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Youth Workers Call for More Education on IT Ethics
Youth workers in Hong Kong have called for further enhancement of education in information technology ethics, a local newspaper reports Saturday.
The warning came from social workers after a recent survey on school pupils' attitudes toward the use of pirated software, showing that many of the youth considered such acts acceptable.
Of the 1,089 senior secondary school pupils who took part in the Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association of Hong Kong poll, 82.1 percent admitted to acts of copyright infringement, according to the local English language newspaper South China Morning Post.
Nearly half of the students felt there was nothing wrong in making their favorite songs available on the Internet for other people to download, although only 15 percent had done so.
The newspaper cited the survey organizer Fu Suk-yin as saying that many youngsters knew it was wrong to infringe other people's copyright but went ahead with actions for a very simple reason - cost.
The price of licensed software or the cost of its use may prove to be too expensive for them to bear, and therefore, in order to encourage the youngsters to use the real thing again, a rethink in policy is required, Hu said.
At the same time, more should be done to strengthen young people's ethics through both academic and civic education, she said.
The survey also showed that more than 60 percent of the students believed IT knowledge picked up from school could help them with their studies and employment.
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