Intellectual Property on the Internet

On one of my first web sites I had an original graphic design, done by one of my friends. The design was interesting and eye-catching, two necessary elements for my site. I kept the design on the site for over six months, before taking it down and rebuilding. Almost a year after the graphic went up on my site, the person who designed it saw it on another site. After he showed me, he expressed his disappointment. He had put his time and hard work into this and someone else had just copied the image off my site and used it for themselves. The design was my friend's work and his intellectual property.

According to the United States Information Agency, intellectual property is

[i]nformation that derives its intrinsic value from creative ideas. It is also information with a commercial value. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are bestowed on owners of ideas, inventions and creative expression that have the status of property. Like tangible property, IPRs give owners the right to exclude others from access to or use of their property. (United States Information Agency, "Intellectual Property Rights Protection")

One example of tangible property is the ownership and use of an automobile. If I hold the title to a car it is my car, and I have the right to let people borrow this automobile. I also retain the right to prevent someone from taking my car. Just as I have the right to share or prevent others from using my tangible property, I ought to have the right to share my intellectual property, my word, graphics, and sounds, with whom I choose. If I choose not to allow someone else to use these ideas, then that person will be violating my intellectual property rights.

The concept of intellectual property has been around for a few hundred years. In "Intellectual Property Myths" it is stated that:

The first patent law was enacted in 1623, and the precursor of modern copyright - the Statute of Anne - came into being in 1710. These early laws were limited in scope and restricted to only a few types of information; the broader interpretation of these principles used today in the western world is quite modern, certain elements having been added only within the last few years. ("Some myths about intellectual property")

Although the concept has been around for a long time, protection of intellectual property has never been as much of an issue as it is today. Eric Chabrow explains:

That's because pre-Internet, intellectual property was fairly easy to protect. Books, illustrations, and reports could all be held in your hands. Even computer software, though trickier to protect, usually resides on disks that can be protected. But the Internet makes it a cinch for any PC owner to copy and distribute-that is, to publish-virtually anything on the World Wide Web. This powerful technology threatens to make copyright and other intellectual property protections obsolete. (Chabrow, Copyrights: What's Left?)

The copying of text, sound, and graphics has become easy to do, but it is extremely hard to detect. With the increased use of the Internet and software tools that ease the copying of information, text, sound, and graphics can be used without the permission of the author or creator. To copy a word, sentence, or an entire paper all one needs to do is highlight the material and click the copy icon. For example, the text quoted above was copied and pasted into this document in a matter of thirty seconds. While I gave proper credit, I could have easily passed this information off as my own.

Copying a graphic is even easier than copying a sentence. Copying a graphic involves merely placing the cursor on the image and holding down the button on the mouse until the words "copy this image" come up. While many Internet users feel that if they change or distort the image enough it is appropriate to use the image as their own, it still is the creator's intellectual property. Not only have they taken the creator's work, but by changing it they imply the creator's work is not good enough. The creator not only finds his intellectual property stolen, but also defaced.

An individual's intellectual property is protected by copyrights. Copyright protection can be found on any material that is generally considered either literary or artistic. Obtaining a copyright for intellectual property is simple: when a person has created a work it is automatically copyrighted. (World Intellectual Property Organization) Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of the work are legal, if they are done with the authorization of the copyright owner. Copyright protection applies to those who write books, design advertisements, and create photographs and other visual representations. And today, anybody who has ever written an original Web page, or created an original graphic for the Web is the owner of a copyright on that page or graphic. Copyright even extends to electronic mailings and Usenet postings. (Chang, Herskowitz, Lee, and Page. "Intellectual Property in the Information Age.")

Before the recent explosion on the Internet, copyrights were mainly thought of in only one light. They were reserved for "hard" pieces of work, including books, drawings, paintings, songs, and other creative work. Before the explosion of the Internet it was much easier to protect these works against copyright infringement. In order for the copyright to be broken, one had to first find a physical copy of the information or graphic, and then copy it. For example, to copy a photograph one needed first to find and obtain a physical copy, and then reproduce it. For a high quality reproduction, there was a need for special and expensive equipment. In cyberspace, though, that photograph can be linked to, copied and altered (with readily available software) without leaving a personal computer. This is one of the main differences in the present day argument of intellectual property, copyright, and availability.

