Copyright law has an effect on these areas of the work we do at the library:
The Supreme Court decision in the case of the New York Times v. Jonathan Tasini, et al. affected the content available in our online databases.
"Reproduction of freelance authors' magazine and newspaper articles in computer databases, without authors' permission, held to infringe authors' copyrights and not to be privileged under 17 USCS 201(c)".
Here's an overview of the issues and the implications of the decision from the LexisNexis wiki.
Copyright Law also has an effect on what your professors do.
New articles on the search: copyright