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Under copyleft, copyright infringement may be avoided if the would-be infringer perpetuates the same copyleft scheme. For this reason copyleft licenses are also known as viral or reciprocal licenses.

when Richard Stallman was working on a Lisp interpreter. Symbolics asked to use the Lisp interpreter, and Stallman agreed to supply them with a public domain version of his work. Symbolics extended and improved the Lisp interpreter, but when Stallman wanted access to the improvements that Symbolics had made to his interpreter, Symbolics refused. Stallman then, in 1984, proceeded to work towards eradicating this emerging behavior and culture of proprietary software, which he named software hoarding.[2]

he created his own copyright license, the Emacs General Public License > [3] > , the first copyleft license. > This later evolved into the GNU General Public License

Enforcement mechanisms such as digital rights management endanger existing consumer rights like fair use, and can be used to further tie creators to the corporate entities that control this technology since even a use which may be legally considered fair use may be hampered or rendered impossible by the technological restrictions. "Trusted computing" platforms may refuse to play, display or execute content that is not properly "certified" by central authorities.

Article 8 of the Berne Convention may have a chilling effect on freedom of speech

without copyright, it would be possible to use DRM without limitations, and fair use and copyleft would be impossible.

Creative Commons licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

"Corporations have wielded the DMCA to censor magazines, academic researchers, and competitors," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Now Vivendi is using the DMCA to threaten customers who simply want to improve the gaming environment for a product they've purchased legitimately."