In the traditional state of copyrights, there were physical restraints involved in the process of infringement. This was changed with the explosive increase in the use of the Internet. With the increase came a flood of information, text, graphics, and sounds which were available a few keystrokes away. This explosion of the ready availability of material brings a cultural issue into the arena. As Jude Thilman stated in a radio broadcast on art and music sampling, "When original material can be captured on computer and sent around the globe at lightning speed, who really owns it?" He also asks "Are you sharing a common culture or stealing the artist's private property?" (Thilman, "Telecommunications Radio Project") Many feel that with the increased use of television and the Internet people are becoming more and more dependent on technology. The stereotype of the lazy American is revired in the intellectual property battle. Instead of doing research, working for weeks on a paper or struggling to create a graphic design, these people would rather do a search for what they need and copy someone else's ideas.

With the availablity of these works and the ease of copying many legal issues arise. Is copying another person's work off the Internet stealing? Is it really theft, even though it is so readily available? Does it really hurt anyone to copy another's work? Even though the work on the Internet is so widespread and available for easy copying, it is stealing. Let me illustrate my point with an example: I live near a baseball diamond, and in my front yard I have placed a box of a thousand balls. Someone who does not have a ball takes one to play and does not return it. I may not initially know it is missing, but it is still my property. I can only use one ball at a time to play baseball, but I would be hurt if someone stole an item belonging to me.

Many believe that the medium of the Internet should have to follow the same basic laws that have been written for other types of transmissions. The main problem with this issue is its short history: there are very few legal cases.

Seeing as in how [sic] it has only recently come to the forefront of legal issues, there has [sic] not been many cases or ruling [sic] to be seen as precedent. The tough question, then, is what rights are afforded the owner of a copyright on a Web page? This is extremely new subject matter for the courts to handle. As of mid-August the word "Internet" appeared in less than a dozen written opinions of any kind from any Federal court, the courts with jurisdiction for copyright law. Of those cases, all but one were from after October 1994, and only one of those was at an appellate level court (and that one really had nothing to do with the Internet). The Supreme Court has never even uttered the word "Internet" in any form. Even in the handful of trial level opinions that mention the Internet, only one case involved intellectual property on the Internet. (Rosenberg. "Copyright Law Meets the World Wide Web")

While this quote may show a lack of involvement by the judicial branch of government, it more probably shows the recentness of this issue in the court system.

There are also many people who feel that the information that is placed on the Internet is there to be shared. This goes back to the roots of the Internet, when this domain was ruled by the armed forces and academics. At that time academics would place their findings on the Internet for other colleagues to read and discuss. This was the driving force behind the medium; anything that was placed on the Internet was open target and free for use. The Internet was not set up to be a read-only venue; this is why we are entering a time of great debate on this issue of intellectual property, and copyright on the Internet. In the academic arena there are tacit standards that are understood and followed by virtually all who reside in academia. When the work of these academics enters the forum of society as a whole, those rules and standards are not as rigid or clear-cut.

There are groups of people for whom the Internet has become a great medium for their ideas. One group that has used the Internet to display ideas, that are traditionally misconstrued in the media, are the anarchists. According to Carter Butts, creator of a web page against intellectual property:

[E] even those who support some forms of intellectual property must not see the failure of this stance in the realm of computing, where traditional copyright and patent practices threaten to disrupt entire industries. The time has come to challenge intellectual property, and anarchists, with their obvious concern for freedom, should be at the forefront. (Butts. "Against Intellectual Property")

In Butts' view, the new world of computerized information transfer should not be held up to traditional laws. He sends a message that the new information world should be above the law of copyright and be held up to a different standard.

One of the issues that is raised by this group is whether intellectual property and physical property are the same. Physical property rights come from the idea that a physical object can't be in two places at the same time. In order to prevent people from squabbling over material objects, we use a system of rights to say who is the owner of what. Intellectual property, however, differs from physical property in a number of ways, one of which being that it can be anywhere in the world, and in numerous places at the same time. ("Some myths about intellectual property") An example that is given on Intellectual Property Myths uses a character named Fred and anybody named Barney:

Let's say that Fred gives Barney an apple; after this, Fred no longer has the apple. If, on the other hand, Fred TELLS Barney about the apple, Fred STILL knows about the apple. Fred gave the information to Barney, but Fred still has it! Clearly, then, there is no need for Fred and Barney to squabble over who "owns" the information about the apple: to do such would be to try to treat information like an object, an idea which is clearly flawed. ("Some myths about intellectual property")

This story is used as an attempt to strike down the physical property argument discussed in the opening of this paper. But I believe that it is flawed. Does knowledge of the existence of a piece of fruit have value? No, not necessarily. The knowledge of the apple may not have any value. It is the apple which has value, not the information of its existence, but the physical product itself. The only time that the knowledge of the apple would have value is if Barney was hungry. Then the information would be invaluable to him, so he could steal the apple and eat something.

