Let's Take a Look At Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights Issues!
Welcome to Our Intellectual Property Rights Web Quest
Diana Barnett
dbarnett@online.tamu-commerce.eduLaura Dacus
ldacus@online.tamu-commerce.eduGladys Emerson
gemerson@online.tamu-commerce.eduOrawan Sakunloetprasuk orawan@online.tamu-commerce.edu
Introduction:
This page has been created to heighten awareness of Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright Issues, and Plagiarism. It is for the use of educators and students in order to better understand Intellectual Property Rights.
The Process:
1. Read through the questions. Using a K-W-L chart (what you 'Know', what you 'Want' to know, what you 'Learned') write down what you know about the topics and what you want to know about the topics.
2. Visit the links in order to find the answers to the questions.
3. Complete the 'Learned' part of the K-W-L chart.
4. Discuss your findings with others.
Task:
You will gain a better understanding of what Intellectual Property Rights mean. You should be able to answer the following questions:
1. What Presidential administration championed to weaken the past democratic copyright law safeguards?
2. What year did private negotiations between owners and users of copyrighted materials result in guidelines for classroom and educational use?
3. What is plagiarism and why is it a problem?
4. What is the first step to avoiding plagiarism?
Are there tools available to assist educators if they believe a paper is plagiarized?
5. You want to either copy a part of a web page or print it out. What should you do for as far as asking permission?
6. You copy only the URL of a web page and use it in your page. What is the problem with not going to a site's home page?
History of intellectual property and copyright in the US
The history of copyright began in 1557 when the Queen Mary Tudor censored
printing presses. In contrast copyright in American has reflected American republican
values since 1791:
 | James Madison introduced the copyright and patent clause to the Constitution. |
| President George Washington supported the Copyright Act of 1790. Washington felt that copyright would enrich political culture. |
| Thomas Jefferson believed in protecting private property but had doubts about the insight of copyright. |
Copyright was formed as a policy that balanced the interest of authors, publishers, and readers. It was not proposed to be a restrictive property rights. But it has changed over time into a part of commercial legal protections now unfortunately called “intellectual property.”
American copyright grew to cover four democratic safeguards:
| All works would enter public domain once the copyright term expired |
| Collection of “fair use,” such as limited copying for education or research |
| After the “first sale” of a copyrighted item, the buyer could do whatever they wanted with the item, save distribute unauthorized copies for profit |
| Copyright protects specific expression of ideas but not the ideas themselves |
The Clinton administration in the 1990s championed to weaken the past democratic safeguards. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 allows content providers to regulate access and use. They can set all the terms of use and the duration of protection is almost endless.
Presently the copyright law in 2001 protects any work created today for life of the author plus 70 years or 95 years in the case of corporate “works for hire.”
Copyright and The Internet
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) only allows people who have licenses to make a photocopy from paper publications into the paper. With the dawning of the technology age, everything has changed. The users want copies, not only the paper publications, but also electronic publications, putting them into both the paper and electronic form. Even though the users have licenses for making a copy of paper publications, they still need to obtain another license for the electronic publication. Making an electronic publication copy without permission is a violation of copyright laws.
Things to consider in using someone else's work
- The World Wide Web is subject to copyright.
- Web pages are themselves literary works.
- The articles located on Web pages are not a part of the literary work.
- The sound recordings are separate from the musical works.
Printing out a web page or copying a part of web page is not right; therefore, it is necessary that you get the permission of the copyright owner before you do it. The easiest way to ask for the permission is sending an email to the webmaster of the page concerned.
Although there is nothing wrong with including a hyperlink in your site, you might be allowing someone else to duplicate of the material to which you are linking. The links which do not go to the home page may give material out of the proper context. As a result, you may have to include a link which goes to the home page with your site instead of links which go to other parts of the site. Nevertheless, the law about hyper linking is unclear and is developing. Asking for the permission from the webmaster before hyper linking to another site is the best procedure for the present time.
