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Copyright FAQ and Copyright Resource Page
Frequently Asked Questions about copyright, and links to online resources regarding copyright issues.
The Copyright Website
Information about copyright law, especially designed for internet users and professionals.
U.S. Copyright Office Home Page
The U.S. Government's Copyright Office home page. Covers copyright basics and legislation applying to both Internet and non-Internet content.
ARTICLES
'Landmark' Accord on Copyrights
"[Technology companies will] throw their support behind aggressive enforcement of digital piracy laws... [the RIAA] will argue against government requirements to build locking controls into entertainment devices..." (1/14/2003 at Wired News)
'The Future of Ideas': Protecting the Old With Copyright Law
A review of Lawrence Lessig's book on copyright law's stifling effect on creativity, "The Future of Ideas." (1/6/2002 at The New York Times)
2 Copyright Cases Decided in Favor of Entertainment Industry
On October 28, 2001, the entertainment industry won victories in two challenges to the DMCA: a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled for the MPAA against Eric Corley of 2600, and a judge dismissed Professor Edward W. Felten's lawsuit against the RIAA. (11/29/2001 at The New York Times)
2600's DMCA Challenge Blocked
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided not to revisit its ruling that hacker magazine 2600 illegally distributed DVD-descrambling software; the magazine and the EFF now have 90 days to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. (5/17/2002 at Wired News)
3 Copyright Lawsuits Test Limits of New Digital Media
A trio of multimedia-related lawsuits - RIAA vs. MP3 vendors, MPAA vs. DVD hackers, and RealNetworks vs. Streambox - show the tensions between entertainment giants on the one hand, and consumer groups and startups on the other. (1/24/2000 at The New York Times)
Adobe E-Book Hacker Released
Russian e-book hacker Dmitry Sklyarov has been released from jail on $50,000 bail; the U.S. Department of Justice still plans to prosecute him for violation of the DMCA. (8/6/2001 at Wired News)
All Hail Creative Commons
Stanford professor and cyberlaw author Lawrence Lessig is launching a new effort, Creative Commons, which will provide flexible, fair intellectual property licenses for artists, writers, programmers, and others. (2/11/2002 at SF Gate)
Arrest Of Computer Researcher Is Arrest Of First Amendment Rights
Bruce Schneier on the injustice of arresting Dmitry Sklyarov for providing information and tools to break e-book encryption. (8/6/2001 at Internet Week)
Assessing Linking Liability
Legal experts weigh in on Judge Lewis A. Kaplan's ruling that the publisher of 2600 remove links to sites publishing DeCSS computer code, while not all other websites need to remove the same links. (9/8/2000 at The New York Times)
Bill: Copyright Power to People
"On Thursday Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Rep. John Doolittle (D-Calif.) introduced the Digital Media Consumers Rights Act to preserve specific fair-use rights to copy digital works as well as 'circumvention' rights to bypass copy protections." (10/4/2002 at Wired News)
BMG and Napster Tie the Knot
Bertelsmann AG (a recording company) and Napster have agreed to an alliance; Bertelsmann will drop out of the lawsuit against Napster and provide the startup with funds to develop a paid music subscription service. (10/31/2000 at ZDNet)
Case Highlights Law's Threat to Fair-Use Rights
The music industry has stopped threatening Professor Ed Felten, who wants to publish information on how he broke SDMI's encryption; but the Deparment of Justice, which arrested another programmer for violating the DMCA recently, hasn't. (7/18/2001 at Siliconvalley.com)
A Chat With Hilary Rosen
Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, talks about the Napster case and the future of music on the Internet. (10/2/2000 at Wired News)
Congress Should Amend Copyright Law to Protect Users' Rights, Legislator Says
An interview with Representative Rick Boucher, who proposed amendments to weaken the DMCA when it was passed in 1998, in which he talks about possible changes to the copyright bill. (9/11/2001 at The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Copyright Groups Knock Heads
5 composer and songwriter organizations, including BMI in the US, have joined to develop databases for tracking international use of music. (7/6/2000 at Wired News)
Copyright Issues Grab Spotlight
The Internet has forced entertainment firms to hire lobbyists, lawyers, and copyright cops to fight what they view as theft of their intellectual property. (9/20/2000 at The Washington Post)
Copyright Office Issues Unusual Rule
The US Copyright Office has issued two exceptions to the DMCA's limit on citizen's rights to circumvent technological barriers to piracy: (1) hacking filtering technology and (2) hacking technological barriers that are a result of malfunctions. (11/3/2000 at The New York Times)
Copyright on the Net: Who 'Owns' a Price?
Should the law bar "meta-sites" (like AuctionWatch.com) from taking information from sites that take other people's information (like EBay) and combining it with other similar info? Columnist says: no. (12/10/1999 at Business Week)
Copyright: Your Right or Theirs?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation hopes to overturn an injunction keeping 2600 Magazine from posting links to DeCSS, on the principle that the law (the DMCA) used to justify the injunction is eroding consumer rights excessively. (1/19/2001 at Wired News)
Copywrong?
A variety of experts comment on the U.S. Copyright Office's report saying that no revisions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are needed. (8/31/2001 at Salon.com)
Courtney Love Demands Some MP3.com Cash
Courtney Love, saying Universal won't give its artists any of the money it won in a case against MP3.com, is suing Universal for "stealing her music." (9/14/2000 at Upside)
Crack SDMI? No Thanks!
The hacker community is ignoring the Secure Digital Music Initiative's $10,000 challenge to crack SDMI, which is meant to watermark and track digital music. (9/14/2000 at Salon.com)
Creative Types: A Lot in Common
"On Monday, Creative Commons will release its collection of free, machine-readable licenses. The idea is to give copyright holders another way to get the word out that their works are free for copying and other uses under specific conditions." (12/16/2002 at Wired News)
Critics Weigh In on Copyright Act
"A federal agency's request for commentary on a controversial digital copyright law drew a boatload of criticism from respondents who asked for new limitations on the far-reaching statute." (12/21/2002 at Wired News)
Dan Gillmor: Copyright Dictators Are Winning Out
An argument against Congress' continual extension of the length of copyright, as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. (2/19/2002 at Siliconvalley.com)
David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
Musician David Bowie talks about technology, music, and the death of copyright. (6/9/2002 at The New York Times)
DeCSS Judge: Code Isn't Free Speech
MPAA president Jack Valenti, defense attorney Martin Garbus, hacker Shawn Reimerdes, and law professor Mark Lemley react to the ruling that magazine 2600 is breaking the law by publishing and linking to DeCSS code. (8/18/2000 at Salon.com)
Deep Link Foes Get Another Win
A Danish court has granted a preliminary injunction against Newsbooster, a company that the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association says harms newspaper publishers through deep linking. (7/8/2002 at Wired News)
Descramble That DVD in 7 Lines
MIT programmers Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz have written a 7-line Perl program, called qrpff, for descrambling DVDs. (3/7/2001 at Wired News)
Does an Anti-Piracy Plan Quash the First Amendment?
Fair use permits limited uncompensated use of copyrighted works for teaching, research, and news gathering; but does it entitle people to gain access to gain access to technologically protected content? (4/27/2001 at The New York Times)
Draft Bill Calls for Gov't Copyright Standard
Senator Ernest Hollings has proposed the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSA), which would make the manufacture or trade of any digital device without a certified means of protecting copyrighted content illegal. (9/11/2001 at ZDNet)
DVD Cracking Case Returns to Court
In a test of the Digiral Millennium Act (DMCA), the MPAA and hacker magazine 2600 will head back to court to determine if it's legal for a publication to link to "illegal" computer code. (4/27/2001 at News.com)
DVD Ruling May Have Profound Implications
Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a permanent injunction to keep Web sites from linking to other sites that contain illegal code, specifically DeCSS, the DVD-encryption-breaker, and acknowledged that the ruling could have a chilling effect on web linking. (8/17/2000 at InfoWorld)
eBay, Bidder's Edge End Legal Dispute
Bidder's Edge, which had been scouring eBay's auction listings for information to list on its own auction-comparison-site, has agreed to stop doing so. (3/1/2001 at News.com)
The End of Innovation?
