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[Katarzyna Rybicka, Centrum Cyfrowe,  Link (CC-BY)]  In December 2013 Centrum Cyfrowe has accomplished two-year research project on copyright law and social norms related to content usage. The main purpose of the study was to provide reliable knowledge about what people today think on issues related to copyright. What is permitted, and what is not? What is right, and what is wrong? We thus give a voice to users – a group that in the debate on copyright is usually ignored.

For over a decade, we have been witnessing massive changes of social behaviors regulated by copyright law. Changes to ways of enjoying and using culture (and other content regulated by copyright law) are so vast and common, and so far removed from the law currently in force, that keeping it in its present form is becoming increasingly difficult – especially if we recognize the fact that social reality and the law should be coherent with one another.

The report „Copyright Law in transition. On Social Norms related to Content Usage” is built on the first Polish study on popular perceptions and understanding of copyright in Poland. Based on the research data we believe that the core of today’s problems with copyright in a broad social context is anomie – an imbalance in the system of norms and values which have dominated until now; a situation where these norms cannot be upheld any longer because of a change of social conditions in which they used to function.The study we undertook allowed us to see serious discrepancies between common behaviors and the law and also between common behaviors and social norms.

Below we are publishing summary note of a research project on popular perceptions and understanding of copyright in Poland, conducted by Centrum Cyfrowe in 2012 and 2013. A full version of the report, together with an online mashup, will be made available in January 2014.

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