世論 What Japan Thinks

Yet another survey on illegal downloads, this time from iShare, pussy-foots around the direct question of whether people have downloaded or not, although there are some interesting answers in the survey, for some reason entitled “the morals of young people“, suggesting there were a number of other unreported questions asked.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 9th of March 2010 834 people from the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 64.1% of the sample were male, 11.4% in their teens, and 88.4% in their twenties. This is quite an unusual survey demographic for iShare.

To educate the public, there has been a site set up to educate the public on the recent change in the law. The site is called in Japanese やめよう！違法ダウンロード, yameyou! Ihou download, Stop! Illegal Download, and can be found at the rather quaint URL http://www.happy-musiccycle.jp/.

The change in the law this January has outlawed download – up to then it was only illegal to upload; downloading was fine, even through P2P software, as long as you set it to leech mode only. The site has a FAQ with the answer to a few questions, including one interesting one that says it is still legal to burn a CD and give it to your mother. I would guess that CD rental shops fall under this clause so you are still free to rent’n'rip.

Research results

Q1: Have you ever done something you shouldn’t have done? For example, peeked at your partner’s mobile phone, thrown rubbish out on the wrong day, etc. (Sample size=834)

	All	Male N=535	Female N=299
Often (to SQ)	2.8%	3.0%	2.3%
Sometimes (to SQ)	20.1%	17.4%	25.1%
Rarely	48.6%	46.2%	52.8%
Never	28.5%	33.5%	19.7%

Q1SQ: What is the main reason why you do these things? (Sample size=191)

	All	Male N=109	Female N=82
Because it’s OK to do these small things	44.0%	43.1%	45.1%
Because it doesn’t cause much bother to people	33.5%	40.4%	24.4%
Because I want to do it	9.9%	4.6%	17.1%
Because it’s not a criminal offence	6.8%	4.6%	9.8%
Because even if I get seen there’s no penalty	2.1%	2.8%	1.2%
Other	3.7%	4.6%	2.4%

Q2: Did you know that from January 2010 downloading had become illegal? (Sample size=834)

	All	Male N=535	Female N=299
Yes	60.1%	63.6%	53.8%
No	39.9%	36.4%	46.2%

Q3: Before January 2010 did you think that downloading illegally-uploaded music was also illegal? (Sample size=834)

	All	Male N=535	Female N=299
Thought it was	62.8%	63.0%	62.5%
Thought it wasn’t	37.2%	37.0%	37.5%