Pirates of the Academia? : Students attitude towards illegally downloading academic material at Lund University

Sammanfattning: The illegal downloading of copyrighted material digitally has existed ever since the internet's inception. At first this was ignored because it was a small enough problem but as the internet grew the amount of illegal file sharing grew with it. The practice of downloading illegal academic material is especially interesting to look at because there is a moral gray area where large publishers earn huge profits publishing research that has been paid for with funds from the government that the universities then must pay the publishers to get access to. Research has been done on the attitude among people in academia, especially in poorer countries, but there has been a lack of research done on this attitude among students in Sweden. The purpose for this thesis is to provide further insight into Lund University students' opinions regarding illegally downloading academic material. Do they think it’s okay to illegally download academic material and in which situations, if any, do they think that? Also, do students at Lund University think that the risk of being convicted for copyright infringement is high or low when it comes to illegally downloading academic material? What this thesis finds is that students are in general ambivalent with regards to illegally downloading academic material, with students being positive when presented with situations where they might not have easy legal access to the material while being negative towards illegally downloading academic material when downloading because it is more convenient. Students also think that the risk of being convicted of copyright infringement in those situations are low.