DC-area schools consider copyright policy that takes ownership of students’ work

The work-for-hire exception to the general copyright law principle that the right of copyright belongs to the creator from fixation is narrowly construed, and school pupils attending a public school don't meet the rather narrow exceptions that trigger the work-for-hire doctrine.

http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-copyright-law-ownershi...

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

School pupils are not employees of school districts. Works produced in the scope of employment by school district employees may indeed be works for hire (there is some scope for interpretation in applying this part of the work-for-hire doctrine) but, again, students and pupils are not employees of the school district. They have authorship rights in their works from the moment of fixation. (That students and pupils are usually minors, not adults, is an additional complication in asserting that right, but that doesn't pass the right to the school.)

Anecdote: I made a school art project in second grade, a picture of a Mongol horseman, that somehow was precociously good, probably because I had seen other such drawings at home when reading history books. The school's specialist art teacher was so impressed by the picture that she took it, and I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT AGAIN. Every time I tell this story, I encounter other adults who also remember producing an art project in school that was taken by a teacher, never to be returned. Thanks a lot.

My advice to parents, which I advise parents to memorize, whenever I speak at a public meeting about educational law: if a school official tells you that you must put up with some school rule, because the rule is the law, say, "What is your legal authority to ask me to do this?" Statutes and case holdings and administrative regulations have citations. If it's really the law, someone can look it up and see exactly what the law says. Schools can only make up policies under authority granted to the schools by other law-making bodies. And if a school district has a policy, it still needs to be written down somewhere. In my experience, most school district officials who say "It's the law" are nonlawyers and are often mistaken about what the law says. If a school tells you that you can't do what's right by your child because "it's the law," ask for the citation of the law. If it's really a law, there is a citation, and the law can be looked up. In the United States, under its Anglo-American system of law, the default assumption is individual liberty (and parents rather than schools acting in the interests of minor children), so make sure to check the specific law before believing your freedom is restricted by the law in the manner the school official claims.

SECOND EDIT: A different top-level comment in this thread mentions a policy of the University of California Berkeley. I have an inference about what that is about, and it would be enormously helpful to the discussion to link to the exact text of what students agree to as they enroll, which is surely a public document that very likely lives on the World Wide Web.

Maybe a better solution is some kind of joint copyright (if that's even possible)? Where one must get permission from the other if they plan on using it for publication or otherwise.

I understand that you're forced to go to school but how are you forced to complete assignments?

I grant you that hard-core slackers laugh at this until they can get away with dropping out, but a large majority of students will conform to the physiological pressure to comply.