Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
An organization may make some materials available to the
general public before an event for publicity, but those materi
als may be withdrawn from public access afterwards.
The Web is a wonderful place to go for many types of materials,
but there are circumstances in which all types of materials, such as
historical documents or professional journals, are not accessible on
the Web for reasons including time restrictions and financial consid
erations.
Once you find documents on the World Wide Web, you can
read and enjoy them. You may wonder, however, how free you are
to use those materials in other contexts.
How do the concepts of intellectual property and
the Web?
There seems to be a common belief among users of the Internet
that all materials are available for free and unrestricted access, and fur
ther, that any downloaded information can be used or posted on the
Web without restriction. There are, however, many ethical, economic,
and legal reasons that make this untrue. Ethical issues surrounding the
use of materials typically relate to a concept called
intellectual property
.
To address this concept, let's first examine the nature of ideas and aca
demic exploration.
Ideas, Academic Exploration, and Intellectual Property:
Creations of an individual or group are considered to be owned by
the creators and are designated
intellectual property
. Ideas and un
derstandings are shaped by many factors, such as time, effort,
thought, research, insight, experience, and practice, and the expres
sions of this work have value. In academia, this perspective has led
to the wellestablished practice that each person gratefully acknowl
edges the ideas of others. When you write a paper, you may use oth
ers' ideas, but you are expected to reference your sources. This is the
principle of
academic honesty
. As you likely are aware, academic
work requires careful practices of quotation, paraphrasing, and ci
tation. To reinforce this principle, most academic institutions have
