Copyright
Computer users must follow the copyright law which also applies to other media such as videos, music cassettes and books.
Copyright law
Computer users must obey the copyright law. When you buy software:
- you do not have the right to give a copy to a friend.
- you cannot make a copy of the CD with a CD writer and then sell it.
- you cannot use the software on a network unless the licence allows it.
- you cannot rent out the software without the permission of the copyright holder.
- The licence agreement is normally part of the installation process and you have to press ‘ok’ or ‘I agree’ to be allowed to install the software. This applies equally to downloaded software.
- You are usually asked to type in a licence key which is a set of letters and numbers, when you install the software.
- Some programs will only run if the CD-ROM is in the CD drive.
- Some programs will only run if a special piece of hardware called a dongle is plugged into the back of the computer.
FAST
The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) was founded in 1984 by the software industry and is now supported by over 1,200 companies. It is a not-for-profit organisation aiming to prevent software piracy and has a policy of prosecuting anyone found to be breaching copyright law.
FAST also works to educate the public about good software practice and legal requirements.
posted by The ICT Team @ 11:57 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Students should be aware that a lot of copyrighted software does allow, even encourage, users to make copies and pass them onto friends.
Free software and Open Source Software both permit this, along with other freedoms such the ability to see and change the source code.
Freeware and Shareware also normally allow users to make copies and share them, but don't give users the freedom to see the source code.
Examples of software that encourage this sort of sharing include the Firefox web browser, Apache web server, Linux operating system and OpenOffice.org office suite.
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