ENGR 101/HUM 200: Technology and Society

November 29, 2005

Agenda

• Schedule for presentations

• Creating an effective poster

• Lecture: Copyright/copyleft/intellectual property

Creating a Poster

• http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/IndexStart.html

Copyright

• Copyright anxiety with computer technology is associated with – Piracy– Working with electronic information (copying,

working with copies, saving multiple copies, etc.)

“Copying is an ongoing, necessary, and inevitable component of using electronic information.”

– Ethan Katsh, 1995

Copyright in Context

• Print spurred the emergence of copyright– “fixity” of a work different from the manuscript culture

that dominated previously; degradation of copies• “Engine of free expression”• Software carries both the restrictions of

copyright law and a license– when you buy a novel, it doesn’t come with a license

• Time-shifting• Fair Use

– purpose and character of use; nature of original work; amount taken; economic impact

Sharing or Stealing

• "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea...He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." --Thomas Jefferson

The DMCA

• Passed in 1998 by Congress• Designed to protect copyright

– Anti-circumvention

• In practice, eliminates fair use ability (Section 1201)– Princeton Univ Professor Edward Felton (with RICE,

PARC)• SDMI and watermarking, conference paper in 2001, threatened

lawsuit

– 2600 Magazine• Never used DeCSS software, didn’t develop it, published info

about it and linked to it

– TIVO; Slashdot, and more

Fears of “Internet Piracy”

• Prosecute people who use tools to infringe on copyrighted material

• OR

• Prosecute people who develop tools that can be used for fair use

Aspects of Copyright Laws

• UOP and skipping through DVD commercials (copyright holder rights vs. private individual rights while viewing in own home)

• Encryption software as arms dealing

Different Tactics on Protecting IP

• Red v. Blue

• Disney

• Fan communities

• Digital Media Consumer Rights’ Act of 2005 (HR 1201)

Next Class

• Read Lessig