Notes on Property

Key Concepts for the midterm

Major Trends

privatization of public information (for example human genome information or contents of databases)
a lengthening of the time period of intellectual property ownership (patents are now 20 years and copyrights life of the author plus 70 years)
expanded claims over what rights owners have (read the EULA that comes with a Microsoft product)
a reduction in the liabilities and responsibilities owners have (see the Skype license
expanded criminalization of copyright violations (for example, California's True Name Bill or the Induce Act)
international pressure to make US law international law (this can backfire as a strategy to protect U.S. companies' property)
anti-competitive monopoly pressures as economically powerful companies and industries influence lawmaking (government and conservative views)

Major Sites

World Intellectual Property Organization
Electronic Frontier Foundation's Intellectual Property Site
The Association for Computing Machinery's Intellectual Property site.
The newly privatized Internet Law Library here and here and lots of other places. Not all are providing the same levels of customer satisfaction
Some widely respected internet law sites:
- Hieros Gamos
- FindLaw
- Kuester Law
- Pamela Samuelson's Berkeley Center for Law and Technology
- and one conservative law site
Specialized law search engines:
- U.S. government search engine for laws and proposed legislation in various stages of being acted on by Congress, Thomas
- FindLaw's Law Crawler
And a few good blogs:
- Pamela Jones' GrokLaw
- Lawrence Lessig's lessig blog
- Edward Felton's Freedom to Tinker
- Harvard student Derek Slater
- Reverse engineer, Jon Lech Johansen's blog So Sue Me

Copyright

A humorous, but accurate, introduction to copyright is Where did Copyright Come from?. Two useful introductions to fair use are Benedict.com's and the more comprehensive Stanford University Copright & Fair Use Center.
More on what you can do with your pencils pencils or in class and on what you can't do now that the Digital Milleneum Copyright Act has made reverse engineering mostly illegal (exceptions are made for security and interoperability): DMCA explained with a car engine metaphor.

Patents

A good overview is on the U. S. Department of Energy's patenting genetic information page. For computer related patents s search of the U.S. Patent Office for computer patents for searching procedures produces a long list, including one that seems to cover the method used by mooter. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Patent Busting Project is challenging some of the more offensive (to technoliberals) patents.

Trademarks

The U. S. Trademark Office is at the Patent Office. Trademarks are defined on on their FAQ. They last forever if the owner keeps registering registering them and does not allow infringing activities to occur. Some trademarks: :-( and

Contracts and Licences

Contracts are legally binding economic agreements entered into willingly by both parties. As the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) is passed into law in U.S. states, electronic interactions like the "click here to accept this agreement" will have the force of law. The Association of Computing Machinery has raised objections to UCITA. Some licenses for your reading pleasure:

EULAs (End User Licensing Agreements). Photoshop license allows a copy on more than one computer, acknowleging the way customers actually use software. Microsoft licensing FAQ
Questions about the Windows XP EULA are elaborately complex in their listings of what customers cannot do.
The GNU General Public License was an early alternative to corporate software licenses.
Creative Commons is a newer set of alternative ways to license intellectual property for public use without putting it into the public domain. For an example of work licensed under it , see the Web Museum.
BSD Opensource license
UltraEdit32's shareware license is an example of low cost multiuser or one user with many machines.
Skype's license tries to avoid liability for product failures that might cause serious harm to it's users.
on a lighter note, the frowny license

Intellectual Property Vigilanteism

In societies based on the rule of law, vigilanteism is illegal. Private citizens may not take the law into their own hands. But in several controversial areas of intellectual property law, Vigilanteism is quite prevalent. Although URLs are not trademarks, most webpages are covered by copyright. Some people seem to believe that they have the right to prevent others from linking to their pages without permission. In an attempt to prevent deep linking, or hot linking, some websites hack those who link to their images or pages. U.S. law is beginning to recoginze a right for intellectual property owners to hack their customers and others who copy their work. The DMCA authorized Licence to Hack Act

> perrolle@ccs.neu.edu