Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Another model is the online music store, in which you pay to download music
without digital rights management. Three leading online music stores are Amazon MP3,
eMusic, and Apple's iTunes Store. The iTunes Store is easily the biggest player in the legal
online music business. In 2008 the iTunes Store surpassed Wal-Mart to become the top
music retailer in the United States, with over 50 million customers, a catalog of more
than 6 million songs, and cumulative sales of more than 4 billion songs [111]. Digital
music sales continue to climb, and in 2011 accounted for more than half of all music
purchases for the first time [112].
The two primary sources for the information in this section are the BitLaw Web site
(
www.bitlaw.com)
, created by Daniel A. Tysver of the law firm Beck & Tysver, and
Legal
Protection of Digital Information
by Lee Hollaar [113].
In the early days of the computer industry, there was no strong demand for intel-
lectual property protection for software. Most commercial software was produced by the
same companies manufacturing computer hardware. They sold complete systems to cus-
tomers, and the licensing agreements covered use of the software as well as the hardware.
Interest in copyrighting software grew with the emergence of an independent software
industry in the 1960s.
The first software copyrights were applied for in 1964. The Copyright Office allowed the
submitted computer programs to be registered, reasoning that a computer program is
like a “how-to” book. The Copyright Act of 1976 explicitly recognizes that software can
be copyrighted.
When a piece of software gets copyright protection, what exactly is copyrighted?
First, copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. For example,
suppose you develop a program for a relational database management system. You may
be able to copyright your implementation of a relational database management system,
but you cannot copyright the concept of using relational databases to store information.
Second, copyright usually protects the object (executable) program, not the source
program. Typically, the source code to a program is confidential; in other words, a
trade secret of the enterprise that developed it. The company only distributes the object
program to its customers. The copyright also protects the screen displays produced
by the program as it executes. This is particularly valuable for the developers of video
games.
The holder of a copyright has a right to control the distribution of the copyrighted
material. Obviously, this includes making copies of the program. The definition of what
it means to make a copy of a program is broad. Suppose you purchase a program stored
on a CD. If you transfer a copy of the program from the CD to a hard disk, you are
