I.T. and the Law

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GCSE/Unit 3/ICT in Society

I.T. and the Law

There are a lot of Law and I.T related rules. The three I shall be explaining and elaborating about today are:

  1. Copyright Act 1988
  2. Data Protection Act
  3. Misuse of Computer Act 1990

Copyright Act

The Copyright Designs and Patents Act (1988) states that it is illegal to copy software without the permission of the person or company that owns the copyright for the software. This means that it is illegal to make copies of floppy disks or CD-ROMs containing computer software or to install the same software onto more than one computer unless you have a special licence agreement. Licence Agreement

A licence agreement does not make it harder to copy software. A licence agreement is a legal contract agreed between the person who buys a software package and the company that developed and sells it. It states what the person who has purchased the software may do with it. The agreement serves two main purposes:

  1. It makes it easier for a software company to successfully take legal action against a person who has pirated software.  

  1. If a company purchases a software package then the licence agreement may give the company permission to install the software onto more than one computer. This is known as a network or multi-user licence. This type of licence is very convenient for companies, which have many computers, connected to a network. The company will have to pay more for this type of licence than for a standard licence to install the software onto just one computer. But the cost will be lower than it would be to purchase individual copies of the program for each computer.  

The illegal copying of software is known as piracy and a person who does this is a pirate. Most pirates copy software for their own use but some pirate copies software to sell to other people. In some European countries it is estimated that each software package that is sold is copied seven times. In other parts of the world this figure is much higher.

Illegal copying of software reduces the income of software companies. Having invested money in designing and producing software these companies need to earn income from software sales to recover these costs and make a profit. Without this income software companies will go out of business and the range of new software that is developed will be reduced. The terms of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act make both the copying and the sale of copies of software packages illegal. Despite the fact that copying software is illegal many people still do it. Therefore some software companies use copy protection methods to make it harder to copy software. They also use licence agreements to restrict the use that customers can make of the software that they purchase.

Copyright protection exists from the time the work is created in a fixed, tangible form of expression. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author, or those deriving their rights through the author, can rightfully claim copyright. In the case of works made for hire the employer, not the writer, is considered to be the author.

What can be copy written?

Copyright protects original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, published editions of works, sound recordings, films (including videogames) and broadcasts. There is no copyright in a name, title, slogan or phrase. But these may be eligible for registration as a trade mark. Although the work itself may be protected, the idea behind it is not. Computer programs are protected on the same basis as literary works. Conversion of a program into or between computer languages and codes corresponds to "adapting" a work and storing any work in a computer amounts to "copying" the work. Also, running a computer program or displaying a work on a VDU will usually involve copying and thus require the consent of the copyright owner. The copyright owner will usually need to give permission for 'adapting' and 'copying' a work, however you may not need permission to make transient or incidental temporary copies. Databases may receive copyright protection for the selection and/or arrangement of the contents. In addition, or instead, database right may exist in a database. This is an automatic right and protects databases against the unauthorised extraction and re-utilisation of the contents of the database. Database right lasts for 15 years from the making but, if published during this time, then the term is 15 years from publication. Technical descriptions, catalogues and engineering drawings are all examples of material that qualifies for copyright protection, whatever the subject matter. Copyright may protect the drawing from which an article is made but copyright cannot be used to prevent the manufacture of articles.

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Copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work (including a photograph) lasts until 70 years after the death of the author. The duration of copyright in a film is 70 years after the death of the last to survive of the principal director, the authors of the screenplay and dialogue, and the composer of any music specially created for the film. Sound recordings are generally protected for 50 years from the year of publication. Broadcasts are protected for 50 years and published editions are protected for 25 years. If a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or film ...

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