Plagiarism:
To plagiarize means to use someone else’s words without properly giving them credit. It means to imply that the words are your own. Regardless of whether this is done on purpose or simply by not understanding how to cite a source, it is a very serious matter. Educators must instruct students on proper ways to cite sources. With the flood of information available to students on the word wide web, it is important that students and educators alike understand the responsibilities of citing information from electronic sources.
Do we need to take international laws into consideration when using information from the web? The following information explains that even though the World Wide Web crosses borders, Intellectual Property Rights are still protected.
International Standards Regarding Intellectual Property and Copyright:
As we know, the Internet knows no boundaries. Therefore, educators should consider that any of their works, accessible by the World Wide Web, could find their way into the uttermost parts of the earth. Furthermore, according to Ackermann and Hartman (2001), not all cultures have the same attitudes about ownership of information. Some groups believe all information should be free. Others believe a charge should be levied for the use of works. The concept of the later has existed since the sovereign of England in the Middle Ages issued the first patents. In most countries, patent rights are enforceable by civil rather than criminal law. Laws governing the international community encompass four separate and distinct types of intangible property—namely, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, which collectively are referred to as “intellectual property.”
Patents:
Most patent systems outside the U.S. have terms that run for a fixed term from the date of the patent application. Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and many other countries have patent terms of 20 years from first filing of the patent application. However, the U.S. is unique in its approach to the allocation of patents. The right is granted to the “first to invent” rather than the universally accepted approach of “first to file.”
Trademarks and Service Marks:
Trademarks and service marks (called “marks”) can be anything that distinguishes one product or service over another. Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). TRIPS consider both the same. The duration of protection afforded a trademark varies greatly from country to country, but are issued for a finite period of time.
Copyrights:
Exclusive right or “copyright” protection is provided a minimum standard of duration of copyright protection by TRIPS. In case, of a person, the term is the life of the author plus 50 years.
Trade Secrets:
Information that is secret or not generally known in the relevant industry, giving the owner an advantage over competitors, is considered a trade secret. Protection for trade secrets is found in the TRIPS Agreement under the heading “Protection of Undisclosed Information.”
The International Community:
The international community is linked through the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). According to international standards, a patent is issued for 20 years from the date of filing. Although all WTO members are subject to patent provisions in the TRIPS Agreement, patents are granted under national laws and, therefore, the rights are also national in scope. The reality is that a U.S. patent can only be asserted against infringing conduct in the United States.
The administration and enforcement of intellectual property rights in developing countries must be seen in another dimension. For example, a survey of some countries such as Egypt, Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, and Nigeria shows that, before the 1970s and 1980s, most of the laws regarding the protection of intellectual property were mere replicas of existing laws of their colonizing countries.
Most of the intellectual property laws enacted after the 1970s in those countries tended to have a different bias since they had to respond to new national environments and the varied global trade requirements of emerging nations struggling to level the playing fields in international commerce and investment activities. Some of the advantages that developing countries acknowledge as having directly resulted from increased enforcement of the intellectual property laws are:
|
Stimulation of creativity and inventiveness in society, thereby contributing to a country's development. |
| Provision and protection of the infrastructure necessary for the growth of production, manufacture, and distribution within the cultural, educational, and entertainment industries. |
| Protection — in view of emerging technologies — of expressions of folklore and live performances through the enhanced legal protection of performers' rights. |
| Creation of an environment conducive to attracting domestic and foreign private sector investment in the copyright industries. |
“Intellectual property rights,” says a Ghanaian copyright official, “galvanize domestic industry, while retaining national culture, inventiveness and creativity.”
The international community stepped forth to address the copyright in an electronic age where anyone can pirate works with a single keystroke. To address this situation, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) passed the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonogram Treaty (WPPT) in December 1996, marking the most extensive revision of international law in over 25 years. These treaties, once ratified by at least 30 member states, will grant writers, artists, and other creators of copyrighted material global protection from electronic piracy.
On October 12, 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28. The act implements the two WIPO treaties; it also contains provisions addressing related matters for the electronic age.
