David Christy's History of Copyright. This covers some earlier history, but is against the idea of intellectual property.
Becky Allen sends this link from ZeroPaid.com: "Zeropaid.com is an indepth resource for file sharing. The site provides links and ratings for numerous file sharing programs. Related current events are also addressed on the site."
Marshall Annis provides this article from InfoWorld: "Mandy Andress's article 'File-sharing Warnings' talks about the many security risks introduced by file swapping programs such as Kazaa. While connected to these networks your computer is vulnerable to attack from hackers, and you may download a file containing a virus without even knowing it. This article gives good information on how to control file sharing in a corporate setting and block access to these services."
Deepak Arora suggests this site from the University of Arizona: "The University of Arizona describes a few recent events in filesharing lawsuits, including the first criminal prosecuction, and the the lawsuits against students, including those from the University itself. Following this, it states the exact laws that are in place for filesharing, along with some instructions on how to avoid conflicts with the law."
Paul Chuong provides this link from the Franklin Pierce Law Center: "The Franklin Pierce Law Center has created a site which clarifys copyright laws on the internet, specifically email lists and host web pages.
On this site are links that explain the limits to copyright, the author's rights, user's risks, and other information. It also contains links to other sites which deal with the issue of copyright laws on the internet."
Chris Gilmore's link is from CBC News (Canada): "CBC news posted an article in August of this year
describing the lawsuits filed by the recording industry on four specific college students. These four students at different universities in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan were responsible for running file-sharing systems on their school networks. Due to these violations, the respective universities now have policies forbidding the use of their networks for copyright infringements."
Stefanie Kealey sends this link from FirstCoastNews.com: "A Florida news station reports that Universities all over the state are cracking down on illegal file-sharing by imposing limits on the size of downloads and penalties for those in violation of the new guidelines. Students are vehemently opposed to the new policies."
Kristy Klein provides this article from Wired.com: "[This article] called 'Kazaa's File Sharing Swap,' By Brad King is an article from weirdnews.com about the file sharing program called Altnet that Kazaa put out to work with entertainment companies so that for a price, their material will come up at the top of searches. While this does not address the issue of piracy, they do hope to create a secure network that takes advantage of the 'tremendous distribution opportunity.'"
Julie Lauenger provides this article from OpenP2P.com: "In 2002, Tim O'Reilly wrote an article stating that, 'being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement' because it give[s] the artist, 'a chance to build their own reputation and visibility.' In support of online music, O'Reilly points out that a lot of music is difficult to find and that an online copy is never out of stock. He suggest[s] that not too far in the future people will be paying subscribers to download online music, much like people pay for cable television."
Paul Lavoie suggests this site from Electronic Frontier Foundation: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EEF, is a donor supported organization based in San Francisco. Its purpose is to protect freedom where law and technology intertwine. Their website presents tips on how not to get sued by the RIAA. It also contains issues, cases, and information on copyrights and filesharing."
Jeffrey Lees's site is from the University of Texas: "The University of Texas runs this site giving the user a crash course in copyright. Images, videos, words, and just about anything else you can think of is copyrighted, and the details are explained for everyone to understand. The site is not just for students, but also has presnetations designed for librarians, teachers artists and administrators."
April Mahoney provides this site from Cornell Law School: "The Law School at Cornell University provides this page, which contains a complete version of Title 17 of the U.S. Code. Title 17 outlines the
laws on such copyright topics as fair use, duration of protection, and penalties. This source is helpful in understanding specific parts of the U.S. law which deal with copyright protection."
Sophie Moravej sends this site from Wired.com: "The birth and life of Napster were incredible stories. Its death was a brutal battle between the entertainment and technology industries. The results were unexpected benefactors and other methods to filesharing."
Plagiarism Links
Plagiarism: this is an extraordinarily serious and prevalent problem at all Universities today. Plagiarism (and anti-plagiarism) sites are ubiquitous. The following are just a few of the many you can find via a search in any major search engine.
John Fleming sends this article from VirtualSalt.com: "Robert Harris in his article, 'Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers' on VirtualSalt.com, describes ways for instructors to stop plagiarism in their classrooms. Steps include awareness, prevention, and detection of plagiarism and steps to do complete these steps efficiently. Harris includes a link to a very interesting legal website containing cases that included students and instructors that gained their PhDs fraudulently."
Taki Naito's site is TurnItIn.com: "I came across a very useful website on Internet plagiarism for teachers. It is called www.turnitin.com. Dedicated professionals, including award-winning teachers, graphic designers, business professionals and computer scientists have developed this website together to stop the spread of Internet plagiarism. They provide a system that makes it easier to identify students who submit unoriginal, and plagiarized work."
Katie O'Keeffe's site is Copyright.gov: "This is the offical Coyright Law of the United States. This site provides the reader with the laws of the land in full. It provides a detailed assessment of the limitations of copyright as well as visual/audio media and every other medium which is protected by copyright."
Michelle Spangle suggests this article from CNN.com: "'Internet watchdog could stop collegiate copycats,' by Rusty Dornin, shows how wide spread it is in colleges today to use parts of or entire essays obtained from the internet. He discusses a new program developed, which compares a student's essay to all essays in the top 20 search engines as well as the essays in their local database. This program codes every sentence that is found to be a word-for-word match with another
sentence on the internet or in the database, and is hoped to help curb plagiarism."
Jan Voolstra provides this article from The Citadel: "Kathleen Turner and Betsey Carter from the Daniel Library at The Citadel have developed a site for faculty that discusses online plagiarism.
They talk about ways of detecting plagiarism, as well as ways of preventing plagiarism. They also offer professors ways of dealing with term paper plagiarism. So if you are interested in not getting caught do the opposite of what they say. :)"