Overview
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Teaching Methods (EDPS 491)
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2012 Workshop
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RET, Summer 2010
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Copyright law was initially created to protect the distribution rights of the creator for a limited amount of time. In the United States, the initial length of copyright was 14 years, which the option to renew for an additional 14 if the author was still alive. It has since been extended to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, or the life of the creator plus an additional 70 years. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 criminalized some cases of copyright infringement, such as circumventing the copy protection on DVDs.
A patent is (according to Dictionary.com) the exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to manufacture, use, or sell an invention for a certain number of years. Patents were designed to promote innovation, to protect the rights of the inventor so that people with bigger pockets could not snatch away an invention and mass produce it without the inventor being credited and compensated. Software patents are for the process of doing a task. Many software companies are hoarding patents and patenting processes preemptively as a defensive measure against competitors or as a way of weaponizing the patents to launch legal battles against other companies.
EULAs, or End-User License Agreements are fairly standard in today's software world. Many EULAs provide that the software that the user is about to use is merely licensed to the user. It is not a copy of the software (which would give users certain rights, e.g. reselling the software). Many times, EULAs are called shrink-wrap agreements, because to get to the agreement (to which you may or may not agree), you have to open the shrink wrap, which prevents you from returning the software. Therefore, you are essentially agreeing to the EULA before seeing it. There are many questions to bring up when discussing EULAs:
The DMCA is a law in the United States. Certain websites, a good example being The Pirate Bay, are hosted outside of the United States. However, such websites host, or provide access to, content that is copyrighted in the United States. These sites would obviously be in violation of US copyright law, if they were based in the US. However, they are breaking no laws in the country they are hosted in. Therefore, by whose set of laws should they be governed? The laws of the country they are hosted in, or the laws of the country that protects material they are hosting?
