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

washingtonpost.com

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

#21

Post by tomx »

What would the ideal policy be?

My ideas are:

- Students own their own work; even if they don't really care for it. I don't see any value in a 10 year pile of homework, but if you create a great piece of art, you should be able to take it home. Realistically, most work is valueless and binned.

- Any created teaching materials may optionally be released as open source, under some license that prevents anyone profiting from them. There's often a gap between good work, and good releasable work (final polish, consistency and so on). Anyone (e.g. some school district) wanting a particular set of work released should be prepared to fund this final polishing. So, a teacher could make a great course, subsequently receive funding to make it brilliant for others, and share it with the world. Thus any good teaching materials created benefit the most amount of people.

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

#22

Post by Fire30 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #6

Why would you want to own the IP for a bunch of crappy school projects?

I made an app for my county's online grade book and would definitely hate it if my app was considered the county's work now. This is somewhat scary because my county(Loudoun) is close to Prince Georges.

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

#23

Post by grumps »

russell wrote: post #9

When my son was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley he used to put a copyright notice on all his homework because the University has a similar policy. The policy was legal because students has to agree in order to gain admission. The Prince Georges policy has no legal standing because first graders cant enter into contracts. Apparently nobody contacted a minimally competent lawyer.

I'm not sure that even if a 1st grader could sign a contract that it would be legal. I believe these are public schools, and I think they're legally required to accept students.

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

#25

Post by jiggy2011 »

michaelpinto wrote: post #24
jiggy2011 wrote: post #6

Why would you want to own the IP for a bunch of crappy school projects?

If your former student becomes famous you can cash in: Look at the current interest in finding yearbook photos as an example.

Seems like a long shot.

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

#26

Post by jbester »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #19

What possible reason could there be for this, that, in any way, serves the public? Don't these schools have bigger problems than stealing people's work? It seems even having this as a discussion is a waste of public funds.

This is already pretty common at the college-level.

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

#28

Post by kabdib »

tekromancr wrote: post #20
noonespecial wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once they get kids into the system, they have a suprising array of coercive methods to get students to perform. Vague threats about future actions, social shaming through posted grades and holding students back as their class moves on, etc. 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.

I literally did no (assigned) work in High School, failed every class, and still graduated a year early. It was about 50% moral outrage at the state of our education system, %40 I could teach myself things better, %10 I was a lazy arsehole.

I came within one point (on my last math final) of not graduating; teacher made a mistake grading the exam, a 69 turned into a 70, a 70 got my GPA just to the point where I got a diploma. Otherwise, I guess, summer school.

High school sucked.

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

#29

Post by cs702 »

Every time I read something like this, I can't help but feel that society has lost sight that the primary purpose of copyright is to promote and encourage creative endeavors for everyone's benefit[1], not to safeguard individual ownership of 'intellectual property.'

Is anyone at this school system even wondering, "does society at large benefit from this?"

--

[1] As pyre points out below, this is the case in the US, but not necessarily in Europe, where the history of copyright is much longer and more complex. (Thanks pyre!) The Copyright Clause of the US Constitution is: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

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

#30

Post by Retric »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

Surely this can't be legal under existing copyright law. From the article, "The District holds common law copyright, at a minimum, to all relevant intellectual property its city and school employees create, a spokeswoman said." I take it that the school district's lawyer was not consulted before that statement was made, or else the lawyer was a doofus about copyright law. There isn't any "common law copyright," in th…

Further schools are Already legally required to teach students so any contract signed to trade copywrite in exchange for attendance fails to give the parent or student anything thus failing to become a contract. (Contracts require both sides to gain something of value aka consideration.)

PS: Schools often run into this issue when trying to set up contracts with students / parents.

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