Digital piracy, technology, the legal system and computing education

Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, regularly outpacing the evolution of law. The law, by nature is reactive, and thus the legal system finds itself often unprepared to handle the novel technological innovations. Further prohibiting the adequate advancement of the law, many legal practitioners lack the requisite technical knowledge to accurately argue existing laws or to craft new laws that sufficiently respond to technological innovation. This lack of understanding leads to misapplication of the law and inappropriate hindrance of technology. This paper briefly examines the origin and evolution of Copyright law in the United States, together with efforts to stem digital piracy. It then details the development of an educational module focused on user education on copyright and intellectual property that can be deployed in introductory computing courses or provided as resource to legal professionals.