YNOT – Fifty-nine percent of American adults surveyed in June said the government should prosecute internet users who pirate online content, according to a new survey by the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. Only 33 percent were opposed to the idea, and 9 percent were undecided.

“At this country’s birth, the nation’s founders guaranteed free speech and art through the First Amendment and ensured compensation for authors and creators through a copyright clause in the U.S. Constitution and federal law,” said Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center. “These were complementary principles, which together helped ensure that a then-young nation would be a capital of creativity.

“As illegal downloading has flourished, the right to create remains unabated, but the right to be paid for your work has been seriously damaged.”

Though outright theft of copyrighted material is frowned upon, the American public is more ambivalent about the use of copyrighted material on social media. Forty-four percent of those surveyed said people should be able to post copyrighted material online without paying licensing or usage fees “as long as no money is being made.” Forty-two percent nixed such “borrowing.”

“Spend just a few minutes on social media and you’ll find plenty of examples of people using copyrighted material they don’t have the rights to [use],” Paulson told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where the survey was released. “Technically, many of these are copyright violations.

“But they’re also a form of expression by those who have posted [the music, images or videos], particularly when the poster has used copyrighted material as a mash-up, creating new art by adapting the old.

“Using content for personal and hobby use is consistent with the legal doctrine of fair use, allowing us to use copyrighted material in limited, generally nonprofit ways that don’t significantly affect the market for the original content,” Paulson said.

Survey participants this year saw a clear distinction between using copyrighted material for personal purposes and using it for profit: 64 percent said for-profit sites should not have the right to post copyrighted material without paying fees.

The complete survey results are available here (PDF).

The 2012 national survey of 1,006 adults was conducted via phone in June by the PERT Group.

The First Amendment Center works to preserve and protect First Amendment freedoms through information and education. The center serves as a forum for the study and exploration of free-expression issues, including freedom of speech, of the press and of religion, and the rights to assemble and to petition the government. The center, with offices at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C., is an operating program of the Freedom Forum and is associated with the Newseum.