Canadian University Students Taught To Protect IP

innocent_white_lamb writes "Graduate students at Carleton University (Ottawa) are taking steps to protect their intellectual property, at the same time are insuring that they are being properly recognized for their work. This is in response to the increased commercialization of research done at universities, and high-profile cases of copyright infringement by professors at the University of Toronto and Indiana University. 'The initiative will include workshops and a handbook outlining what would constitute an infraction of students' intellectual property rights, Howlett said. Examples include a student not receiving authorship on written work, or having a professor take credit for their work. "This isn't an indictment of profs at all," said Howlett. "It's just to ensure that students' rights are protected in the case that it does happen."'"

Comments

This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for the days when universities were places for learning and not little more than businesses and when the students were more focussed on learning than making a quick buck or some recognition.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not, but Ottawa is Canada's equivalent of Silicon Valley. There are a number of high-tech giants in that area with significant R&D facilities, including Nortel, Corel and IBM. Much of IBM's work on Eclipse is done at their Ottawa labs, for instance. Waterloo, where I attended university, is growing quite significant in this area, as well. But Ottawa is still the leader.

Carleton University has had close industrial ties for years. Michael Cowpland, of Mitel and Corel fame, earned his masters and doctorate from Carleton. This close relationship with industry is a good thing, as many of these companies have in turn provided financial support to Carleton for a variety of initiatives. According to relatives of mine who study there, companies like Nortel and March Networks have funded various engineering laboratories. The university likely would not have had such labs were it not for the financial support from industry.

From what I hear from my relatives, Carleton does need to be more careful about their commercial collaborations. But it's not in the area of engineering or design. It's when it comes to their food services. An exclusivity contract with Coca Cola apparently results in there being only Coke available on that campus. Similarly, the company they contract out their food services to, Aramark, provides terrible service and terrible food, but is willing to charge students an arm and a leg.

So Carleton probably has the right idea collaborating with industry when it comes to their research. But their collaboration with companies for various services on-campus should probably be reconsidered.

Re:This is ridiculous

[melikamp]

Mods?... The parent is far from OT. That was the first thing in my mind as well: how universities are becoming a place where people are taught to own and protect their ideas. Historically, a university was a place where scholars engaged in sharing of their ideas, where the free flow of information was encouraged. Modern universities, otoh, are built after an industrial model. Their curricula are fixed and their original research is sometimes regarded as a trade secret. An awful place to do science at.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Skreems]

From what I hear from my relatives, Carleton does need to be more careful about their commercial collaborations. But it's not in the area of engineering or design. It's when it comes to their food services. An exclusivity contract with Coca Cola apparently results in there being only Coke available on that campus.

American universities do the same thing. It's nothing new.

Re:This is ridiculous

[The MAZZTer]

Yup, it's all Pepsi at my college, not a Coca-Cola to be found anywhere for sale on the property.

Re:This is ridiculous

[jcorno]

An exclusivity contract with Coca Cola apparently results in there being only Coke available on that campus.

Georgia Tech has the same deal. We had the only Pizza Hut in the world that served Coke products (Pizza Hut was owned by Pepsi). It may still be the only one. Doesn't make it any cheaper, though. It's up to $1.40 for a bottle now. The difference all goes to the school.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

when the students were more focussed on learning than making a quick buck or some recognition.

Hey, all that I want to do is do my research and create novel things. I do want to get the credit for it too though, and I don't want someone else to steal my work and profit from it -- that way, I can continue doing it.

I've had a course project used by a prof to get a grant. Did I see any of that grant money? Nope. In fact, my funding was being threatened a couple of months later. What did I learn? If I invent something as a student, a prof will get the credit for it, and I am better off sitting on my ideas until after I graduate -- it's sad that I can't wait to graduate so that I can do my research -- it's sadder that I won't be able to.

Oh for the days when universities were places for learning

Academia is (and always has been) as underhanded and cutthroat as everything else.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly ! In my research center, we wont tell anyone outside our group what ideas we have until we publish them in phys. rev. lett. or sort! Yes, we do hoard ideas for months, occasionally, for years !

Re:This is ridiculous

[smchris]

No kidding.

My first response was: "And....why? Commercialization has done so much to foster communication and intellectual synergy in the U.S., hasn't it?" And the products, whose research we've paid for, are so affordable when the patent is licensed to a monopoly.

Oh, right. I forgot. It would be communism to promote affordable public higher education so universities _have_ to become business enterprises.

