Intellectual Property - Ethics for the Information Age - page 213

The story of the GNU Project and Linux demonstrates how thousands of volunteers
can work together to produce high-quality, industrial-strength software. Why can't the
success of GNU/Linux be replicated in the arts? Imagine a culture that encouraged
the production of new creative works from existing works, a culture in which songs
would rapidly evolve, different versions of movies were exchanged and compared, and
hypertext novels accumulated links to fan sites. Today's intellectual property laws make
it difficult to achieve this vision in the entertainment field. Little can be done with a
copyrighted work without first asking for permission, a labor-intensive process that
puts a drag on innovation. Creative Commons is an effort to streamline the process
by allowing copyright holders to indicate up front the conditions under which they are
willing to let other people use their work.
Review Questions
1. What is intellectual property? Give ten examples of intellectual property.
2. Summarize John Locke's explanation why there is a natural right to property.
3. What paradoxes arise when we attempt to extend a natural right to property into the
realm of intellectual property?
4. What are the ways in which an individual or firm may protect intellectual property in
the United States?
5. What is the difference between a trademark and a trade secret?
6. What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of patents versus trade secrets?
7. When referring to copyrighted materials, what is meant by the term “fair use”?
8. Explain how advances in information technology have made it easier for consumers to
violate copyright law.
9. How has the Digital Millennium Copyright Act affected fair use of copyrighted material
by consumers?
10. What does the term “digital rights management” mean? Describe three different tech-
nologies that have been used or proposed for digital rights management.
11. What is a peer-to-peer network?
12. What property makes the peer-to-peer network FastTrack more difficult to shut down
than Napster?
13. How does BitTorrent provide an order-of-magnitude increase in downloading speed
compared to earlier peer-to-peer networks?
14. The US Supreme Court ruled that Sony was not responsible for the copyright infringe-
ments of Betamax customers, but Grokster and StreamCast were responsible for the
copyright infringements of those who used their peer-to-peer networks. Explain the dif-
ferences in the two situations that led the Supreme Court to reach opposite conclusions.
15. Why are patents considered an unreliable way of protecting intellectual property rights
in software?