Biographical:

A professional biography of Gail Dykstra, current as of November 2003, can be found near the bottom of this web page.

Cultural:

For a useful description and discussion of peer-to-peer networking click here.

UCLA’s Cyberspace Law and Policy Institute provides a quick overview of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act along with links to the full text of the Act and other resources:

For those interested in pursuing academic research on file sharing and related topics, The Social Science Research Network contains abstracts and access to full-text (PDF) articles in academic journals. Users of the SSRN service are asked to register (free). Some of the material is free, some is available for a fee. (Occasionally the material being charged for is available at no charge on the website of the academic paper’s author.)

This web page from the University of Maryland contains numerous links to online and print resources which describe and discuss the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation examines some of the legal fallout since passage of the DMCA in 1998.

This page from the Digital Future Coalition site gives clear descriptions of some the issues involved in making laws about use and dissemination of digital information.

This DFC site also gives a number of links to other online resources relating to the DMCA.

Here is an extended commentary, from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, on the proper role of government in protecting intellectual property rights via copyright laws and other means: