鈥淚NFORMATION wants to be free鈥� has been a rallying cry since the day the Net began. Netropolitan is all for giving people access to information (see last week鈥檚 column), but lots of material will never make it onto the Net at all unless there are measures in place to protect it from thieves. This is especially true in the case of images.
Later this year the UN鈥檚 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is due to pronounce on the subject. It is widely expected to come down hard on the online a buse of copyright and to endorse digital watermarking as a way to protect images.
WIPO doesn鈥檛 have its own Web site, but for some reason Norway鈥檚 Troms University hosts lots of information about it on .
Advertisement
If you are curious about copyright laws in different countries, try the dreadfully named Intellectual Property Rights Mall at . This comprehensive site covers nearly every corner of the globe.
The European Commission has put together a Green Paper about how the growth of the 鈥渋nformation society鈥� will affect copyright. Check out what it has to say about intellectual property in Europe at .
