Copyright

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the 
United States (Title 17 US Code) to the authors of "original 
works of authorship" including literary, drama, musical,
artistic, architectural, cartographic and certain other 
intellectual works, including  computer software, graphics, 
multimedia. 

See Copyright Issues - Virginia Montecino
Also review copyright primer for when you create your Web material

U.S Copyright Act of 1980 definition-"set of statements or 
instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result." 

Text definition - broadens the definition to include more than one computer program as a part of a software "package," and also include data as part of the software package, which could include, for example, data related to a dictionary.  This data is not the same as the data you create using a software program.  A software "package" can contain a number of programs.  For example Microsoft Office contains Word, Access, Excel, clip art, spell checker, etc.

Copyrighted Software

• Public domain 
• Shareware 
• Freeware

Operating systems – liaison between hardware and application software
- DOS – non graphical interface
- Windows – (3X, 95, 98) graphical - desktop
- Macintosh (OS7, OS8 - graphical
- Windows NT and UNIX - network operating systems designed  to manage multiple user needs at same time.

Utility software – sub category programs that control resources by managing files by sorting, copying, comparing, listing and searching, as well as diagnostic and measurement routines that check the health and performance of the system.

Device driver software –  allows the computer to "talk" with the device, such as a scanner, printer, modem.

Programming language software – instructions translated into electrical signals – bits and bytes.

Languages high level vs low level languages: 
- High level languages are closer to human language. 

- Low level languages are highly codified and are closer to machine language. [Programmers write OSs with low level languages. They are also used when the instructions deal with communicating with the hardware.]

See examples of programming languages - Dr. Marchant

Some major categories of application software 
- word processors
- data management - spreadsheets, databases
- presentation
- graphics - creation / manipulation
- Web browsers
- communication
- E mail
- desktop publishing
- multimedia authoring
- education training
- finance

Terms 
- Multimedia - integrated use of various presentation mediums such as text, graphics, sound, animation, graphics and video.  All elements need not be present. 

- hypertext - documents linked to each other by "hotspots"  in text. 

- hypermedia - graphics, sound, video, as well as text,  linked together by "hotspots" so that a    user can easily move from one to another. 

"Hyperlinks" are essential to using a Web browser to access such material.