This page is obselete and is not maintained. You may wish to peruse information on the legal policies of the W3C, or read up on general Internet policy issues at EPIC, CDT or EFF.[JR20000629]

Copyright

Ever since the concept of licensing PC software was initiated by Seymour Rubenstein (MicroPro, WordStar) has there been some controversy. More recently, the immense growth of the Internet and the Web has given copyright issues a new dimension.

U.S. Copyright law

• The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office links you to the Copyright Office.
  • U.S. Copyright Act, 15 U.S.C.S. Sections 101 - 1010 from Cornell University.
  • U.S. COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1976, AS AMENDED (1994) is a hypertext publication from the LII Legal Information Institute (Cornell) and includes a Full Text Search option.
  • Copyright Law Materials at Cornell
  • U.S. Patent Law materials at Cornell
  • Trademark Act of the U.S.
• Intellectual Property Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court: Syllabi at Cornell.

Description of more ressources re "Copyright law":

• FAQ (Summaries of Frequently asked Questions) are still a good start: Copyright Law - Usenet FAQ by Terry Carroll.

• 10 Big Myths about copyright are explained here.

• The Web server of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School includes U.S. Copyright Law and more.
• The Coalition for Networked Information and Interactive Multimedia Association (CNI), is a joint project of the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM.
  Technological Strategies for Protecting Intellectual Property in the Networked Multimedia Environment are various working papers and committee notes of CNI.

• You can also subscribe to the CNI-COPYRIGHT MAILING LIST (Coalition for Networked Information, see above) :
  email to LISTPROC@cni.org with a single line in the body:
  SUBSCRIBE CNI-COPYRIGHT your name

• Speak Japanese ? Find out about Japanese Copyright Law (only in Japanese).

• The book Legal Care for your Software has a nice Chapter about Copyright Protection.

• And here is a bibliography of books re Intellectual Property.

• The League for Programming Freedom opposes software patents and interface copyrights.