Briefly reviews the laws pertaining to copyrights, patents, and trade secrets, and discusses how each of these may be applied to the protection of computer programs. The comparative merits and limitations of each category of law are discussed and recent court decisions are summarized. (CLB)

Description of the Library of Congress' Networking Advisory Committee focuses on recommendations it has made concerning issues pertinent to intellectual property in an information network environment. Alternatives to the present Copyright Act are examined, the economics of sharing information are discussed, and questions involving databases and…

Discusses licensing agreements and royalties to writers for the sale of articles from online databases. CARL Corporation is working with the National Writers' Union to devise a transaction-based method of paying royalty fees to authors whose articles are used through UnCover; this agreement could provide a model for use by all database services.…

Discusses three methods for the preservation of the intellectual content of deteriorating paper materials--photocopying, microforms, and electronic digital technologies. Topics addressed include selection, preparation procedures, standards, bibliographic control, obsolescence of technologies, costs and user fees as possible deterrents to access to…

Focuses on the history of the United States as a copyright haven from 1790 to the Chace Act of 1891. Indicates analogies between the United States' historical practice and the exploitation of its intellectual property, without observing copyright, to late 20th-century China. Examines the contrast between the idea of a transition to an information…

Although some consider electronic publishing to be the wave of the future, publishers must first build an infrastructure of citations, copyrights, authentication, and preservation to make it work well. Consistency is a crucial consideration in making information and documents accessible, and significant resources must be dedicated to archiving…

Discusses the use of computer networking such as the Internet for the creation and dissemination of copyright works. Topics include the need for data structures for organizing and identifying units of digital information; and the copyright status of original works of authorship structured as digital objects. (LRW)

Describes types of videos with suggestions for instructional uses. Presents copyright rules and procedures. (SK)

Describes procedures for librarians interested in building a World Wide Web site. Highlights include hypertext markup language; home pages; determining audiences and purposes; promoting safety; the planning process, including text length and density, links to external sites, and maintenance; and copyright concerns. (LRW)

Discusses electronic books and their impact on the publishing industry. Topics include a history of the book industry; downloadable ebooks; dedicated ebook readers; Web-accessible ebooks; print-on-demand books; advantages and disadvantages; copyright; ebook concerns in libraries, including licensing, lack of standards, bibliographic control, and…

By and large, educators are honest and ethical. Yet, copyright violations such as those described in the following scenarios are all too common in many, if not most, schools: Teacher Gray shows Disney's The Little Mermaid to reward her students for scoring exceptionally well on a recent test. Teacher Black adds images taken from various Internet…

August in the U.S. capital is typically quiet. Congress is in recess, and most bureaucrats choose this hot steamy month for their vacation. In a normal year, serious legislation is put off until September; in a close election year such as this one, it is put off until "after the elections." This year, with the exception of agency…

U.S. Supreme Court justices struggled in a lively debate with how to balance the competing interests of the entertainment industry and developers of file-sharing technology. Some justices sharply questioned whether it was fair to hold inventors of a distribution technology liable for copyright infringement, while others suggested that it was wrong…

This paper describes the creation of a new library facility for Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, one designed ready to accommodate an infrastructure that would support the new technologies of the electronic information environment. Wiring and fiber-optic schemes are outlined briefly. The document is formatted as a script for…

The increasing presence of electronic materials, databases, and networks in society's institutions raises a number of new questions related to copyrighted and intellectual property in cyberspace environments (e.g., How will the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law and practice be extended to electronic situations?). Such questions have…