Copyright Issues Relevant to the Creation of a Digital Archive: A Preliminary Assessment
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the complexities of modern copyright issues, this clearly written and relatively brief report might be just the tonic for you. Though written for a U.S. audience, it contains clear overviews of the concepts (for example, types of copyring, typical exceptions). More...

The Practical Realities of the New Copyright Laws: A Librarian's Perspective
Just now available online, this talk from last December outlines a series of concerns faced by libraries in the face of increasing restrictions being placed by copyright legislation on degital materials. "Recent changes in copyright law have been insufficiently careful to protect the 'fair use' of copyrighted materials. More...

COL Copyright Conference
With 215 messages stored already (as of this posting), the Commonwealth of learning conference on copyright is off to a flying start. I must confess to having contributed more than my share of verbiage, but I think the discussion is worth a read by anyone interested in the issue. More...

In Defense of Copyright Law

A defense of current copyright legislation. The author takes pains to point out that you may own copyright over certain content, and therefore benefit from copyright law. More...

Copyright and the Web
This short paper is intended to stimukate discussion at a Commonweath of Learning online forum. The major message of the paper is that, "The education community in Canada is urging its federal government to consider an amendment to the Copyright Act to allow students and educators to make effective and legal use of publicly available Internet materials as part of a programme of learning." I don't think there should be an educational exemption. More...

Record Industry Has No Plan to Seek Names of Students Trading Copyrighted Songs

"We may have lost a few games but I have complete confidence in the manager of our baseball team and we have no immediate plans to replace him." Yeah. Right. More...

Hollywood and Silicon Valley: Together at last?
Discussion of the recenrly formed alliance between the technology companies and the recording industry which asks whether it should be up to these two entities on their own to decide the future of copyright. And the answer is, of course, no. More...

Supreme Court Endorses Copyright Theft
Readers of my most recent article will not be surprised to read that my reaction to the Supreme Court's decision to allow extended copyright terms is exactly the same as this author's: "Swipe a CD from a record store and you'll get arrested. But when Congress authorizes the entertainment industry to steal from you -- well, that's the American way. More...

Hackers Take on MS on Copyright Protection for eBooks
A British programmer is walking on dangerous grounds having posted on his website the source code to a program that cracks the highest level of Microsoft's eBook DRM scheme. His objective, however, is benign: he would like to be able to read eBooks he has leagally purchased on his older Win CE device. More...