Internet has set the pace for the 21st century, also known as ‘digital era’. The spread of the Internet in any electronic device allows us to be communicated at all times, with its advantages and disadvantages. This revolution has made possible for the society to have easy access to Internet at home. In Spain, for example, 78.8% homes had Internet connection in 2015 (INE, 2015). Being able to be ‘online’ 24 hours a day provide not only free online programmes, but also downloadable films or series at no cost. Whether these practices are legal or moral is questionable.
The article in this post gives a thorough reflection on the uses that university students make of these downloads. Some of the results are eye-opening. In the survey undertaken, 67.3% of the participants said that their downloads were ‘pirated’, free and with no permission from the authors. Have they been informed about this matter? Are they really aware of the legal constraints in their uses?
I highly recommend reading this study that has received almost 1,000 online visits and whose aim is ‘to analyse the habits of audio-visual (movies and television series) consumption via the internet of university students; to detect their attitudes, knowledge and abilities as related to illegal downloading of content from the web; and to describe the education/training they perceive to have in relation to legal and ethical issues on the subject’ (Duarte-Hueros et al., 2016:52). How can we educate the new generations to look after the increasingly amount of audio-visual material ‘available at any time and any place’?
Duarte-Hueros, J., Duarte-Hueros, A. & Ruano-López, S. (2016). The Audiovisual Content Downloads among University Students [Las descargas de contenidos audiovisuales en Internet entre estudiantes universitarios.] Comunicar, 48, 49-57. (DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.3916/C48-2016-05.)