Intellectual property law
Overview
Intellectual property legislation is generally concerned with protecting the interests of intellectual property (IP) owners by making specific statements about the legality of various ways of using IP.
More recently, laws such as the DMCA seek to reduce illegal usage by placing legal protections around copy protection devices, a controversial expansion of traditional legal coverage. (Previously, "tampering" with "protection" devices, e.g. door locks, may have been only illegal to the extent that it caused damage to the device or actually allowed someone to steal something; does anyone have references on this? --Woozle 21:44, 6 August 2006 (EDT))
Countries
The status quo in the United States is largely represented by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), along with any remnants of Fair Use not rendered illegal by the DMCA.
Interest Groups
Groups who are directly affected by IP legislation include:
against the status quo
- open source groups aiming for restriction of circumvention to copyright infringing activities, and to have protection for a range of business models.
- academics who want to be able to research and comment without threat of litigation
- components manufacturers who want to be able to develop for a range of systems and not be locked into specific partnerships.
- makers, inventors, and recyclers who will be using hardware to make new things which were not anticipated by the original manufacturer.
- webcasters who are concerned that traditional broadcasters are aiming to have themselves considered as a special kind of boradcaster and provided rights at the expense of creators and other business models.
- democracy advocates concerned about software providers who want to blackbox their systems effectively avoiding transparency regarding the accuracy of their products.
- pirate parties which are representing strictly a consumer perspective as they see that the system is so broken that non compliance and non recognition of the broken system is the only way to change it.
pro status quo
- the music industry (including some of the more popular artists)
- media conglomerates (e.g. Time/Warner/AOL, Fox -> Newscorp. -> Rupert Murdoch, Disney)