>>>>>Title I: WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act of 1998, amends U.S. law in order to extend protection to those works required to be protected under the WIPO treaties and to restore copyright protection in the same circumstances to works from WCT and WPPT member countries. This title also creates new prohibitions to prevent circumventing technological measures built into most commercial software to protect copyrighted works and to prevent tampering with the integrity of copyright management information.
>>>>>Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act creates four new limitations on liability for copyright infringement by online service providers. Specifically, it limits the liability of service providers:
| Where the provider merely acts as a data conduit, transmitting digital information from one point on a net to another at someone else's request; |
| For the practice of retaining copies, for a limited time, of material that has been made available online by a person other than the provider and then transmitted to a subscriber at his or her direction; the service provider retains the material to fill subsequent requests, rather than retrieving the material again from the original source on the network; |
· For infringing material on Web sites hosted on their systems and for referring or linking users to a site that contains infringing materials by using hyperlinks, online directories, search engines, and similar tools, if the provider is not aware of the infringing activity, does not receive a direct financial benefit from it, and, if notified, takes down or blocks across to access to the information.
>>>>>Title III: Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance Act expands an existing exemption in the U.S. Copyright Act to permit the owner or lessee of a computer to make or authorize the making of a copy of a computer program while repairing or maintaining that computer.
>>>>>Title IV: Miscellaneous Provisions, contains provisions that, among other things:
| Grant an exemption for making “ephemeral recordings” |
| Recordings made to facilitate a transmission — to allow a radio station to broadcast from the new recording rather than from original CDs that must be changed “on the fly” during a broadcast; |
| Require the U.S. Register of Copyrights to recommend to the Congress how to promote distance education through digital technologies while “maintaining an appropriate balance between the rights of copyright owners and the needs of users.” |
| Allow nonprofit libraries and archives to make up to three copies, which may be digital, of a work provided that digital copies are not made available to the public outside the library premises. |
Require that “Webcasters” — those making digital transmissions of sound recordings over the Internet using streaming audio technologies — pay licensing fees to record companies.
Resources:
Check out the following sites:
"Crash Course in Copyright"
|
(http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm#top) |
"Fair Use
Guidelines for Educational Multimedia
Established by Congress of the United States"
|
TIMELINE: A History of Copyright in the United States
|
Plagiarism:
The Reference and Instructional Services of the Young Research Library at UCLA offers resources and links for educators to assist students. This site could be a good place to begin as you instruct your students. (http://www.library.ucla.edu/yrl/referenc/plagiarism.htm)
(http://www.plagiarism.org/index.html) discusses the issue of plagiarism is schools. It has links to sites that will assist educators as they instruct students. One site linked here is a site called Turnitin.com. For a small fee, teachers can submit student’s papers for review to find out if the paper was plagiarized.
Weber State University gives links to help educators and students alike avoid the pitfalls with often lead to plagiarism. (http://old.weber.edu/facultyhandbook/plagerism.htm)
As educators, we need to be aware of site that offer papers for sale. Your students will know about these sites, and you should too. “Anti-Plagiarism” gives links to such sites. It also offers help on spotting plagiarized information. (http://hargrave.drh.net/academics/teaching/antiplag.html)
Copyright Laws:
(http://www.cla.co.uk/copyrightvillage/internet.html)
International Standards:
Intellectual Property: Copyrights, Trademarks, & Patents>>
|
World Intellectual Property Organization World Trade Organization
Intellectual Property Menu>>
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What is intellectual property?>>
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(http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/intelprp/homepage.htm) |
World Intellectual Property Organization>>
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World Trade Organization>>
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Evaluation:
Did you, the educator, or the students gain a better understanding of what Intellectual Property Rights means? Continue discussing copyright, public domain, and citing sources.
Conclusion:
The World Wide Web is a wide open area for information acquisition. People who use information from online sources need to be aware of laws that protects what individuals have created.
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Last Modified on December 19, 2002