Intellectual property can and should be treated like an object. One main reason for this is that it can have tremendous value to a person or company. Three examples of the value of intellectual property are:

Intellectual property can be greatly lessened in value if a number of people have it ( e.g., I take a wonderful picture and make one copy -- it's worth a lot of money. If someone steals that copy and made thousands of postcards from it, the value of a second copy, which I have possession of, would decrease quickly. )
Some intellectual property potentially has great financial value -- stock tips, the recipe for Coke, information on mergers or expansions of competing companies. (e.g., If Wegman's knows how much P & C is charging for corned beef the week before St. Patrick's Day, it can draw P&C customers into its own store. Also, if I know that a large company is going to hire or fire a Chief Operations Officer, I can either buy or sell their stock)
Intellectual property has value, at least to the person creating it, if that person put work into creating it (e.g., if I pick a bouquet of lilacs for Mom, and my big brother sees me and does the same thing, beating me to Mom, then he has stolen my idea and the value of my creative efforts.) (Interview with Susan Bonzi. 3.30.97)

In the second example, the recipe for Coca-Cola is that company's intellectual property, therefore if I were to copy it, I would violate their intellectual property rights. I could also use the recipe for my financial gain, and their loss. In each of the scenarios above, a person or company stands to profit from taking another's intellectual property, however legal it may be. Therefore the information and intellectual property does have value to someone.

Some people who steal information, and then use it for their own personal gain think that using the information is good advertising. People who showcase another's information or graphics feel that it is not hurting the owner of the intellectual property right, but aiding them. "Don't rationalize whether it hurts the owner or not , ASK them. Usually it is not hard to do." ( Templeton. "10 Big Myths about copyright explained".) Also, many graphic artists want a licensing fee paid to them if their work is used. They feel that before their work is put on an Internet site they should be paid.

There are different arguments in the battle of intellectual property and fair use on the Internet. I have already discussed intellectual property, fair-use is described by the United States Information Agency as follows

...exclusive rights granted to a copyright owner do not include the right to prevent others from making "fair use" of the owner's work. Fair use may include criticism, comment, news, reporting, teaching, or research. The nature of the work, the extent copied, and the impact on the work's commercial value are factors used to determine whether an unauthorized use is a `fair use.' (United States Information Agency, "Intellectual Property Rights Protection")

Fair use normally is just the use of a small excerpt and in most cases is attributed to the creator. This use of a short excerpt does not take away the commercial value of the original, because people will still need to have the original to evaluate the entire document. One argument for the need for protection of intellectual property is the copying of information for personal use. As stated previously, this includes copying text, sound, and graphics for a personal usage. However there is another type of infringement that can take place, especially with papers and essays.

The theft of text also occurs in other areas including Usenet, chat rooms, listservs and discussion groups. Many believe that taking an idea from a listserv is not anything major, but it still is using someone else's intellectual property. Many feel that something posted on a Usenet is public domain. This is not so; it is only public domain if it is stated that it is. It needs to be clearly marked "I grant this to be public domain." or something to that effect. ( Templeton. "10 Big Myths about copyright explained".) The theft of ideas over the Internet has also slowed the transfer of information among academics. "Discussion groups have not met expectations for scholarly exchange, possibly because of plagiarism and copyright concerns." (Turnbull "Conversation on Scholarship in Cyberspace.") Therefore many scholars who would have traditionally shared information with their colleagues will not do so in a discussion group. There then arises a decline in the academic process, because some people are afraid their work and ideas will be taken by others to use.

For many years, the backs of magazines have shown advertisements for term papers for sale. For years these companies have preyed on college students with "term paper blues." I often wondered where they got the papers to sell and by investigating a few Internet sites, I found out how they actually say they obtain them and another possible way they could possibly obtain them. One company, Term Papers On-line, obtains their papers through purchase, trade, or writing the papers themselves. They offer the writer $.25 per page, yes a quarter. For this twenty page paper I could get five bucks. Through another term paper service I could have bought a paper on copyrights in cyberspace, twenty-one pages with eighteen sources, for just under two hundred dollars ($200). The price was for regular delivery, two weeks. For overnight it is $15 and for fax transmission it cost an additional $.50 a page. If a student wants a custom, original paper, it costs from $20 to $35 per page. So for this paper, twenty pages could have cost from $400 to $700, excluding your choice of delivery.(A-1 Termpaper.) Many of these companies will also send the paper via e-mail.