Geez, sometimes I feel so sorry for kids today. I think a state college credit was about $12 in my time and I remember a Big 10 5000 grad course was $155 + $15 for grad registration.

Re:This is ridiculous

[XL70E3]

I was taught to protect my ideas too(university of quebec), and, you know after hearing all those things about IPs being stolen, concepts being slightly modified by other people to make em theirs.. i understand the point of it. And guess what, a lot of teachers in universities comes from private companies or are self-employed. So there you have the culture of protecting your IPS. As for myself, i was taugh to be careful with ideas and copyrights. I wasnt told to put a copyright on every damn thought. I think this article tries to 'accuse' more than really giving insight to the root of the problem. It denounces something, but doesn't provide any solution. "Funding cutbacks and a more commercialized culture have seen government, the private sector and university administrators gravitating to the notion of knowledge and creativity as saleable products, Jones said." ... Obviously. Haha, so they just figured it out? Wow. Or is this more of a way to dodge some part of the trouble they created themselves? On this i salute Id Software, who are gladly sharing their work to everyone. If every company was confident in itself to do just that, it would profit everybody.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Foobar of Borg]

What did I learn? If I invent something as a student, a prof will get the credit for it, and I am better off sitting on my ideas until after I graduate -- it's sad that I can't wait to graduate so that I can do my research -- it's sadder that I won't be able to.

It's even worse in most American universities. While Canadian graduate students are being taught to protect their IP, graduate students at most American universities have to sign a waiver of their rights to anything they discover just to be able to go to graduate school. So, if you are a graduate student in an American university, then yes you certainly should sit on something truly inventive that you discover until after you graduate. Also, make sure you get rid of anything traceable to University equipment and recreate it after you leave.

Re:This is ridiculous

[iminplaya]

Basically what they want taught is that no information should be shared unless money changes hands.

How are ya doin', Bob?

Gimme a dollar, and I'll tell ya, eh?

Think it'll rain tomorrow?

Wouldn't want to say. You might take that info and parlay it on raincoat futures, make a fortune, and not give me what's rightfully mine.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Brickwall]

I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not, but Ottawa is Canada's equivalent of Silicon Valley.

I am so tired of this canard. I worked at Mitel in Kanata in the 1980's, and people were saying the same BS back then. Markham, a suburb of Toronto, had more high tech employees then, and has more high tech employees now. Sure BNR had big labs there, but they also had a bunch of labs scattered across Toronto. IBM has huge plants, although some of them were turned over to Celestica. Just drive up the 404, and you'll see names like CGI, Sprint, Hummingbird, GEAC, OpenText, etc.

I'm not trying to dump on Ottawa; I'm just tired of seeing this misinformation repeated.

Re:This is ridiculous

[moosesocks]

Please RTFA. It looks like this "course" is intended to teach students to make sure that they get credit for their research and work.

Although I do agree that any obstruction of the free flow of information is detrimental to science and academia, I don't think that's the point of this initiative.

If your research is quoted/copied by another scientist (especially, one who is more reputable than you are) without proper citation, it can completely destroy your credibility, and severely hurt when applying for grants or being considered for tenure.

I really don't see anything wrong with this. Like TFA said, there have been several high-profile copyright infringement cases lately, and you'd be a fool not to protect yourself.

This famously happened with some of the original AIDS research in the 80s (that first identified HIV as a retrovirus), where the group of CDC epidemiologists who spearheaded the research received little to no credit for their work once conclusive evidence was found.

Re:This is ridiculous

[FooAtWFU]

On a tangential note, I go to Wake Forest University. We also have an exclusive foodservice contract with Aramark. The food and service isn't terrible, but it's not too grand, and it certainly does cost an arm and a leg and is (as of fall 2005) mandatory for all students - with new freshman required to have a minimum of something like 10 meals a week, I think it was.

We used to be an exclusively Pepsi school, but I do think this has changed now.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen and heard of lot of things like that happen in my own universities:

Urban legend #1:

Foreign student takes lecturers course notes and turns them into a book to be published in his home country.

Things I've seen directly:

1) Former student takes source code used in research, and then passed it off as his own on his website (removed copyright headers).
      The source code was based on 80's technology anyway (command line programs/shell scripts).

2) Professor borrows screenshots of PhD project, and gives it credit to MSc course students.

3) Professor reviews draft PhD chapter from student #1, and it appears in pressentation by student #2 without knowledge of student #1.
      Unfortunately, student #1 attends presentation, and is accused of unfairly benefitting from other peoples work by professor.

Re:This is ridiculous

[CastrTroy]

I went to University of Ottawa, the other university in Ottawa. Aramark does have terrible food. Aramark owns food service for just about the entire school. Not only does the food suck, but they won't hire students to work at the facilities. Again, Coke bought U of O too, so nothing but coke. I don't think this is different from many other universities, I think a lot of schools do this. I not really against it. If it lowers tuition for the students, then it's fine. If you don't want to drink coke, then you can still bring your own drinks on campus. Funny story, somebody started a campaign to take down the Christmas lights because they were red and white, and thought they were a big Coke advertisement. Never mind that red and white are traditional Christmas colours.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my professors (graduated within the last 5 years let's say) had a class in which they had scribe notes. This was apparently at one of the nice universities that doesn't make you turn over copyright, but the professor of the course was going to put all the notes together into a book and sell it.

He said he had a hard decision considering possible repercussions before saying "you can't do that."

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, those are regional offices and head offices. Yeah, you'll find those in Toronto, just because those companies have lots of clients in Toronto. And being the largest city in Canada, Toronto will of course be home to many corporate head offices. But all you'll find there are paper pushers.

Most of the real technical R&D work is not done in Toronto. It's done in Kanata, Waterloo, Montreal and these days Calgary.

Re:This is ridiculous

[dlevitan]

It's even worse in most American universities. While Canadian graduate students are being taught to protect their IP, graduate students at most American universities have to sign a waiver of their rights to anything they discover just to be able to go to graduate school. So, if you are a graduate student in an American university, then yes you certainly should sit on something truly inventive that you discover until after you graduate. Also, make sure you get rid of anything traceable to University equipment and recreate it after you leave. I don't see the problem with this. I'm starting grad school this Fall, and I'm getting paid to do research. Why should I be allowed to keep anything I discover if I'm being paid to do the research by someone else? I don't know what you've had to sign, but my waiver basically said the following things:

1. Since you're a student, if you're not being paid to do research and don't use university equipment, you keep whatever you discover.
2. If you are being paid, you're treated like an employee. Employees must sign all patents to the University. The University then decides if it wants to market the patent. If the patent is successfully licensed to someone and a profit is made, the profit is split between the inventor and the university (either 50-50 or 25-75 depending on the circumstances). Otherwise, the patent is returned to you.

I actually like this idea. I want to do research. If I discover something along the way, I don't have to deal with any bureaucracy and still get a nice bonus if my invention is successful.

Re:This is ridiculous

[PPH]

Oh for the days when universities were places for learning

[snip]

Toga! Toga! Toga!

Re:This is ridiculous

[Rakishi]

That didn't stop Google from becoming successful now did it?

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you're forking over ridiculous amounts of money AND they're stealing your research, what then? The waivers here have no such clause (as #1). If you do it as a student, the university owns it.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Gorshkov]

Disclaimer: Carleton is my Alma Mater

Carleton is very, very different from most universities. Last time I saw statistics, around 3/4 of the students were part-time students .... that, btw, is one of the major reasons why it used to do so horribly in the MacLain's annual university ratings.

Carleton is generally geared more towards continuing and part-time education, rather than simply being a "standard" undergraduate university. You'll have people taking their 2nd & 3rd degrees, upgrading their qualifications, or just taking interest courses.

Many of it's services are (were?) geared towards these students. And I suspect that the nature of the students - people with real-world experience, and thus more awareness of these issues - may have something to do with this.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Joelfabulous]

I'm not directly disputing what you've said, but I'd argue that Waterloo is becoming more and more of the tech giant that you're making Ottawa out to be. The University of Waterloo is known internationally for its technology-related programs, and it is highly competitive. Waterloo is the place to be if you want a tech job -- I'm told it's the only place in Canada that Google has a co-op agreement with. It's not uncommon to hear of big name tech industry speakers heading over to Waterloo to make speeches -- I think Bill Gates was there a few years ago.

I'm a student at Carleton, and the food could be much, *much* worse. (Especially compared to the cafeteria at the University of Ottawa -- at least, that's what I'm told.) I'm sure the university makes a killing off the whole exclusivity agreement with Coca Cola (and I assume there's one with Aramark as well). You're right though... The food here is insanely expensive. I just hope at least *some* of those funds take the edge off my tuition fees or something. I don't like exclusivity agreements and backroom corporate deals any more than the next guy, but running a university isn't cheap. I wish they wouldn't run it like a business, but they almost have to. People want tuition to cost next to nothing, but they don't seem to realize that it is very expensive to be here... Universities in Quebec are suffering due to tuition freezes -- even McGill, the "Harvard of the North" has to pinch pennies.

I suppose that was somewhat off topic, but anyways. We aren't quite the "be all, end all" of tech up here, though we do have many strong, well-renowned programs in a wide range of areas. I'm in one of them. =P

Re:This is ridiculous

[AdamInParadise]

Funny story, somebody started a campaign to take down the Christmas lights because they were red and white, and thought they were a big Coke advertisement. Never mind that red and white are traditional Christmas colours. Well, Coca-Cola did have a part in standardizing the image of Santa Claus as a jolly fat guy dress in red in white..

Re:This is ridiculous

[FormOfActionBanana]

I just don't see it that way. The modern (German) "assembly line" university system functions on the principle that professors take the credit for the genius and hard work played out by the graduate students.

This is, of course, the reason schools try to solicit the best, smartest candidates they can.

Up the ladder, the university gets credit when they have a lot of honored professors who "publish" a lot of stuff.

What the student gets out of this is 1) prestige, 2) a degree and 3) the chance to become a professor themselves. Sometimes the student gets paid to go to school.

The system breaks down when the student doesn't have an easy path to success with their degree. These days, a Ph.D. doesn't mean what it used to, and an M.S. barely matters for anything in a lot of fields.

All the same, this is something the student should have undertaken to understand upon entering graduate school. I'm not saying abuses don't happen (my take on grad school is that it is *complete* abuse), but nevertheless this is the system.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Seek_1]

Well then I can tell you with relative certainty that the services Aramark provides must be radically different at Wake Forest than they are at U of O (where I went to school).

I went to the University of Ottawa for four years and avoided using the cafeterias and meal plan as much as possible. The workers from Aramark were unfriendly, didn't care a thing about customer satisfaction and were at many times rude. The food choices have gotten better since I had the meal plan, but that I believe the attitude and treatment of students is still a problem.

Aramark also provides food services where I work and there is a completely different attitude between how they treat students and professional employees.

Re:This is ridiculous

[asninn]

Oh for the days when universities were places for teaching and not little more than businesses and when professors were more focussed on teaching than making a quick buck by ripping off their students' work.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, those are largely research labs that are in Markham, the regional offices are usually located in Toronto Proper.

CGI is a slightly different animal as every office of theirs tends to be both an administrative as well as a development office (byproduct of how CGI was formed and expanded).

Re:This is ridiculous

[Larry_The_Canary]

Not only are they willing to charge students an arm and a leg but they will use their exclusivity contract to stop student groups from selling snacks or holding fundraisers that involve the sale of food. One time they even shut down a muffin sale raising money for orphans!

Re:This is ridiculous

[nanoakron]

I hope you find something earth shattering.

And then find out quite how equitable the deal your signing really is.

You're going to get roasted. Grow up little boy.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually like this idea. I want to do research. If I discover something along the way, I don't have to deal with any bureaucracy and still get a nice bonus if my invention is successful.

Not really, what it basically says to me is "If you want to be an entrepreneur, you can't have an education.".

If that isn't business holding back innovation I don't know what is.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is a bad deal but I think what the article is really concerned about it is. You discover a major break through while at University and your Prof. takes your research slaps his name on it and publishes it.

Re:This is ridiculous

[sexybomber]

Although I do agree that any obstruction of the free flow of information is detrimental to science and academia, I don't think that's the point of this initiative.

Exactly! Proper citation and giving credit where credit is due should in no way inhibit the free flow of information. After all, everybody has to borrow and cite and work off of others' work in order to create or discover or innovate. Even Newton said, famously, that he had only gotten where he was by "standing on the shoulders of giants."

Re:This is ridiculous

[Rac3r5]

"1. Since you're a student, if you're not being paid to do research and don't use university equipment, you keep whatever you discover.
2. If you are being paid, you're treated like an employee. Employees must sign all patents to the University. The University then decides if it wants to market the patent. If the patent is successfully licensed to someone and a profit is made, the profit is split between the inventor and the university (either 50-50 or 25-75 depending on the circumstances). Otherwise, the patent is returned to you."

Your wavier is partially right. I agree with #2, but not #1.
If you are a student, you are paying a fee to be a student and use the equipment. Thus if you discover anything during that time, it should belong to you since you are paying. You are their customer and not their employee.
If you pay a rental place to use their science equipment, and you make a discovery, do you hand out the rights of your discovery to the rental company?
If you are using a cell phone to discuss an idea and come out with a marketable concept, do you hand the rights of you discovery to your cell phone company?
The answer should be NO in both cases because you are the customer.

Re:This is ridiculous

[Zgonjko]

It's all true, i live in Carleton residence and the food is barely edible. Cant wait to move out On a more positive note, yes, the labs that we have here are some of the most advanced in north america. As a software engineering student this is a real advantage

Re:This is ridiculous

[ShieldW0lf]

None of which makes it any less scummy.

I'm ashamed of my countrymen.

Obligatory..

[StikyPad]

Don't protect it.. tell everyone that IP, freely!

Excellent!

[vertigoCiel]

Always good for someone to own the rights to research they've done. In the age of disregard for IP, I'm not sure how much it will do, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's a step in the right direction insofar as more people will be aware assinine I"P" laws exist. But it's vital people also learn that I"P" laws as they currently stand, like slavery, belong in the pages of history books. You don't need to be able to stop me passing on information to prevent plagiarism - if I say "vertigoCiel said XYZ" I have not plagiarised - but I may have infringed on your copyright preventing redistribution of XYZ. Most academics are against willful plagiarism, but you don't need copyright law to fight plagiarism, fraud provisions are entirely sufficient.

Re:Excellent!

[argoff]

A step in the right direction would be to kill copyright monopolies entirely.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case cited by the article, fraud law might not have been sufficient. A professor could take the results of a student's work and submit it to a journal as a report on "research conducted at the Foo Science Dept at the University of Bar"... Everyone reading the article would have assumed that the professor had a lead role in the research.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on the extent and powers of fraud law - I'm all for strengthening anti-plagiarism provisions (while simultaneously weakening anti-redistribution provisions). So, the professor could submit the research (that's just redistribution), but would be required to identify with specifity the real researcher.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please take note that many of us draw a very distinct line between plagiarism (taking credit for other people's work) and IP (laws ostensibly created to encourage progress, but in practise frequently abused).

Plagiarism is not illegal but is immoral. The best defense against it is to point out offenders and tarnish their reputations. That is all that is required, mind you (the government need not use their courts and their guns to enforce this good behavior).

On the other hand we have IP laws, which are broken, hostile towards the citizenry, and thus now themselves immoral. Protecting IP law is misguided. We should be fixing it.

I mention this only because your statements "own the rights to research they've done" and "disregard for IP" are imprecise. I'm not sure what stance you're advocating, actually. For my part, I fully support students who want appropriate credit for the work they've done, but I'm not so excited about breeding a new generation of citizens who are more obsessed with entitlement laws than with progress of society as a whole.

Re:Excellent!

[that this is not und]

Microsoft might agree with you there. They have the infrastructure and the enforcement muscle to use Trade Secret protection to keep their revenue stream coming in. And they'd love for there to be no mechanism whatsoever for the GPL to be enforced.

You're really a sharp fellow, you know.

Re:Excellent!

[cpt kangarooski]

What anti-plagarism provisions? It's generally not illegal, and there's no reason to make it so. If someone doesn't get caught, the law wouldn't matter. If someone does get caught, it's bad for their reputation, but the law cannot possibly mandate that their reputation suffer. There's no problem here for which the law could be a solution. Private enforcement (e.g. complaining to the school, which will protect its reputation by sacrificing the prof.) does actually work.

Re:Excellent!

[compro01]

A step in the right direction would be to kill copyright monopolies entirely.

i personally think that killing copyright entirely would be a very bad idea. things such as the GPL and creative commons licencing (not 100% sure on the latter) rely on copyright law, so killing copyright would kill those too.

that said, the copyright term needs to be cutdown significantly, such as back to the original term (7 years and the option for a one-time 7 year extension, for a maximum of 14 years), which i feel is a completely reasonable length of time to make your money.

Re:Excellent!

[cpt kangarooski]

First, the term was 14+14 for a total of 28. Second, while a shorter term is certainly called for, it's probably better if we avoid automatically using numbers that made sense in the 18th century and instead figure out what numbers make sense now (with regard to term length, number of terms, and number of renewals; i.e. maybe 7+7+7+7 is better than 14+14, or maybe 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2 is better than both). Third, there are other things that need to be fixed besides term length. If all that is fixed is term length, copyright as implemented will still be very bad and be a big problem for everyone. Wholesale reform is needed with regard to both the length and scope of copyright. Fourth, ignore the GPL and CC. The big picture is too important to permit us to romanticize particular licensing schemes. While I suspect that the best copyright reforms would not prevent the GPL, CC, or at least some successor to them, from working, we ought to be willing to seriously consider any manner of reform if its benefits outweigh its costs. Given how few works use the GPL and CC, and that they could effectively be replaced by similar concepts in the law itself, if that happened to be a good idea, it isn't worth concentrating too much on them.

