title: The Illustrated Story of Copyright
author: Edward Samuels
description: Starting from the perspective of the future of technological innovations such as computers and software, Samuels looks into the past, placing those innovations in historical context and giving life to what is generally considered an esoteric subject. He notes that U.S. copyright laws have been sufficiently flexible and adaptive to accommodate new issues. He examines contemporary issues from the MP3 music-sharing litigation to restrictions on copying video- and audiotapes. The book reads, in part, like a popular commentary on how regular people may be breaking the law. Interestingly, before the U.S. became an exporter of intellectual property after World War II, it was a rogue nation, a pirate of copyrighted work from Europe, primarily Britain. As a leader in technology and commerce, however, the U.S. has been influenced by international copyright standards. Besides the technicalities of varying terms of copyrights--the current term is the life of the author plus 70 years--readers will enjoy learning how copyright applies to pop-cultural products, from movies to musicals to computer software. <i>Vernon Ford</i><br /><i>Copyright  American Library Association. All rights reserved</i>
zlib_text: 	
  Begin	Reading
  Table	of	Contents
  About	the	Author
  Copyright	Page
  	
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  Preface
  I	was	leafing	through	a	sheaf	of	documents	in	the	National	Archives	in	London	–
  it	 was	 three	 or	 four	 years	 ago	 –	 when	 I	 stumbled	 across	 a	 most	 intriguing
  photograph.	It	depicted	a	cloud	of	smoke	rising	from	a	forest	clearing,	nothing
  else,	and	might	easily	have	been	dismissed	as	being	of	no	cons