Cyberspace

Cyberspace is a new and exciting frontier, and presents a host of new and difficult legal questions in many areas.

Larry Lessig,
David Post and
Eugene Volokh

If someone saves your e-mail in an archive, he's made copies, which might be infringements.

If you download an article from a newspaper Web site and forward it to a news group, you've made copies, which might be infringements.

It covers MANUAL copies as well as mechanical copies: It doesn't matter whether you make an electronic copy of an electronic document, scan in a print document, or hand-enter a document into the computer. All of this is copying.

You respond to someone's discussion list post, and quote part of his post in yours

1. Extremely short writings - for instance, several words or shorter - or extremely simple drawings are generally not copyrighted.

2. If you simply copy what someone else has done, without adding anything new of your own, your copy is generally not copyrighted.

You don´t need to send it in to the Library of Congress.

You don´t need to put a copyright notice on it.

Your work is copyrighted THE MOMENT IT´S WRITTEN DOWN.

Copying an IDEA from someone else's work isn't considered copying for copyright purposes (though in some situations it might violate rights under the *patent* laws). Thus, even if I'm the first person to think about writing a courtroom drama set in a virtual cybercourt, everyone is free to copy this idea.

1. Is your use noncommercial?
2. Is your use for purposes of criticism, comment, parody, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research?
3. Is the original work mostly fact (as opposed to mostly fiction or opinion)?
4. Has the original work been published (as opposed to sent out only to one or a few people)?
5. Are you copying only a small part of the original work?
6. Are you copying only a relatively insignificant part of the original work (as opposed to the most important part)?
7. Are you adding a lot new to the work (as opposed to just quoting parts of the original)?
8. Does your conduct leave unaffected any profits that the copyright owner can make (as opposed to displacing some potential sales OR potential licenses of reprint rights)?

When a copyright owner acts in such a way that "reasonable people would assume that he's allowing them to make copies", the law interprets his conduct as creating an "implied license."

No, it is unfair to copy unpublished works.

If you're copying only a LITTLE BIT - for text, this generally means no more than a couple of paragraphs here or there, but it could be less if you're copying from a work that's already quite short - your use is probably FAIR.
We wish we could tell you how much is "a little bit," but we can't - there's no bright line. If someone tells you something like "It's OK to copy 20% of a newspaper article or 10% of a scholarly article," that's a COPYRIGHT MYTH.

If you're copying more than a little bit, but you're doing it for (a) SYSTEMATIC NEWS REPORTING, (b) CRITICAL COMMENTARY (whether positive or negative), or (c) PARODY, your use is probably FAIR.
Note that it's not enough just to say "I'm reporting the news to the list" or "I'm commenting on this article just by quoting it." A little test: If pretty much any copier can make the same claim of "news reporting" or "commentary" that you're making, your claim is probably too ambitious.

1. if it knew,
2. OR had reason to know of the infringement. This means that
3. if someone complains about an infringing post, the service provider must take reasonable steps to determine whether the post is actually an infringement - whether it actually copies someone else's work, whether it's a fair use, and so on -
4. but until someone complains, the provider generally has no duty to look for potential infringements.

The liability of service providers

Privacy Law in Cyberspace

Informational Privacy

American law does not expressly protect people from having websites gather information about them while they are accessed.

It was the statement, "the constitution protects people, not places."

1. truths about you that have revealed to the public, either by giving some information over to someone else, or by being observed in public; or
2. Truths about you that you have kept private.

It was the statement, "the constitution protects people, not places."

Privacy and the Fourth Amendment, Part 2