Re:Excellent!

[m50d]

Microsoft might agree with you there. They have the infrastructure and the enforcement muscle to use Trade Secret protection to keep their revenue stream coming in. And they'd love for there to be no mechanism whatsoever for the GPL to be enforced.

Bollocks. Explain to me just how they would get people to pay for Office using Trade Secret law?

Re:Excellent!

[vertigoCiel]

I've heard of several situations where grad students saw their research being used in a commercial setting, without credit, and without permission. Hopefully this will to more to prevent the kind of situations I'm talking about, and less off the ones you're describing.

Re:Excellent!

[that this is not und]

Authentication/validation on much, much shorter time intervals. It isn't
'trade secret laws' it is just plain trade secrets. The laws are secondary, i.e. enforcing contract laws against employees who reveal the trade secrets.

turnitin.com

[Joe The Dragon]

what does it say about turnitin.com?
Do the students need to use it as part of there classes?

Re:turnitin.com

[RockoTDF]

This is referring to student research outside of the classroom, which the majority of students do not participate in, it has nothing to do with term papers and all that plagiarism debate going on /. lately. The idea here is not so much "IP" in the traditional sense, but rather to stop students who are research assistants from being screwed over by some professor who wants sole credit on a publication. I have work getting published, and while I (and most anyone who does academic research) do not want people to have to pay to cite us or just read our work, you can bet your ass we want our names in there though. If anything, this is showing students how to basically open source their work and not let other people take credit for it. I have the good fortune of dealing with profs who will give students primary authorship if the kid did more work than they did, so this thing isn't much of an issue to me personally. This is not teaching students to commercialize their research, in fact that goes against the very nature of scientific research and intellectual advancement.

not IP

[Mr. Slippery]

Examples include a student not receiving authorship on written work, or having a professor take credit for their work.

These are not "intellectual property" rights, they are "moral rights" of authors.

The distinction is important because one can be opposed to copyright as an artifical right created by the state but still be in favor of natural moral rights.

I don't think it's just to use force to prevent you from making a copy of one of my poems; but represent yourself as its author and I'll kick your ass.

Re:not IP

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect, I disagree. Moral rights have no place in this area of law. This law is intimately tied with economics, and as such, the question of law should be setting the incentives properly to produce favorable behavior, not abstract reasoning about whether something is morally right or wrong. We can have a disagreement about morality or find some absurd situation to debate endlessly, but it is harder to disagree about the incentives produced by a set of laws.

This is not to say that morality and law don't work together. This is very much the case in civil rights, for example.

Re:not IP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not to say that morality and law don't work together. This is very much the case in civil rights, for example.

And I consider the right to communicate information as I see fit, without government interference or oversight, a fundamental civil right. This is fundamentally at odds with copyright law (as /.ers should well know, copyright law is incompatible with free speech in the digital-enforcement limit as outlined by Ian Clarke). It is not, however, at odds with anti-plagiarism law - that is to say, I am not restricted from supplying information so long as I am careful to attribute it correctly.

Moral rights are of primary importance in this area of law - economic argument is a distant second at best.

Re:not IP

[Mr. Slippery]

Moral rights have no place in this area of law.

Ah, there's some confusion here.

"Moral rights" is in this case a legal term, a translation of the French term "droit moral," refering to legal rights of creators regarding personal and reputational value of a work.

Re:not IP

[DrMindWarp]

Moral rights are traditionally part of IP law. Your distinction is not so clear cut either - moral rights may include (depending on the applicable law) the right not to have a work included with others where it might be demeaned, for example. So you cannot permit copies arbitrarily and still assert all your moral rights. They are closely linked.

Re:not IP

[cpt kangarooski]

These are not "intellectual property" rights, they are "moral rights" of authors.

The distinction is important because one can be opposed to copyright as an artifical right created by the state but still be in favor of natural moral rights.

I think you'll find that they are both artificial rights created by the state.

But I agree, the distinction is important: copyrights of any kind exist solely to benefit the public, which has equal interests in 1) having works created and published, and 2) being absolutely free to do anything with those works. A copyright law is only tolerable if its net result is a greater satisfaction of both interests than some alternative, including not having a copyright law.

If some rights of attribution and integrity actually benefit the public by causing authors to create and publish more works than they would otherwise, and if their burden on the public (which has an interest in stripping or altering attribution and ignoring the integrity of works) is less than that benefit, then we should be all for them.

But history shows that it's actually not that important to authors. Oh, they'd like it, certainly. But the vast, vast majority of them will create and publish works whether they have those rights or not. Consider as an example, the US, which has a lot of authors doing a lot of work, and no moral rights save a tiny (intolerable) bit for some, but not all, fine artists. And that's new. We didn't even have that until quite recently. We didn't lack for fine arts before, and we aren't exactly drowning in a surfeit of them now.

The evidence is clear that such laws are a public burden without a commensurately greater public benefit and should therefore not exist.

Which brings us to what "one can be opposed to." I'm in favor of any copyright laws where their public benefit outweighs their public burden, and I am in particularly in favor of the copyright laws with the greatest public benefit and the least public burden. But I'm against arbitrary distinctions between so-called economic and moral rights. I'm happy to have anything on the table, so long as it is a utilitarian table.

Re:not IP

[Mr2001]

The distinction is important because one can be opposed to copyright as an artifical right created by the state but still be in favor of natural moral rights. I agree with the goal but not this justification. I don't think there's any "natural", "moral" right to have your name associated with anything.

Associating your name with someone else's work, or vice versa, is still wrong - not because the real author owns the work in any sense, but because misrepresenting the authorship is fraud. If I take your comment and repost it as my own work, then I'm lying to everyone who reads it.

Re:not IP

[cpt kangarooski]

I disagree.

Setting aside that moral rights also cover the integrity of works (i.e. whether and how much people can alter the works of another) and whether artists can remove the attribution of a work to them (i.e. if they don't like what you've done to their work, they can take their name off of it, as if they were never involved in any capacity), it is bad to require people to correctly attribute works.

Provided that the re-attributor is not engaging in actual fraud, why does it matter to the law what they do? From experience, we know that it has no appreciable effect on whether authors create and publish works, which is all we seek to get authors to do when we give them copyrights. The law should encourage the most creation and publication with the least burden to the public. Adding on useless restrictions to the public is bad policy. To the extent that anyone actually cares about proper attribution, non-legal means are better ways of dealing with it. When an author gets caught plagarizing -- which isn't illegal now, btw -- his reputation suffers for it. This happens outside of the system; a judge cannot order that people think less of the author. It happens regardless of whether it is legal or not.

Copyright laws deal with economic motives because that's basically all that the government can do. Other motives for authors aren't dependent on copyrights or the government.

Re:not IP

[sumdumass]

Legally, the definition of fraud usually involves some intent to harm or profit in some way. If I took you poems and placed them on the Internet because i liked them and claimed they were things I was thinking about during troubled time, Not legal fraud has been committed in most territories.

This wouldn't protect you in the way I think you were hoping it too. Fraud has a loose definition but when we are talking of legalities, we need to seek the narrow legal definition. I just looked and there is nothing in the US laws defining fraud without connections to other acts like scamming money, misusing a computer or something similar. I doubt it would cover something copyright already does. And in at least one case, It would look as if the government tried to use fraud for copyright violations but couldn't.

Re:not IP

[Mr2001]

Legally, the definition of fraud usually involves some intent to harm or profit in some way. If you're putting your name on a paper in order to get funding or credibility, I'd consider that profit. In any case, I'm not opposed to broadening the legal definition of fraud to cover serious plagiarism.

And in at least one case, It would look as if the government tried to use fraud for copyright violations but couldn't. At a brief glance, that case looks like plain old copyright infringement, not plagiarism, so I don't see the problem.

Re:not IP

[sumdumass]

If you're putting your name on a paper in order to get funding or credibility, I'd consider that profit. In any case, I'm not opposed to broadening the legal definition of fraud to cover serious plagiarism.

That is fine then. I was just attempting to point out that Fraud laws would need to be changed to include the acts. I do question how much changing could be done without just making the fraud provisions in law a new copyright act though.

Outside it being an exorcise in common sense and name changing, I'm not sure it would be too much different. However, I am lumping plagiarism and copyright in general into the same group. This might be my downfall on understanding this.

