Intellectual Property - Ethics for the Information Age - page 214

16. Suppose company A wants to develop a program that duplicates the functionality of a
program made by company B. Describe how company A may do this without violating
the copyrights held by company B.
17. When describing a software license, what does the phrase “open source” mean?
18. How has Linux affected the market for proprietary software?
19. Suppose your band has recorded a song and posted it as an MP3 file on your Web site.
How can you allow people to download your music for noncommercial purposes while
retaining your copyright on the song?
Discussion Questions
20. Benjamin Franklin created many useful inventions without any desire to receive finan-
cial reward. Is intellectual property protection needed in order to promote innovation?
21. Any original piece of intellectual property you have created, such as a poem, term paper,
or photograph, is automatically copyrighted, even if you did not label it with a copyright
notice. Think about your most valuable piece of intellectual property. Describe in detail
the ownership rights you would like to claim on it.
22. Do you support the aims of the Google Books project? Does this initiative give Google
toomuchpower?
23. Discuss the morality of posting the 32-character encryption key for HD-DVDs on
Digg.com; the morality of terminating the poster's account; and the morality of re-
posting the encryption key.
24. How does the debate over digital music illuminate the differences among ethics, moral-
ity, and law?
25. Is the concept of digital rights management doomed to failure?
26. What does the US Supreme Court decision in MGM v. Grokster mean for the develop-
ment of future peer-to-peer network technologies?
27. The current legal system allows both proprietary software and open-source software to
be distributed. What are the pros and cons of maintaining the status quo?
28. Examine the analyses of Section 4.9 regarding the legitimacy of providing intellectual
property protection for software. Do these arguments apply equally well to the question
of providing intellectual property protection for music? Why or why not?
29. Should copyright laws protect musical compositions? Should copyright laws protect
recordings of musical performances?
30. Is it hopeless to try to protect intellectual property in digital media?
In-Class Exercises
31. A plane makes an emergency crash landing on a deserted tropical island. Two dozen
survivors must fend for themselves until help arrives. All of them are from large cities,
and none of them has camping experience. The survivors find it impossible to gather