What is the data protection act?

[aingeni]

This is what i have so far, could some one elaborate. Simple terms if possible.

Data misuse
The Data Protection Act 1998 is a U.K law stating that personal data has to remain private and confidential. Business, organisations and the government regularly store data on computers and networks. This data may include:
Names
Addresses
Telephone numbers
Criminal records
Medical history

In the modern day and age, more and more data is stored on computers and networks. With electronic data storage on the increase, there was fear and concerns about how safe data was:

Who could access the information?
Could the information be copied?
Could you edit the data anonymously?
Did the person know their data was being stored?

The UK government then bought in the Data Protection Act (DPA) in 1998. The purpose of the DPA was to control the way data was stored, handled and edited.
The new act put in place rules about how personal data about people could be used. It also gave people legal rights if their personal information was stored by any company or organisation.

The act didn't stop companies or organisations from storing data but it made them follow several guidelines on how the data was stored and used.

[siuaghan]

it stops people from copying information (c) (copyright)

[avikar76]

It is NOT about copyright, which does not protect "data" -- only creative expression or when incorporated into a database (under the Database Directive), which does not apply in the USA.

The DPA is about privacy of individual data stored in a system of records and accessible by others. The concern is that your private information could be used by others without proper authorization or tampered with or collected and stored without your permission. Those things are illegal under the DPA.