The Internet's breakthrough to primetime usage beginning in the mid-1990s evolved in an era of openness. Unfettered access seemed key to Internet development. An important foundation for the 1996 Telecommunications Act was the theory that the telecom industry would work best if it were free of government regulation, a guiding principle that has…

Includes two articles: one discusses Federal legislation and regulations affecting libraries in 2000, including database protection, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, funding, Internet filtering, and e-rate; and the second discusses legislation and regulations affecting publishing, including copyright, foreign sales corporation tax, children's…

For years, recording companies have been waging a losing war against millions of Net-savvy college students who download and copy digital music or videos and sell or swap them. Many students make illegal use of high-speed computer links owned by universities as administrators catch the flak. Meanwhile, the recording industry and artists claim…

In this article, the author provides a spirited defense of librarians' sometimes controversial role in public and legislative controversies over a wide array of topics including fair use, Internet filters, and digital rights to intellectual property. She argues that librarians cannot solve the copyright conundrum for their universities by…

Copyright law, together with the market logic it carries, penetrates deeply into our daily life. The copyright regime is so restrictive that it turns a normal learning process into a series of potential copyright violations. The Free Software Movement (FSM) represents a substantial community effort to counter this trend. It seeks to supersede the…