The question of licensing and leasing CD-ROM products is a controversial one. Producers maintain that they only lease the data on the discs, while librarians object to the idea of paying sometimes thousands of pounds for products which are only temporarily theirs. In this book librarians, vendors and other industry spokespersons provide a discussion of the issues involved in the licensing and leasing of CD-ROM products. A number of issues are reviewed providing an overview of the day-to-day problems that licensing and leasing agreements can generate, and it gives practical advice on resolving purchase and use restrictions on a local basis. A discussion of the present day context in which copyright law is applied to new technology by the courts is given. The book also examines the vendor's perspective, addressing the problem of database ownership offering an industry-wide overview of the implications of campus-wide local area networks on licensing and leasing agreements. Finally a proposed resolution to the several legal issues addressed throughout the book is discussed.
