Interest

Oricon: 28.5% of Japanese Teens Have Illegally Downloaded

The market survey firm Oricon Communications released the results of a questionnaire on Thursday that asked people if they illegally download content from the Internet. Between January 31 and February 13, Oricon conducted the online survey among 1,000 people ranging from middle school students to people in their 40s. According to the results, 28.5% of Japanese middle and high school students have illegally downloaded, but only about half of all respondents knew that Japan's Copyright Law has been amended.

A similar survey has been conducted every year since 2010, when the Japanese parliament made it illegal to knowingly download copyrighted material without authorization. Under the country's former Copyright Law, Japan allowed prosecution against people who upload copyrighted material without authorization, but it was legal to download the exact same material for private use.

In the past year, 17.4% of respondents said they illegally downloaded, a small decrease from 18.7% in 2010 and 19.2% in 2011. The percentage of illegal downloaders was highest among middle and high school students (28.5%), followed by college students (24.0%), working adults in their 20s (13.5%), and people in their 30s and 40s (10.5%). Among middle and high school students, 21.5% said that they will illegally download in the future, which is almost double the percentage of all survey takers (11.3%).

56.1% of all respondents said that they knew the Japanese Copyright Law had been altered, compared with 51.6% in 2010 and 50.5% in 2011. The largest percentage of people that knew about the change were college students (63%), followed by middle and high school students (61.5%).

Source: Internet Watch