Zoom-in Online

Here's some scary information: 27% of all Americans are not aware that using downloaded media content could violate the rights of its creator. More than 1 in 4, that is, have no idea what intellectual property means. This information comes from an online survey conducted by KRC Research and iStockphoto, in which 1,003 people were asked about their use and knowledge of online media, such as photography, video and music.

The largest groups of people, who are unaware that permission is sometimes needed before content can be used or reproduced, are either older than 65 years of age (not terribly surprising perhaps, as this age group tends to be less involved with the internet in general) or in between 18-24 years old. In both of these groups, a whopping 38% did not know anything about copyright.

I find it shocking, that so many young people are in the dark about this. This is a group who grew up with file- and media-sharing sites and all the debate about the legality of these services. You would think that some idea of the concept would stick.

The survey also revealed that 26% of people who download photos, artwork, images or videos to help them with their job or business don't believe there are legal ramifications. 30% of those who download material to use on their blog, web page, or social networking site have the same misguided idea, and 29% of people who use the same media files for personal uses such as scrapbooking, albums, invitations, etc., are unaware of any legal issues. In the so-called information age, these are scary figures for any creator of digital media.

It's one thing when people don't care about intellectual property, but ignorance is in some ways even worse. How can we expect people to respect intellectual property, if they haven't got a clue what we're talking about?

Photo credit: Junial

Rasmus Rasmussen is on loan from iStockphoto, where he is part of the image inspection team.