Reading Assignment: Copyright in the Electronic Environment

Assigned: Thursday, 2 September 1999
Questions Due: Noon, Monday, 6 September 1999
Expected Discussion: Tuesday, 7 September 1999

This is a reading assignment. You should reflect on the notes on reading assignments before undertaking this assignment.

On Tuesday, we'll be discussing issues of intellectual property in hypermedia. It would help if you had some background on U.S. copyright law. Georgia Harper's ``Copyright Law in the Electronic Environment'' at http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/IntellectualProperty/faculty.htm is a good place to start. You need only read the outline on the main page. However, we do encourage you to follow links on that page to learn more.

What kind of general questions will we be discussion? Things on the order of

• Who owns links?
• When should it be legal or illegal to link to other pages.
• When should it be legal or illegal to include other people's pages in your document?
• Who should own databases collected from other materials?

Come up with two interesting discussion questions based on the reading, and be prepared to discuss those questions (and others) in class. Please send the questions to both of us by noon on Monday. (Note that your questions can be much more specific than those we suggested above.)