Staying Legal: A Guide to Issues and Practice for Users and Publishers of Electronic Resources

Information officers and librarians in all sectors are involved in the use of electronic information sources. Issues of copyright and user licensing directly affect them and increasingly the Internet has brought information workers into a publisher/distributor role. This collection offers information professionals a practical guide to the legal issues that affect the use and production of electronic resources. Aiming to make the law accessible, the book provides specific advice. Each chapter, contributed by a leading expert in the field, indicates relevant UK and EU legislation and includes detailed coverage of the law as it affects publishers of electronic resources - online or CD-ROM databases, multimedia products, electronic books and the full range of Internet-related resources. Contents include: information democracy, universal access to information, open government; the law of electronic resources; copyright and intellectual property rights, data protection, legal deposit; criminal liability, obscenity, indecency, incitement and pornography; defamation, liability and blasphemy; agreements, user licences and codes of practice; consumer law security; and database production - a commercial view of the law.