CA Legislature Passes Ban On Sale Of Lecture Notes

Misch writes: "On September 22, the legislature of the state of California has passed a ban on the commercial distribution of lecture notes. Needless to say, there are going to be some definite free speech issues to be played out here. "This lecture is copyrighted by the Board of Regents of the State of California, and is intended for the sole use of a student sitting in the classroom. All images, sounds and ideas presented may not be re-used without the express written consent of Major League Baseball." Text of the bill here. And, of course, there's the people in favor of the ban."

Interestingly, part of the explanatory text of the bill points out that "[e]xisting case law provides that in the absence of evidence of agreement to the contrary, a teacher, rather than the institution for which he or she teaches, owns the common law copyright to his or her lectures." That does seem to make some sense, but are notes "the lecture"? If I draw a sketch of a painting, does the original artist own my sketch, too? (Or in this case, does the University of California?)

If "commericial" distribution is prohibited, what about non-commericial? If this spreads to Texas, I know a few businesses on Austin's Drag that would have to quickly rethink their operations. Absent rigorous NDAs, is it fair to restrict the information in a lecture? A video or audio recording is one thing, but notes are by their nature different from the original lecture. Sharing lecture notes is not akin to "sharing" term papers or stealing tests. Wouldn't this be akin to declaring that a reader is not allowed to summarize the content of a book he borrows from the library, or purchases outright?

Gnutella Gnotes, anyone?

Comments

You've gotta be kidding...

[mbadolato]

I would think that there is going to be a hell of a protest about this.

Notes taken during a class are basically just the note-taker's paraphrase of what's said. It isn't copyrighted material! Since when isn't someone allowed to write about something, and sell their work (if they desire)?

I mean, a ruling that basically says "I'm special.. what I say in front of this group of people, within these 4 walls, belongs to me and no one else. Bwahahahaha)

What about if a fellow student is absent, can notes be shared with them? What if they need to pay for the paper that the copy of the notes is written on, does that violate the ruling?

*sigh*

Whole new twist on press conferences...

[syates21]

I can see it now. By the same "logic" applied in this bill, the next time a politician lies, calls someone an a**hole, etc at a press conference, they can just say "Sorry, I own the copyright to that quote and you can't reproduce it without my express written permission"

Isn't the whole point of universities to share knowledge anyway?

And just who do those stupid regents of the UC system think is footing the bill for all those classes anyway? It sure isn't them.

New recording format: "Learning"

[rkent]

Wouldn't this be akin to declaring that a reader is not allowed to summarize the content of a book he borrows from the library, or purchases outright?

Right. And doesn't it also, logically, prohibit you from using your learned information in a commercial way? What about if I learn how to code linked lists in class, and then tell a coworker how to do that at my internship? Oops!

Of course, this is meant to prohibit those places that sell lecture notes back to students, a ban which I'd more or less agree with. But it doesn't seem written in quite the right way.

Does anyone actually buy these?

[sheckard]

Free speech issues aside, does any student actually buy these notes? I never have, but then again, I've never really skipped more than a couple classes per semester. Evidently there's a market for these, since you see those shops everywhere, but I don't know a single person who's actually bought notes.

Most of the lecture-type classes I've taken a service like this would be completely useless since they normally put a copy of their notes in the library after class anyway. As a matter of fact, that would be a good way of combating this... just have the prof dump his notes in the library and make them available to students at the cost of copying... whether it's done by hand or for 5c a page from the copier. Just eliminate the market for them and you eliminate the problem.

Re:Does anyone actually buy these?

[mmmmbeer]

I can't really prove anything, but I do know that there are quite a few of these businesses around the Ohio State campus. Many of them work with teachers to sell required class materials, but lots of them just hire students to take notes and then sell copies of those notes. Unless these companies are all just fronts for money-laundering schemes, I'd say it must be a viable business model.

What I don't understand is whom this is hurting. It's not like the teachers are being cheated; if they want to sell their notes themselves, they'll pretty much always beat the competition. They just need to make buying their notes a class requirement (I had teachers who did that). And if they're worried about students relying on the notes and not taking classes, screw 'em! If you think you can get through college just by reading someone else's notes and skipping class, you deserve to fail. On the other hand, having notes available to read before you get to a topic in class, and to mark up with your own notes during class, can be really helpful to students. I guess I just don't see how this bill benefits anyone. (I tried to look at the page in favor of it, but it's /.ed. Go Figure.)

I don't see this as a problem!

[2nd Post!]

This seems to be the relevent passage:

CHAPTER 6.5. UNAUTHORIZED RECORDING, DISSEMINATION, AND
PUBLICATION OF ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES

66450. (a) Except as authorized by policies developed in
accordance with subdivision (a) of Section 66452, no business,
agency, or person, including, but not necessarily limited to, an
enrolled student, shall prepare, cause to be prepared, give, sell,
transfer, or otherwise distribute or publish, for any commercial
purpose, any contemporaneous recording of an academic presentation in
a classroom or equivalent site of instruction by an instructor of
record. This prohibition applies to a recording made in any medium,
including, but not necessarily limited to, handwritten or typewritten
class notes.

It never mentions that a non-commercial entity cannot distribute said materials; it specifically mentions "commercial purpose" as part of the restriction. A lawyer, of course, is free to correct my interpretation.

Another point to defend this is the fact that it mentions "contemporaneous recording" in which it means, IIRC, any recording made at the time of the lecture/presentation.

So distributing handwritten notes(not teacher's notes!) should be okay(except perhaps for the fact that your own copyright is being violated when someone else is distributing your notes), unless that counts as a "contemporaneous recording", though it is lossy, full of interpretation, and not authored at all by the professor/lecturer.

Another point is that the information handed out was not under NDA, for the most part, so any notes one has taken, under free speech and other statutes, is fair game for distribution. They are distributing their own works, and not that of the institution, lecturer, or professor.

IANAL!

The nick is a joke! Really!

Notes vs. recordings

[PD]

When I attended my freshman orientation in 1986 at Michigan State University, one of the speakers specifically said that we needed to get permission from the professor before any tape recording was done in the classroom. The reason was that the professor owned the copyright to the actual lecture. On the other hand, he said that written notes, provided they were not a verbatim transcript of the lecture, were our property and we did not need to get permission to take or share our notes.

A professor's lectures are his tools of trade.

[Nanookanano]

Intellectual property is a slippery subject, indeed. But my father was an English professor for forty years. His lectures were his constructions, built out of his own observations and the lectures of those before him. And, he always cited respectfully. If students would treat the material with respect and cite properly all this legal hoorah would not be necessary. "Settle your differences before you get to court. For, if you go to court, neither of you will get what you want." (From some old book I read once.)

I bought the lecture notes

[dan501]

Not everyone learns the same way and not everyone gets the same things out of school.

I didn't skip very many classes either. But I rarely took comprehensive notes. I got a lot more out of classes by paying more attention to the gist of the lecture than diverting my attention into writing down highlights.

I enjoyed the lectures more and I learned more. Perhaps I could have scored higher on tests by ferretting out lecture highlights and paying more dogmatic attention. But I chose to enjoy learning as well as try to assimilate the knowledge into my personality rather than just fair well academically.

Back in high school, when studying for a test, I found it very useful to read through a classmate's notes in addition to my own. Reading someone else's perspective on the lecture often gave me insight into what the teacher was saying that I wouldn't have gotten from my perspective alone.

So I don't think that the answer is in restricting the dissemination of lecture notes.

I think the best solution is to have the university itself sell and profit from the lecture notes. Maybe tuition could be lowered a little.

From an instructor's view

[nweaver]

The purpose of the legislation is to prohibit the commercial distribution of lecture notes WITHOUT the consent of the instructor.

This will not affect most on campus notetaking services, as they already ask for instructor's consent.

As an occasional instructor, I believe that this is a good legislation: I created the lecture, for the university, either I or the University should retain the copyright on the lecture.

Personally, I post my slides and have them available at a local copy shop before the lectures begin, because this is a useful service to the students. I don't gain any compensation from doing so, it just makes things easier both for myself and for my students.

But I don't believe that someone should be able to make a derivitive work (which a set of lecture notes would be, since they are a direct or nearly direct transcription of my presentation), and profit from it , without my consent.


Nicholas C Weaver
nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu

Re:From an instructor's view

[philg]

"But I don't believe that someone should be able to make a derivitive work (which a set of lecture notes would be, since they are a direct or nearly direct transcription of my presentation), and profit from it , without my consent. "

I disagree. If you think students are making a "nearly direct transcription" of your words, you need to read some class notes.

People are allowed to profit from written works that are as derivative as class notes all the time. A review of a play or a movie is no less a written work derived, in part, from a performed work. Copyright clearly belongs to the review writer (or his publisher), not the copyright holder of the work that inspired him. A reviewer frequently recounts events in the play/movie to his readers; is this a violation of the movie's copyright?

In fact, your lecture is (probably) a distillation of courses you have taken, books and papers you have read, etc. Shouldn't the authors of those works, by your logic, have to consent to your "derivative" use of them to create your lectures? Your argument would indicate that, except in cases of recounting only your own research, your own lectures are an example of commercially profiting through the distribution of a derivative work. (You are getting paid to lecture, I assume.)

And for that matter, what research worth doing these days isn't "derivative" of someone else's research? Was your research inspired by a paper you read, or by what someone else's findings were? Shouldn't that person consent before you release your research -- or lecture about them?

Enough reductio ad absurdum. Certainly, a word-for-word transcript of your lecture, or a tape recording, would more clearly represent a potential violation of your rights -- in that case, every effort is made to preserve your presentation of the information, which is uniquely yours. As a student, I never had the time to write down every word the instructor said, and I didn't want to. I wanted to put down the information in a way I would remember.

If you want to prohibit distribution of direct transcripts or recordings of your lectures, fine. But if you think an attempt to preserve the information in your lecture is a violation, you are saying that the information is your personal intellectual property, or the property of your school. For 99% of the information contained in the lectures I heard in school, that is laughably false -- imagine claiming that Newton's laws of motion or the Turner Thesis or Poe's ideas on fiction are your personal intellectual property!

The remaining one percent were dirty jokes, which the professors can have. :)

phil

States can't do copyright!

[troyboy]

This law is simply ineffective. Federal copyright law forbids states from giving copyright-like rights. See 17 U.S.C. 301(a), which says, in part:

All legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright . . . in works of authorship that . . . come within the subject matter of copyright . . . are governed exclusively by this title. Therafter, no person is entitled to any such right or equivalent right in any such work under the common law or statutes of any State.

So, the legal analysis doesn't even get to the First Amendment or fair use!!

You missed the inclusion of handwritten notes

[A nonymous Coward]

You said

So distributing handwritten notes(not teacher's notes!) should be okay

but the clause you quoted covers that:

This prohibition applies to a recording made in any medium, including, but not necessarily limited to, handwritten or typewritten class notes.

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