Ownership, copyright and the law
Introduction
When a person or an organisation develops and promotes a book, an album of songs, a film or a new software application, for example, it costs them a lot of time, effort and money. This can run into millions of pounds. It is only right therefore that they have legal protection for their 'intellectual property', to stop people stealing it. The legal protection that somebody has for their work is called 'copyright.
Although it may not seem like theft, when someone at home illegally downloads some music or a film or a piece of software to use that is copyrighted, it most certainly is. It is denying the people who invested their time, effort and money in the project of a means to regain some of their investment, and to make a profit so that they can continue to operate. To help protect the owners of intellectual property, the Copyright and Patents Act 1988 was introduced.
The Copyright and Patents Act 1988
People who write, paint, compose music, design web pages or invent something, for example, have 'intellectual rights' over what they have done. They own the copyright. This means that somebody who wants to use what they have done must get permission first from the copyright owner. The copyright holder can refuse to give permission, give permission freely, give permission but attach some conditions of use or could charge for permission. These rights are enshrined in law in The Copyright and Patents Act 1988. For example, If you find a web site you like, you cannot make copies of the web site. You cannot burn copies of the web site on to CD without permission nor can you use images you found there without permission. Many web sites, photographs and images now incorporate software that 'stamps' the images with the copyright owner's details.
Copyright law and the European Union
A problem with the Copyright and Patents Act 1998 is that it can only be applied if you are caught breaking copyright laws in the UK. This is clearly a problem, given that the Internet is world wide. Many (but all) countries outside the UK have similar legislation to the Copyright and Patents Act 1998 but the EU, in an attempt to ensure that all its members' laws on copyright were more or less the same, introduced a number of copyright directives. A directive is an instruction to a member state that it must ensure its own legislation meets the standards laid down in the directives. This helps a little bit, but how effective it is is anyone's guess!
Plagiarism
If you do a computing project as part of your course, you cannot include work in your project that somebody else has done without properly giving credit to the author. If you do use somebody else's work without giving it due credit then this is known as 'plagiarism' and even then, you are restricted in how much of someone else's work you can copy wholesale. It is both unethical and a breach of copyright to plagiarise someone's work. There are many web sites offering projects for sale for both school work and university work and many places you can download past pieces of work, although there is no way you can guarantee their quality. Educational institutions and exam boards have become very wise to these sites and now regularly run software through submitted coursework to look for passages that have been stolen.