An interview with Lawrence Lessig on the rush to protect copyright online, and its negative effect on innovation and liberty. (8/7/2001 at OpenP2P.com)
File-Swappers Fight Back
The Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to defend MusicCity against a the RIAA's copyright-infringement lawsuit; unlike Napster, which lost its case, MusicCity only distributes software - it doesn't actively help users trade files. (11/7/2001 at ZDNet)
Freedom and Music for All: Post-Napster Services Heed Principles of Internet, Freenet Creator Says
Ian Clarke's Freenet enforces encrypted, anonymous distribution of all kinds of files; he hopes this will torpedo the concept of intellectual property, but worries about the distribution of bad content - child pornography, stolen credit card numbers, etc. (3/15/2001 at Dallas Morning News)
German Government to Seek Tax on Computer Equipment, Report Says
The German government plans to impose a tax on most computer and telecommunication equipment and Internet applications, the proceeds from which would go to the authors and artists whose content is transmitted online. (9/6/2000 at The Nando Times - Techserver)
Getting It Together
An attorney argues that the time may have come for open-source projects to drop their licenses, because the developers and companies driven away by the licenses would contribute to open-source projects if there were no legal requirements. (12/17/2000 at Web Techniques)
The Great Database Debate
A brief outline of copyright as it applies to compilations of facts (databases), and how other nations and U.S. states deal with it. (4/20/2001 at GigaLaw.com)
Group Says It Beat Music Security but Can't Reveal How
A member of the group of computer scientists who defeated the Secure Digital Music Initiative's in response to SDMI's challenge to do so says he can't publish the full results of their efforts, for fear of being sued under the DMCA. (1/15/2001 at The New York Times)
Hollywood Loves Hollings' Bill
The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), a new DMCA-like bill which Senator Fritz Hollings plans to introduce to the Senate, would require that copy-protection controls be put in almost all PCs and consumer electronic devices. (9/11/2001 at Wired News)
Industry Groups Knock Napster Ruling
Several major Internet industry coalitions have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the RIAA's suit against Napster, criticizing the judge's rulings against Napster. (8/25/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Is It Theft, or Is It Freedom? 7 Views of the Web's Impact on Culture Clashes
A discussion of "file-sharing" applications like Napster and Gnutella. Participants: Hilary Rosen (RIAA), David Boies (Napster), Senator Orrin Hatch, Kevin Smith (filmmaker), Gene Kan (Gnutella), Esther Dyson (EDventures), Craig Newell (teen consumer). (9/20/2000 at The New York Times)
Is Litigation The Best Way To Tame New Technology?
A look at the similarities between the current DeCSS/DVD code case, and earlier fights over VCR and player piano technology. (9/2/2000 at The New York Times)
Is the RIAA Running Scared?
Princeton professor Edward Felten declined to publish a paper on cracking SDMI when the RIAA threatened to sue him if he did publish his findings; free-speech advocates now have an example of the DMCA being used to quash academic freedom. (4/26/2001 at Salon.com)
Is the SDMI Boycott Backfiring?
Technical companies participating in the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) are as unhappy with the record companies as anyone; but they think the boycott of the Hack SDMI challenge will hurt consumers, rather than the record companies. (10/3/2000 at Salon.com)
Judge Imposes Law and Order on Net Music Frontier
"Patel's five-page injunction, issued late Monday and made public Tuesday, effectively runs those lovable but thievin' cowpokes from Napster right out of town." (3/7/2001 at Siliconvalley.com)
Judge Slams MP3.com in Copyright Case
"U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ordered San Diego-based MP3.com to pay Universal $25,000 for each compact disc that was unlawfully copied." The total cost is estimated at between $125 million and $250 million. (9/6/2000 at ZDNet)
Lawmakers Want to Legalize MP3.com Service
U.S. Representative Rich Boucher is sponsoring the Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000, which would make it legal for companies to copy CDs, store them online, and stream them to individuals who own copies of the CDs. (9/26/2000 at News.com)
Legal Tips For Your 'Sucks' Site
Some guidelines on how sites that parody or criticize corporations can stay out of legal trouble. (8/14/2000 at Wired News)
Lessig on the Future of the Public Domain
Lawrence Lessig talks about the public domain, copyright, and the Supreme Court's decision to consider the Eldred case which challenges Congress' extension of copyright. (4/2/2002 at O'Reilly Network)
Lessig's Lonely Crusade Against Copyright Hoarders
Lawrence Lessig is at the forefront of a small, angry fight against corporate control of culture through copyright. (12/6/2001 at Irish Times)
A Library as Big as the World
Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive aims to track the data and discussions on web sites and make them available to future researchers; but restrictive copyright laws may keep him from realizing his goal. (2/28/2002 at Business Week)
MP3.com Loses Court Battle; Sued by Insurer
MP3.com is dealt a double legal blow: TVT records wins a copyright lawsuit against the online music site; and Westport Insurance, MP3.com's insurer, asked a court to rule that it needn't cover MP3.com's losses from its court battles. (3/7/2001 at ZDNet)
MPAA Requests Immunity to Commit Cyber-Crimes
Dicussion of a Congressional bill that would allow copyright holders to use technical means to stop suspected copyright infringers. (7/25/2002 at Slashdot.org)
Music, Morality and Moore's Law
Within a few decades, all of today's recorded music will fit onto one hard drive or portable MP3 player, and bandwidth should be high enough to allow hundreds of CDs to be downloaded in seconds; at this point, prohibiting copying may become impossible. (9/18/2000 at News.com)
Napster Appeal Is on Legal Fast Track After a Stay That Delayed Closing Site
After U.S. District Judge Patel granted a preliminary injunction against Napster, ordering them to shutdown, an appeals court has agreed the suit filed by the RIAA against the music-sharing service on an expedited schedule. (7/31/2000 at MSNBC)
Napster Blocks Over 115,000 Songs
Following its legal defeat, Napster is blocking users from trading over 115,000 copyrighted songs through its service; it has declined to block 46,000 other songs because record companies didn't follow the correct procedure in asking they be blocked. (3/12/2001 at The Industry Standard)
Napster Case: Hard Queries on Copyrights
The federal judges weighing Napster's appeal of Judge Patel's injunction against the service asked some pointed questions of both Napster and RIAA attorneys. (10/2/2000 at The New York Times)
Napster Likely to Be Shut Down
Several tech industry observers and legal experts expect Napster to lose its case, and shut down within the next few weeks. (10/2/2000 at USA Today)
Napster Loss Is Copyright Gain
Free-speech advocates bemoan the erosion of the flow of information on the Internet as a result of court cases decided based on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. (3/3/2001 at Wired News)
Napster Offers $1 Billion to Settle Suit
Napster Inc. offered to pay each of the 5 major record labels $150 million/year for five years, and split $50 million/year among independent labels, in return for the right to offer users (paid) unlimited music downloads. (2/21/2001 at CNN)
Napster-like Service Lays Off Two-Thirds of Staff
Scour, which makes software for trading multimedia files over the Internet, is cutting its staff after failing to secure additional funding; investors are probably scared off by pending lawsuits by the MPAA and RIAA. (9/3/2000 at News.com)
Napster-RIAA Court Case Becoming Goliath vs. Goliath
Many news reports call the Napster vs. RIAA fight a David vs. Goliath battle; but as established technology firms line up on either side of the case, it's becoming a Goliath vs. Goliath fight. (9/18/2000 at SF Gate)
New Codes No Bar to Copyright Violation
A U.S. judge rules that great similarities in the user interfaces of two programs, even when underlying technology is completely different, can be an infringement of copyright. (10/26/1999 at Law News Network)
Once-Trustworthy Newspaper Databases Have Become Unreliable and Frustrating
Because of the publishers vs. freelancers case that reached the Supreme Court, The New York Times Company v. Jonathan Tasini, newspapers are removing old freelance articles from their online archives; historians and researchers fear the resulting voids. (1/21/2002 at The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Online Davids vs. Corporate Goliaths
Even if the entertainment industry wins its court cases against Napster and the DeCSS defendants, chances are they won't be able to stop the spread of such de-centralizing technology. (8/6/2000 at The New York Times)
The Online Enforcer
A profile of Copyright Control Services, a small company that gets hired to aggressively pursue software pirates around the world, and hopes to move on to policing audio and video piracy. (2/16/2001 at The Industry Standard)
Online Group to Give Advice Regarding Copyrights
"...the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several law schools have created a searchable cease-and-desist database to inform recipients of their rights." (2/25/2002 at The New York Times)
Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution
Tim O'Reilly posits that obscurity is a greater threat to artists than piracy; and that media piracy is effectively "progressive taxation" for popular artists to pay. (12/11/2002 at OpenP2P.com)
The Pol and the Professor Debate How Free the Internet Should Be
Jack Valenti (MPAA head) and Lawrence Lessig (Stanford law professor) recently debated about copyright laws, the Internet, technology, and how much control creators should have over their content. (10/2/2000 at Inside.com)
Programmer Cleared of Digital Piracy, in Blow to Hollywood
Jon Lech Johansen, who developed the DeCSS program in 1999 to allow users to unlock security codes on DVDs (to the chagrin of the entertainment industry), has been acquitted of digital piracy. (1/7/2003 at The New York Times)
Providers, Sites Told To Work It Out
Peter Jaszi, a law professor at American University, says that if the entertainment industry does not provide acceptable licensing terms for music and movies to the technology industry, the courts and Congress will decide how music is distributed online. (3/6/2001 at TechWeb)
Record Industry Sues Napster Clones
The RIAA and MPAA are suing MusicCity, Kazaa and Grokster, all file-sharing networks that use software developed by Amsterdam-based FastTrack. (10/3/2001 at ZDNet)
Recording Industry Turns the Screws in Napster Case
