Sources for Debates about

Sources for Debates about

Intellectual Property on the Web

A fabulous article in EJournal (a now defunct "postmodernist" on-line journal exploring the meanings of hypertext). This article explores the history of literary ownership, from Homer and the epic poets on down:

"Oral Knowledge, Typographic Knowledge, Electronic Knowledge: Speculations on the History of Ownership"

by Doug Brent, University of Calgary

http://www.ucalgary.ca/ejournal/archive/rachel/v1n3/article.html

The Software Information and Industry Association, an organization of "content providers" (publishers, software companies, and some of the creators themselves). They express concern at the weakening of copyright law, and favor an updating of the law to take account of the remarkable ease of electronic reproduction and dissemination.

http://www.siia.net

The Digital Future Coalition, an organization of information conduits or transmitters (librarires, scholarly organizations) with an interest in keeping information as freely available as possible.

http://www2.ari.net/home/dfc/index.html

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, with well-known cyber-futurists and intellectuals on their board (like Esther Dyson, Jane Metcalfe and Stewart Brand) pursues "netizenship" issues of civil rights and privacy.

http://www.eff.org

Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (IPNII), a 1994 US government report that led to serious concern by "information conduit" groups like the Digital Future Coalition. They see it as drastically limiting the "fair use" doctrine to leave libraries and others liable to copyright infringement undertaken by their "customers".

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/

The Information Economy, a wonderful site for resources, maintained by Hal Varian, a well-known economist and dean of the Berkeley School of Information Management Systems (SIMS).

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/index.html

Some university researchers are refusing to cede copyright commercially, as discussed in the September 18, 1998 Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com . Yale University librarian, Scott Bennett, suggests that Yale encourage researchers to retain their copyrights when dealing with journal publishers. The Yale proposal is on-line to trigger discussion at

http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/bennett.html

Questions of Intellectual Property are related to issues of Encryption and Surveillance. Will encryption be the savior or the destroyer of traditional copyright? These and other issues are discussed in a forum sponsored by the Foresight Institute.

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