Survey: 59% Say Online Content Pirates Should be Prosecuted

WASHINGTON—Most Americans believe that those who illegally pirate music and movies online should be prosecuted, according to a new study this month from the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed believe the government should prosecute content pirates, with 33 percent opposed. Nine percent said they weren't sure.

“At this country’s birth, the nation’s Founders guaranteed free speech and art through the First Amendment and ensured compensation for authors and creators through a copyright clause in the U.S. Constitution and federal law," said Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center. "These were complementary principles, which together helped ensure that a then-young nation would be a capital of creativity. As illegal downloading has flourished, the right to create remains unabated, but the right to be paid for your work has been seriously damaged.”

Despite most feeling strongly about piracy, significantly fewer respondents—44 percent—felt people should be able to post copyrighted material online without paying rights fees "as long as no money is being made." 42 percent said people shouldn't have that right.

“Spend just a few minutes on social media and you’ll find plenty of examples of people using copyrighted material they don’t have the rights to. Technically, many of these are copyright violations,” Paulson said. "But they’re also a form of expression by those who have posted them, particularly when the poster has used copyrighted material as a mash-up, creating new art by adapting the old."

Those surveyed saw a clear distinction between using copyrighted material for personal purposes and using it for profit. 64 percent said that sites that commercial websites should not have the right to post copyrighted material without paying fees.

The 2012 national survey of 1,006 adults was conducted in June by telephone by the PERT Group. The sampling error is +/-3.2 percent.