9.1 Introduction
In the past six years the World Wide Web has grown from virtually non-existent to an enormous library of newspapers, magazines, organizations, museums, government agencies, schools, personal pages and much, much more. Thirty million or more users tap into the Web and explore the endless realm of information. A user, according to the American Internet User Survey is an individual who uses "at least one Internet application other than e-mail." E-mail ranks first in the use of the Internet with the Web coming in second. Forty-one percent of users say they use e-mail on a daily basis while only twenty seven percent use the Web daily. Regardless, the number of users has more than doubled in the past year.
The overwhelming growth of the WWW has led to the explosion of information on the Internet. Because of this explosion the concern for copyright protection has also grown. Technology has made it possible to reproduce copyrighted works quickly and easily. Not only is it easy to reproduce the work, but also the quality of the copies have become close to or as good as publisher quality copies. In other words, a copy that one person pays for can look almost identical to a reproduced copy that a person got for free.
As technology has evolved, copyright law has been subject to constant scrutiny and investigation. Law makers cannot predict the future; therefore Congress has the ability to revise the laws so that they are in accordance with current technology. The WWW has quickly grown to 30 million users world wide. That is 30 million people who potentially have the ability to look at your web page, or see what your math class is doing, or read about the employment opportunities for your company. Or 30 million people who could down-load, modify and transmit your work all over the Internet.
There are different points of view on this matter and it will be left to the reader to make up their own opinion. Intellectual property on the World Wide Web is not an issue to ignore. All Web users should be concerned because the law has the potential to change every aspect of the Web as it is known today.
Copyright © 1996 Kelly R. Hanood
Kelly Hanood <hanood@simon.cs.vt.edu>