Copyright

Note: this list is only intermittently updated

Copyright FAQs and Tutorials

• UC Copyright Education — University of California site with general resources and UC-specific policies
• Copyright Matters — copyright basics and more by the UC Office of Technology Transfer
• “When Works Pass into the Public Domain” — quick reference table prepared by Laura Gasaway
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video — from the Center for Social Media (CSM)
• Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use — from the CSM
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Fair Use Best Practices for Media Studies Publishing — from the CSM
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open CourseWare — from the CSM
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication — from the CSM
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in Teaching for Film and Media Educators — from the CSM
• The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education — from the CSM
• Cornell University copyright tutorial
• Cornell University Fair Use Checklist — PDF
• Paralegal Handbook — basic information on copyright, patents, and trademarks, with many links to external resources, at the Online Paralegal Programs website

Copyright Articles

• “The Illustrated Story of Copyright” — by Edward Samuels (highly recommended  history with many case studies)
• “The Art of Making Copyright Laws” — by Jessica Litman (ch. 2 of her book Digital Copyright, 2001)
• “Moral Rights and Authors’ Rights: The Keys to the Information Age” — by Mike Holderness
• “Innovating Copyright” — by Lawrence Lessig, 2002. PDF (6.3 mb).
• “Derivative Works and Copyright: Painting from Another’s Photograph” — by Mary Ann Fergus (on the Rogers v. Koons case)
• “The Arts and Humanities in Public Life” — by William M. Landes. Includes disussions of Rogers v. Koons and Alfred Bell v. Catalda Fine Arts.
• Electronic Frontier Foundation — page on intellectual property issues, with many links
• “Copyright and Author’s Rights” — includes discussion of European concepts of authors’ rights and moral rights
• “Anti-Copyright and Cassette Culture” — by Donald McGraith
• “The Heavenly Jukebox” — by Charles C. Mann (from the Atlantic Monthly, October 2000)
• “Selling Wine Without Bottles” — by John Perry Barlow, 1992-1993 (plaintext version)
• A Primer on Distance Learning and Intellectual Property Issues — by  law firm Dow Lohnes & Albertson

Copyright Law

• Berne Copyright Convention of 1928 — text of the primary international copyright law (which dates back to 1886) with revisions and amendments up to 1979
• Other Berne treaties — e.g. the Trademark Law Treaty
• Copyright Act of 1976 — text of the U.S. copyright law
• World Intellectual Property Organization
• DMCA — PDF of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 2000, which attempts to update copyright law for the digital environment

Copyright Activism and Websites

• Creative Commons
• Center for Social Media
• knowyourcopyrights.org — “using copyrights in academic settings”
• “Copywrong” — by Richard M. Stallman
• “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” — by Eric. S. Raymond.
• “Reclaiming the Commons” — by David S. Bollier, 2003. PDF (248 kb)
• “Reinvigorating Fair Use: A Social Economics Approach” — by Benjamin J. Bates. Takes an international perspective.
• “Against Intellectual Property” — by Brian Martin. An Australian perspective.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation
• File Sharing resources — an initiative of the EFF
• Lawrence Lessig’s blog
• Copyright & Fair Use page — at Stanford University
• Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials page — at University of Texas
• Copyright Information Center — at Cornell University
• The GNU Project — the GNU General Public Licence
• The Open Archives Initiative
• Creators’ Rights Alliance
• Digital Future Coalition