAY reports.
An IP Perception Survey, commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore last year, revealed that only 54.9 percent of respondents viewed downloading from unauthorised sources as theft, a decrease from the 77.8 percent back in 2010.
In similar fashion, only 49.2 percent felt that unauthorised file sharing is stealing, while 77.5 percent felt likewise in 2010.
However, a majority of them still consider it important to protect IP rights with 80.2 percent agreeing with the statement. 82.3 percent felt that the works of IP creators deserved to be protected.
Common reasons given for online IP rights infringements include convenience and unwillingness to pay for content, while other respondents cited moral values and poorer quality of content as deterrents.
Photo: nrkbeta via Flickr