Another company that is in the term paper for sale market is School Sucks. The site for School Sucks, whose slogan is School Sucks- Download Your Workload, can create problems for many individuals. This site contains an underlying message, that it is approriate to use the work of others. They try to make the academic community look like a big joke. Using their service just adds to the decline.

With the abundance of these types of companies on the Internet one must wonder if they are obtaining their papers from other sources. With the number of papers placed on the Internet, it would be very easy for the companies to copy and sell these papers. At the end of this semester these companies will have the opportunity to take around a dozen more papers published by this writing class. And what is to stop them from doing so, if they are among the people who believe anything on the Internet is public domain and they can have it? Not much will stop them.

Because of the fear of theft, many people will not put their work or ideas on the Internet, even though they could receive excellent feedback in this forum. Just as the scholars did not want to use the discussion groups, many professors will not place their syllabi on the Internet. They fear that someone will steal their ideas or techniques. I feel that a person should be able to place information on the Internet and not have to worry about someone stealing that information. But I know this is not a possible at this time. Anything that is placed on the Internet now is fair game. With the amount of copyrighted material that currently exists on the Internet, it is hard to know if someone is using someone else's ideas. Unless a person or company has vast resources, like the "publishing giant Simon & Schuster, for example, that has assembled a team of Net detectives to surf the Net and hunt down pirated copies of the company's books" (Chabrow. "Copyright: What's left?") then he or she will probably never know that someone has stolen his or her ideas.

There will most likely be no way to know, in the future, if someone has taken this paper and copied it for their use. This is my intellectual property, and according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, it is copyrighted. It has commercial value, because if I wanted I could sell it to a term paper sales company. But I do not want anyone to take my ideas and intellectual property. Therefore, should I put this paper on the Internet? As soon as this paper is FTPed to the Internet, it then can be easily copied and used without my consent. At this point in time I will no longer have control of my work; with a traditional "hard" copy of a paper there is control. With a "hard" copy the only way for it to get to many individuals is to make photocopies and distribute them. But this is not the case with electronic media. In creating this Internet site for Writing 305 we have the ability to show any user of the Internet our ideas and writing styles. We will also allow them to sell, copy, and edit our papers for their profit and our loss. I do not wish for a term paper sales company to gain the control of my paper and sell it to another student who does not want to put in the time or effort that I did.

Works Cited

A1 Termpaper Academic and Business Research Source. December 1996. {http://www.a1-termpaper.com/} (3 April 1997).

Bonzi, Susan. Personal Interview. Syracuse, NY. (30 March 1997).

Butts, Carter. "Against Intellectual Property." {http://www.duke.edu/~eagle/anarchy/intelprop.html} (16 March 1997).

Butts, Carter. "Some myths about intellectual property." {http://www.duke.edu/~eagle/anarchy/docs/ipmyths.html} (16 March 1997).

Chabrow, Eric R. "Copyrights: What's Left?" 1996. {http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/572/72mtcop.htm} ( 27 March 1997).

Chang, Herskowitz, Lee, and Page. "Intellectual Property in the Information Age." {http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cpage/cis590/} (26 March 1997).

"Information on the World Intellectual Property Organisation." World Intellectual Property Organisation. 1993. {http://ra.irv.uit.no/trade_law/documents/i_p/wipo/art/wipo.html} (1 April 1997).

"Intellectual Property Rights Protection." U.S. Information Agency. {http://www.usis.usemb.se/topics/ip/1.html} (27 March 1997).

Rosenberg, Matt. "Copyright Law Meets the World Wide Web." 1995. {http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds2-2/weblaw.html} (1 April 1997).

Templeton, Brad. "10 Big Myths about copyright explained." {http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html} (1 April 1997).

Thilman, Jude. "Telecommunications Radio Project." 1993. {gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org/00/orgs/pacifica/tel/5} (5 April 1997).

Turnbull, Paul. "Conversational Scholarship in Cyberspace: The Evolution and Activities of H-NET, the On-line Network for the Humanities." Australian Universities' Review. 39(1): 12-15, 1996.

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