COPYING AND COPYRIGHTCopyright can be defined as the exclusive right to make and dispose copies of a literary,musical or artistic work. Its purpose is to protect any form of expression and to encouragecreators to contribute more towards their fields. In this paper, we discuss about the ‘evolution’ of copyrights in the United States.Copyrights can be compared to patents and they are both defined by the threedimensions: length, width and height. The length refers to the term of copyright, thewidth refers to the breadth of coverage i.e. what can be protected using copyrights andthe height refers to the restriction that no substantial work can be copyrighted. A workcan be copyrighted for the lifetime of the author + 70 years or to a maximum of 75 to 95years. The act of Copyright prohibits copying any work. But quoting a work and reproducingthe work for criticism is considered legal. Copying TV broadcasts for personal use is alsoconsidered legal. The principle of Indirect Appropriability states that the price increaseswhen the right to copy is given. We also discuss on the technique to set the price such thatcustomers prefer buying the product even when copying is permitted. The video storemodel and the library model describe the price setting when a work is being shared bydifferent individuals with different tastes. With all the work becoming digital, copying and distributing the work has become veryeasy and enforcing copyrights on such works may become very difficult. We look intovarious business models that discourage copying when copyrights cannot be enforced.Many technologies that make copying of digital content inexpensive are also workingtowards reducing the fixed cost of content creation. Many digital content are given awayfor free, from blogs to open source software. This increased availability of the contentdue to reduced cost in creating and distributing increases the competition and reduces theprice consumers need to pay for legitimate access.Discussion Questions:1. Consider the Piracy Rate vs. per capita Gross Domestic Product discussed earlier,considering the state of affairs developing countries like India and China, how muchdo you think the development of the County depends on the Copyright issue2. The term of a Copyright is the life of the author plus 95 years. The emergence ofCopyright was to protect and encourage the author during his lifetime. After his deathwould his work be better appreciated if it wasn’t copyrighted?3. Consider the Borland vs. Lotus case which is in a state of deadlock in the U.S.Supreme Court, should such user interfaces, like choice of keystrokes be subject tocopyright protection