1. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act

2. Introduction You have spent three months working on your coursework. It is absolutely brilliant,, you just know that it is worth that A + grade. How would you feel if someone in your class had secretly copied your work when you went out of the room for five minutes and then handed it in as their own? I bet you would feel pretty upset. How about that song that you spent last week writing? You are sure it is great chart material and is going to get you that break into the music industry. You record a demo of it and send it to a record company, but you don't hear anything from them. How does it make you feel when you see the latest boy band performing your song on Top of the Pops, and you haven't been paid a single penny for it? It's not fair is it? That's why we need a law to protect the author of any original material from someone else taking it and claiming it as their work. There is such a law, it is called the 'Copyright, Designs and Patents Act' and it was passed in 1988.

3. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This Act was introduced to protect the investment of time, money and effort by the people who create original pieces of work. This can mean: – Authors of books – Composers of music – The makers of a film – A computer game designer – A company that creates applications such as word processing software. They all invest a great deal of time and money to produce these things and quite rightly, their work belongs to them.

4. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act has two main purposes: 1.To ensure people are rewarded for their endeavors 2.To give protection to the copyright holder if someone tries to copy or steal their work.

5. Software Licenses When you purchase a piece of software you don't actually own the software. What you are buying is a license to be able to use the software. You are able to load your software onto your machine at home and use it for as long as you like. You are not however, allowed to take it to your mates and load it onto his computer - he doesn't have a license to use it

6. Software Licenses Type of licenseHow many people it covers Single User license The software can be loaded onto just one machine. Only one person can use the software at a time. However, if that person stops using the machine then someone else can log on and use the software. Multi User license Multi-user licenses are bought for a certain number of users e.g. 20. So at any one time, up to 20 people on the network can use the software. The 21st person cannot use the software until one person logs off or shuts it down. Site license A site license allows everyone on that site or in an office to use the software. It can be loaded onto every machine and anyone on the site can use it. Sometimes a site license covers loading the software onto staff laptops so that they can use it whilst on the move. It might even cover staff to have a copy of the software at home, but that is dependent on the terms of the site license. You shouldn't just assume that you can do this.

7. Myths “I didn't know so I'm not guilty” You won't get way with saying ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know’. If you copy things and pass them off as your own, you are guilty of breaching Copyright.. “If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it is not copyrighted.” Nope, you won't get away with this one either. Any original work is copyright, whether it has a copyright notice on or not. If something looks copyright then you should assume that it is. “If I don't charge for it, I can copy it” False. It doesn't matter if you charge someone or not, copying is copying, whichever way you look at it. Breaking the copyright laws can result in very heavy penalties - you can get a hefty fine and even get sent to jail!

8. Does it matter? How many of the following are you guilty of? – Copying a computer game from your mate – Downloading a few tracks from the internet - they are free aren't they – Copying text from a website and pasted it into your own work Come on, if we tell the truth, I bet we have all done these things. But does it really matter? It is estimated that almost 40% of software is copied. This has a huge impact on the software industry.

9. Does it matter? By just cutting the software piracy rate from 25% to 15% would result in an extra 40,000 jobs in the IT sector and an extra £2.5 billion in tax revenues. The extra revenue that software companies would receive would mean that they could reinvest more into new product development, perhaps a new game or a new application package. It’s estimated, in fact, that people breaking the law and downloading copyrighted music costs the industry something like £8.5 billion a year – and loses £1.5 billion for the VAT man. So, the end result, if everybody that has a PC in the UK decided to download ripped off music rather than buy it, would be an end to the music industry in the UK.