Copyright in the digital era: a pilot on behaviours, social perception and consciousness

Abstract

This article shows an empiric research within the context of a graduate studies thesis and provides a summary report of obtained results. The research has been carried on through a web-survey which was available online between February and June 2011. The article first explains the research goals and introduces the web-survey. Then main methodological nodes met in this research and methods used to collect and analyze data will be discussed. Then is given the results of the total number of useful responses and their distribution based on demographic variables (geographic area, age, degree, occupation and user typology). Therefore it brings into focus on the results about the Studio 1 -- Italia, which are the most representative answers. The results (in few cases showed with bar charts) will be discussed concerning the three macro-themes of the research: behaviours (that is how net users usually acquire creative contents and software); opinions and perceptions (that is how net users relate themselves to the copyright problem, which are their opinions and perceptions about the hottest themes on the subject); consciousness level (in other words what is the real information level and the copyright working principles consciousness of net users and not of experts).