Presenting Mathematical Concepts on the World Wide Web
Intellectual Property Rights ... and Wrongs

Web-sites

• The U.S. Copyright Act (updated through at least July 1996)

  • 17 USCS Sections 101 - 1010:
    www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/
    provided by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.

• U.S. Government-based Resources

  • U.S. Copyright Office:
    lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/
    at the Library of Congress website.

  • U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office:
    www.uspto.gov/
    which also contains the Conference on Fair Use (CONFU) report:
    www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/confu/

  • U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library:
    law.house.gov/
    This is a huge collection of links to law-related information (sources, references, and commentary) that the House has compiled and made available via the Internet. It includes specific information on Intellectual Property Law at:
    law.house.gov/105.htm

  • The President's Information Infrastructure Task Force:
    iitf.doc.gov/

• Organizations & Companies Involved with Intellectual Property Issues

  • American Bar Association's Copyright Basics Page:
    www.abanet.org/intelprop/comm106/106copy.html

  • American Intellectual Property Law Association:
    www.aipla.org/

  • Coalition for Networked Information:
    www.cni.org/
    including Timeline: A History of Copyright in the U.S.
    arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html

  • Copyright Clearance Center:
    www.copyright.com/

  • Copyright Website:
    www.benedict.com/
    From Benedict Mahoney.

  • The Digital Future Coalition:
    www.dfc.org/dfc/
    The DFC is a group of "information providers" (including groups like library and faculty associations, among others).

  • Electronic Frontier Foundation:
    www.eff.org/
    The EFF is a group concerned about civil liberties, such as privacy and freedom of expression, in relation to new communications technologies.

  • The World Intellectual Property Organization
    www.wipo.org/
    Based in Geneva, Switzerland, WIPO is an intergovernmental organization administered by the United Nations to whose aim is to promote (a) the protection intellectual property and (b) cooperation in the administration of intellectual property law.

• Some University-based Guidelines & Resources about Intellectual Property

  • Guide to Copyright
    www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/copyright/
    from the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University.

  • U.S. Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Information
    www.fplc.edu/tfield/Order.htm
    from Professor Thomas Field at the Franklin Pierce Law Center.

  • Copyright Management Center
    www.iupui.edu/it/copyinfo/
    from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis.

  • The Committee on Electronic Information
    alberti.mit.edu/caa/The_Profession/CEI/
    from the College Art Association at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Copyright & Fair Use Resources
    fairuse.stanford.edu/
    from Stanford University.

  • Copyright Crash Course
    www.utsystem.edu/OGC/IntellectualProperty/cprtindx.htm
    from the University of Texas.

  • Copyright Facts & Resources
    publications.urel.wsu.edu:80/Copyright/Copyright.html
    from Washington State University.

• Some Articles & Resource Collections on Intellectual Property

  • Brinson, J. Dianne & Radcliffe, Mark F. (1996). An Intellectual Property Law Primer for Multimedia and Web Developers.
    www.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/ip-primer
    From the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

  • Carroll, Terry. (1994). Usenet Copyright Law FAQ.
    www.aimnet.com/~carroll/copyright/faq-home.html
    That page also contains links to copies of the Berne Convention & Universal Copyright Convention, two international treaties to which the U.S.A. is a party.

  • Goldberg, Morton David. (1996). Copyright Protection for Computer Software: A Summary of Authorities with an Emphasis on Current Judicial Authorities.
    www.sgpdlaw.com/software_copyright/

  • Templeton, Brad. (undated). A brief intro to copyright.
    www.clari.net/brad/copyright.html
  • Templeton, Brad. (undated). 10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained.
    www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html
  • Templeton, Brad. (undated). Top 11 Myths about the Internet (and USENET too).
    www.clari.net/brad/netmyths.html

  • Loundy, David J. (1994-1995). Compter Information Systems Law and System Operator Liability Revisited. P-Law Journal Services. www.dorsai.org/p-law/loundy_dir/lndytxt1.html
    (This is an older article that addresses BB SYSOPS directly, but most of the points are also applicable to webmasters.)

  • Hoffman, Ivan. (1996). Internet Law Simplified: An easy guide to making money, staying out of trouble and protecting your rights.
    home.earthlink.net/~ivanlove/book.html

• Additional Resources & Collections on Intellectual Property

  • The Creative Incentive Coalition:
    www.cic.org/
    The CIC is an industry group of "copyright owners" (not necessarily authors).

  • Cyberspace Law for Non-Lawyers:
    www.counsel.com/cyberspace/
    Oops. Too bad: that site seems to have gone away, and been replaced by:
    • http://www.counsel.com, a commercial service, and
    • http://www.counselconnect.com, a free service with not too much to it.

  • Intellectual Property: The Magazine of Law and Policy for High Technology
    www.ipmag.com/

  • The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions:
    www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/II/cpyright.htm

  • Kuesterlaw:
    kuesterlaw.com/
    This law firm's site offers links on a number of legal topics, including Intellectual Property Law.

  • The Legal Ethics Website
    www.legalethics.com/

  • WWW Multimedia Law
    www.oikoumene.com/
    www.batnet.com/oikoumene/
    (Those are close, but not quite the same...)

  • Software Publishers Association
    www.spa.org/

  • The World Wide Web Virtual Library of Law
    www.law.indiana.edu/law/v-lib/lawindex.html
    Maintained at the Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, in conjunction with the W3 Consortium's Virtual Library project.

  • Yahoo on Intellectual Property: www.yahoo.com/Government/Law/Intellectual_Property/

Newsletter

• The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter: For Librarians & Information Specialists.
  Inaugurated in April, 1997, it plans to have three issues per year, with e-mail updated to subscribers in between issues. Information is available from: http://copyrightlaws.com/

Mailing List

• CNI-COPYRIGHT
  From the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), this is a mailing list devoted to copyright issues. To join, send a message to:
     LISTPROC@CNI.ORG
  with a single line of text in the body that says:
     SUBSCRIBE CNI-COPYRIGHT your name

  Archives of the CNI-COPYRIGHT forum are automatically maintained and are available through various mechanisms via these URLs:

  • http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/
  • gopher://gopher.cni.org:70/11/cniftp/forums/cni-copyright
  • ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/forums/cni-copyright

Usenet Newsgroups

• misc.legal: the main newsgroup covering all legal issues, including copyright law and many other topics;
• misc.legal.moderated: a moderated analog to misc.legal;
• misc.int-property: addresses intellectual property; copyright, patent, trademark and trade secrecy, and their alternatives;
• misc.legal.computing: covers legal issues related to computers, especially copyright and patent issues;
• comp.software.licensing: trends, practices, and techniques in software licensing;
• gnu.misc.discuss: used to include issues of software patents, copyright, and "copyleft," but hasn't had much traffic lately.

Two excellent books written in lay language are:

• Fishman, Stephen. (1995). The Copyright Handbook: How to Protect and Use Written Works, 2nd Edition. Berkeley, CA: Nolo Press.
• Fishman, Stephen. (1995). Copyright Your Software. Nolo Press.