Historical and current trends of digital piracy on university networks.

• In Event: Offenders and Victims of Computer-Assisted Crimes

Abstract

Digital copyright infringement remains a stubborn issue for many university campuses, whose networks are often used by students, faculty, and staff for the purposes of digital piracy. Little is known about the historical and current trends of digital copyright infringement on university campuses, however – an important component of developing effective strategies for reducing the number of complaints received by universities from copyright industry representatives. This paper considers ten years of digital copyright complaints received by the Information and Technology Department of a large, public university in the United States. These data were combined with university demographic information on the student, faculty, and staff bodies over the ten years for analysis from a routine activities perspective. Findings regarding the driving factors of copyright infringement trends on college campuses will be discussed.

Authors

• Sarah Appleby, University of Maryland

• David Maimon, University of Maryland

• Amy Ginther, University of Maryland