The recording industry wants a judge to order Napster to pay copyright infringement fees for the illegal copies that Napster users made. (8/8/2001 at The Industry Standard)
RIAA Sues MP3.com
The Recording Industry Association of America is suing MP3.com for lettings users listen to digital music online through its new service, Instant Listening. (1/22/2000 at Wired News)
Rights Fielder
In this interview, Lawrence Lessig talks about the way peer-to-peer technology takes control of the network away from the network owners; and how intellectual property will change, but not disappear, in coming years. (11/17/2000 at Red Herring)
Royalty Fees Killing Most Internet Radio Stations
Over 200 Net-based radio stations have shut down because they can't afford the per-song-per-listener fee the U.S. government has imposed on them; over 10,000 more stations are expected to join them. (7/21/2002 at USA Today)
Russian Crypto Expert Arrested at Def Con
Russian crypto expert Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested at the Def Con conference for publishing the Advanced eBook Processor, which lets users crack the encryption on Adobe's eBooks. (7/17/2001 at News.com)
Stealth Plan Puts Copy Protection Into Every Hard Drive
Dicussions for incorporating Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) technology into ATA hard drives (used in most PCs) are underway; if they come to fruition, nearly all hard drives sold in the future will keep their owners from copying protected (12/20/2000 at The Register)
Supreme Court Keeps Copyright Protections
In a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act; as a result, works from the 1920s will not now, and may never, enter the public domain. (1/15/2003 at Yahoo News)
Supreme Court Will Hear Copyright Case Affecting Online Resources
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Eldred v. Ashcroft, a case concerning the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which extended copyright of materials to 70 years past the author's death. (2/20/2002 at The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Techies Wage War on Copyright Cartels
At a meeting about the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act held at Stanford Law School, activists decried the unprecedented power over copyrighted works being put in the hands of corporations. (5/19/2000 at ZDNet)
Technical Foul
MP3.com contends that Universal can't sue them for making music available online, because Universal doesn't "own" the music; that music albums aren't "work-for-hire," and so the only ones who should be able to object (or sue) are the musicians. (9/6/2000 at Salon.com)
The Technology Review Ten: Digital Rights Management
Ranjit Singh, president of ContentGuard, is trying to plug digital rights management (DRM) software into content readers from Microsoft, Adobe, and other companies. (12/19/2000 at Technology Review (MIT))
Think Napster -- Only for Movies
A movie-compression scheme called DivX (no relation to the failed Circuit City venture) is popular with online movie pirates, and may cause the movie industry trouble once more homes have broadband access. (5/12/2000 at ZDNet)
To Link or not to Link?
A look at recent cases in which the legality of linking from one website to another was called into question, and an examination of some of the reasoning in the rulings. (9/5/2000 at Upside)
Treating the Web Like Royalty
The Recording Industry Association of America's royalty-payment system, SoundExchange, is already the sole agent for collecting royalties for music broadcast over satellite or cable; it hopes to fulfill the same role online. (11/28/2000 at The Industry Standard)
Tuning Up Digital Copyright Law
Through a series of court cases, the legal system is determining how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 will be enforced, and in what circumstances. (5/16/2000 at Wired News)
U.S. Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Copyright-Protection Case
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, in which an online publisher represented by Lawrence Lessig hopes to have the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act overturned. (10/10/2002 at The Chronicle of Higher Education)
UK Copyright Chief Says Laws Won't Stop Infringement
Anthony Murphy, the UK Patent Office's director of copyright, says that laws alone won't stop intellectual property theft; people's attitudes must change, also. (4/27/2001 at NewsBytes)
The Value of Gnutella and Freenet
Andy Oram argues that while software like Gnutella, Freenet, and Napster allow illegal and quick distribution of copyrighted materials, they hold promise as the foundation of future Internet technologies. (5/12/2000 at Web Review)
What is "Fair Use" in Copyright Law?
A lawyer explains what fair use is, and how courts determine if a particular use of copyrighted material is fair use. (12/22/2000 at GigaLaw.com)
Who's Holding Back Broadband?
Deployment of broadband networking in South Korea and Canada far outstrips that in the U.S.; Lawrence Lessig argues that it is because every attempt to create good broadband-based entertainment services has been squashed by copyright-holding corporations. (1/7/2002 at The Washington Post)
Why Copyright Laws Hurt Culture
At the Darklight Digital Film Festival, Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow warned attendees that they are in danger of losing their cultural heritage to the power of copyright-holding corporations. (11/27/2001 at Wired News)
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