The ease with which electronic documents can be retrieved, downloaded, printed out, re-purposed, and archived all tend to undermine traditional concepts of copyright. The fact that so much of what one finds on the Internet is in the public domain or is offered freely for personal use encourages the notion that everything one finds is free. Although the importance of intellectual property is written into the U.S. Constitution both as copyrights and patents, some have questioned whether Enlightenment concepts of property can comfortably be applied to something as fluid as information. For the immediate future, it is likely that extant laws will serve as the foundation for intellectual property in cyberspace.
Copyrights are enormously valuable, and existing interests are, to say the least, entrenched.
Educators and librarians need to recognize that copyright issues are complex and sometimes conflicting. The following resources will help explicate the issues, and perhaps encourage library professionals to contribute to the dialog. Stanford University hosts this searchable database of information on statutes, judicial opinions, treaties, and current copyright legislation. This page is a lengthy bibliography of articles and position papers, most from the Internet itself. The lack of annotation is annoying, but the list does have an international scope which is essential to observe when dealing with a world-wide web.