Howard,
T. “Who Owns’ Electronic Texts?”
Background:
Historically,
before the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998,” the penalty for
violating copyright laws was being sued at worst. However, after this act was
put in place, the repercussions of copyright infringement are much more severe.
There is a possibility of facing statutory damages in a civil court as well as
criminal penalties of up to $500,000 or up to five years in court and that is
just for the first offense.
Additionally,
with the “Copyright Term Extension Act” put in place in 1998, copyright is
granted for seven years after the death of any author and then in the case of
“works for hire,” 95 years from publication and 120 years from creation.
Many
writers in the academic world he the notion that they have ownership over their
writing and would like to believe that they have control over the type of
capacity their writing is used. However, with trends moving toward new ways
such as collaborative group work, hypertexts and multimedia presentations, the
idealization that writers have control over accessibility of their work is
facing new challenges. As a result, workplaces are finding themselves
unprepared in dealing with these types of issues.
Scenario 1
Deciding
whether or not you need to ask permission to use a famous photograph from a
magazine, which will be tweaked to go on the cover of your company’s annual
report.
Scenario 2
Deciding
whether or not to install software on your computer when your company has
access, but your company didn’t necessarily pay for you to have that access.
Scenario 3
Deciding
whether or not to quote an unpublished reference from a group research exchange
email.
Scenario 4
Email
privacy at work between you and a co-worker of the opposite sex when you are
aware that email conversations are being monitored and talked about amongst the
IT department.
Scenario 5
Deciding
whether or not it is appropriate for a professor to publish a hypertext that
helps his or her students to find jobs.
Historical Overview
The invention of the printing
press transformed book trade from expensive to cheap, easy and accessible. This
ease of production and increase in competition brought about the incentive to
protect a publisher’s copyright. Moving forward, copyright law doesn’t give
authors and publishers the legal right to prevent the public from “fair use” of
texts.
Copyrights In The Electronic Environment
It is important to understand
the general principles, but not all principles are clear. Here is a breakdown
of the above scenarios.
Scenario 1
The
photo is a reproduction of original work. Therefore, consent should be sought
for use. When all is said and done, the document designer should obtain a copy
of the original photo from the copyright holder.
Scenario 2
This
answer depends on licensing agreements, but in most cases companies have a
specific number of licenses per agreement and if a download of software goes
over that number, it is considered copyright infringement.
Scenario 3
Currently,
it would probably be legal to quote a short passage from the email message,
although the ethics behind this type of practice is severely clouded.
Scenario 4
It
is not likely that this can be appealed through copyright law because it is not
based on “natural unlimited property right.”
Scenario 5
University
resources were used to develop the HyperCard stack. Therefore, he or she can
use this practice, although they should be prepared to share any sort of
profits driven from implementation.
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