Article on Measuring Copyright Anxiety

Amanda Wakaruk, Céline Gareau-Brennan, and Matthew Pietrosanu from the University of Alberta have published an article entitled Introducing the Copyright Anxiety Scale in the newest issue of  The Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship:

"Navigating copyright issues can be frustrating to the point of causing anxiety, potentially discouraging or inhibiting legitimate uses of copyright-protected materials. A lack of data about the extent and impact of these phenomena, known as copyright anxiety and copyright chill, respectively, motivated the authors to create the Copyright Anxiety Scale (CAS). This article provides an overview of the CAS’s development and validity testing. Results of an initial survey deployment drawing from a broad cross-section of respondents living in Canada and the United States (n = 521) establishes that the phenomenon of copyright anxiety is prevalent and likely associated with copyright chill."

From the conclusion:

"It is clear from the survey response data that copyright anxiety is a real phenomenon for many and has practical consequences that can impede creativity and potentially legitimate forms of sharing content. Given that more than a quarter of respondents indicated that they had abandoned projects due to copyright-related anxiety, it is fair to say that the phenomenon is in fact prevalent. This research found that a mixture of confusion, stress, and indecision based on questions surrounding copyright prevents users and creators of copyright-protected content from engaging in personal and educational activities that are unlikely to infringe copyright law. The development of CAS provides a useful tool for the analysis of these precursory and potentially causative factors of copyright chill. Given the high degree of internal consistency within the scale, we believe that it can be a useful tool for future observations and research. Over time, further development of the CAS could help provide a more in-depth picture of changing attitudes and understandings of users’ rights."