The Public’s Perception of Copyright — Video Interviews with Randomly-Selected People in Chicago

In order to document the public perception of copyright today, we went around Chicago with a video camera over two days in the summer of 2006, asking strangers what they think copyright is for, how it got started, how they feel about filesharing, and for any other thoughts they have on copyright. We didn’t tell the interviewees about this website or the nature of our project until after each interview was over.

The points that showed up consistently were:

1. Most people felt that copyright is mainly about credit, that is, about preventing plagiarism.
2. Everyone was on the artist’s side — everyone wants to feel that they’re treating the artists right. Over and over again, we heard the sentiment that when someone goes to a concert they’ll buy the CD “to support the band”, even if they already have all those songs on their computer already.
3. Many people felt that copyright was about giving creators the means to make a living, but that in recent times it’s been abused and corrupted by corporate interests.
4. No one — not even the interviewee who had just read a book on copyright — knew where copyright comes from. Most people had the feeling it had been around for a while, though estimates varied widely on how long. One interviewee knew of the Constitutional clause that is the legal basis for copyright in the United States, but wasn’t familiar with the history leading up to that clause.
5. People were ambivalent about filesharing. They don’t feel like it hurts anyone, except perhaps the music distributors, but they still feel some residual guilt about it anyway.

You can view the video at the Internet Archive. It is also available at Google Video and YouTube.

The video is in the public domain; all participants signed a release form permitting their footage to be used. Many thanks to Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick for their help filming, and to Ben for huge amounts of help with editing.