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What is intellectual property? What are the laws that I need to know about intellectual property? How does the Internet affect intellectual property? What are the main issues and questions? Are there any Web sites about the issue of "freedom of information"? What is the famous quote by Thomas Jefferson about intellectual property?
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What is intellectual
property?
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What are the laws that I need to know about intellectual property? Copyright laws, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the concept of "fair use" are important areas of intellectual property for educators. These areas are covered in Copyright Basics for Educators, copyright-faqs.html |
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How does the Internet affect intellectual property? There is a wealth of information available on the Internet that is protected by law. With the click of a mouse text, images, video, and sound files can be easily copied and downloaded. The ease of reproducing information via digital technology and the Internet has caused concern for the creators and users of this information. It is not unusual to see warnings posted on Web sites and reminders that information from the site may not be copied. The digital age has seen two controversial views on intellectual properties emerge. At one extreme of the issue are people who believe that intellectual property should be unprotected and unrestricted, while those at the other end feel that the government needs to pass and enforce laws to protect intellectual property. The key issue here is about producer rights and user rights; a balance between public and private interests. |
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What are the main issues and questions? The digital age has seen two controversial views on intellectual property emerge. At one extreme of the issue are people who believe that intellectual property should be unprotected and unrestricted, while those at the other end feel that the government needs to pass and enforce laws to protect intellectual property. The key issue here is about producer rights and user rights; a balance between public and private interests. Questions being asked in this debate are:
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Are there any Web sites about the issue of "freedom of information"?
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What is the famous quote by Thomas Jefferson about intellectual property? "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson The Economy of Ideas, by
John Perry Barlow, Wired, |
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References and Resources |
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The Economy of Ideas, by
John Perry Barlow, Wired, FAQ's
For Educators On Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Plagiarism:
Copyright Basics for Educators, by Teri Grant, Julia Jeffries,
Vicky Romano, & Kathy Schlappi. (August, 2002). Intellectual Property: Federal Policies Must Balance User and Producer Rights, Association of American Universities, March 2002, retrieved from the World Wide Web, August 1, 2002, http://www.aau.edu/intellect/IntlPropTP.html Is information property?(Legally Speaking), by Pamela Samuelson, Communications of the ACM March 1991 v34 n3 p15(4) COPYRIGHT Association for Computing Machinery 1991. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, August 1, 2002, http://eserver.org/internet/Is-Information-Property.txt The 'Lectric Law Library Legal Lexicon', intellectual property, retrieved from the World Wide Web, August 5, 2002, http://www.lectlaw.com/def/i051.htm Policy Paradigms of Intellectual
Property, by Oliver Roup, Paper for MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics
and Law on the Electronic Frontier, Fall 1995, retrieved from
the World Wide Web, August 1, 2002, |
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Kathy Schlappi August 2002 |
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| © Copyright 2002 by tgrant, jjeffreys, vromano, & kschlappi. Permission to reproduce and distribute for non-profit purposes granted. |