The original home of "Free Culture," libraries rely on copyright law for their very existence. Librarians have been addressing issues around copyright and culture for years, working to make the academic and creative output of the world available to our users. Below, find a collection of resources from the University of Pennsylvania Library about Free Culture. And while you're here, add your own voice to the conversation about Free Culture at Penn by using PennTags to tag resources you find about Free Culture.

A graphic novel about fair use, Bound By Law explores copyright issues through an entertaining story about the trials and tributations of a heroic documentary film maker.
“Will a spiky-haired, camera-toting super-heroine... restore decency and common sense to the world of creative endeavor?” -Paul Bonner, The Herald-Sun
"Bound By Law lays out a sparkling, witty, moving and informative story about how the eroded public domain has made documentary filmmaking into a minefield.” -Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net

This page is part of the documentation guide in Penns Online Research Tutorial, which describes documentation stles and helps with writing papers. The copyright page is an introduction to copyright issues for undergraduates at Penn. It very succinctly describes what copyright is, what kinds of works are copyrighted, what fair use is, and how to copyright your own work.

In this work, Lessig describes how the architecture of the internet was designed to foster creation and innovation, and how recent changes in the law and behavior of the internet are serving to stifle the very creation that has flourished on the internet.

As we learned in Lessig's book, there are barriers to access of creative works beyond the strictures of copyright law, including licensing agreements and cost constraints. As a major research university, Penn produces a tremendous amount of valuable, copyrightable content. However, Penn authors often do not keep rights to their work and the University must buy back the work from journal publishers with considerable restrictions on use. This guide describes ways that faculty and other authors can negotiate with journal publishers to maintain some rights to their own works while continuing to participate in the publication of research articles.