At a brief glance, that case looks like plain old copyright infringement, not plagiarism, so I don't see the problem.

I believe your right. But I only provided that link because after roughly 10-20 minutes of google searching, it was the only time I could find the government attempting to use fraud in a copyright case. It was more to point out that the fraud laws would need to be changed to incorporate the context being submitted here.

Re:not IP

[marcosdumay]

It's important to academics. Almost no one of them would disclosure their findings without a reward system (recognition is a substitute for patents here, works even where the latter can't be applied and does a much lower colateral damage). Otherwise most would clearly work on more mundane things and keep their findings to themselves (or patent them) or either simply stop studing earlier and never go to academia.

And there was almost no serious science done before the system was stablished. Some people even arguee that our first scientific communits were created because of laws enforcing athorship.

Re:not IP

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you seriously underestimate moral rights as an effective incentive. Some of the aims of moral rights are accomplished by copyright so the lack of a separate moral rights regime in the US isn't much of a convincing argument that authors aren't motived by them. I can't take your work, put my name on it, and republish it, because if you own the copyright to your work, and it'd be infringing for me to do make any copies without your permission -- let alone ones with my name on them.

For authors and academics, recognition that a work is yours is a huge motivator. Preservation of the integrity of your work is a huge motivator. There should be limits on both rights (the ability to people from making derivative works via a right to preserve the original's integrity goes too far, for instance, but I think it'd be OK to say that you can't publish a "distorted" work in someone's name unless they approve) but it's undeniable these are incentives.

In fact, since most authors don't benefit at all from copyright -- as you've argued successfully in the past -- it's very likely the motivation of most authors is more in line with moral rights than copyright. People post on Slashdot for many reasons, for instance, but the prevalance of karma whoring clearly indicates people write for the recognitition their works earn them. Moral rights are an excellent motivator here and significantly less burdensome on society than any copyright of any duration.

Re:not IP

[cpt kangarooski]

I think you seriously underestimate moral rights as an effective incentive.

I don't think so.

Some of the aims of moral rights are accomplished by copyright so the lack of a separate moral rights regime in the US isn't much of a convincing argument that authors aren't motived by them.

This is untrue, primarily because moral rights are non-transferable, but copyrights are. Also because there are numerous exceptions to copyright, which given the right circumstances, would indeed allow someone to make copies of someone's work without permission and with altered or deleted attribution.

For authors and academics, recognition that a work is yours is a huge motivator. Preservation of the integrity of your work is a huge motivator.

And yet copyright doesn't provide them with this, and they seem adequately motivated already. The minor amount of additional motivation that moral rights would provide on top of the existing copyright regime would pretty certainly not outweigh the burden to the public of having such rights.

but I think it'd be OK to say that you can't publish a "distorted" work in someone's name unless they approve

Absolutely not. For example, suppose Alice is a famous author who sells the movie rights to her book to Bob, a filmmaker. Bob owns the relevant rights, and so Alice cannot exercise control over what he does. She ends up unhappy with the movie version of the book. It is important for Bob to have the right to keep Alice's name attached to the movie as the author of the book the movie is based upon 1) because her name is part of the draw, and it would be unjust for Bob to have paid all the money he did in getting the rights and making the movie if he cannot market it truthfully and adequately, and 2) because it is truthful and useful for informing the audience that this movie was authorized by Alice and it is based upon her book; depriving the audience of that information is injurious to them and the marketplace.

The proper thing to do is to chide Alice for selling her rights outright, because if she cares about the movie version, she should have licensed the rights with some authorial input as an attached string. If she doesn't care, she should be free to sell the rights altogether, so we mustn't remove her freedom to dispose of her copyright as she sees fit. But she should not get some kind of magical veto power over truthful information which absolutely everyone else -- the filmmaker and the public -- want to be out there.

In fact, since most authors don't benefit at all from copyright -- as you've argued successfully in the past -- it's very likely the motivation of most authors is more in line with moral rights than copyright.

No. Authors are motivated by copyright even when it doesn't actually benefit them (because their work is an economic flop) because authors are often easily exploited optimists. Think of all the people who think they'll be amazing musicians or authors. There are also other non copyright-based economic motives. For example, most fine artists simply sell individual copies. A Picasso is worth a lot more than a poster of a Picasso. Picasso did not bother to make significant money from posters, and so wasn't really motivated by his copyright, which wasn't all that valuable to him. Even if everyone had been making copies of his art, it still wouldn't have been the actual canvas (or whatever) painted by him. Commissions are also non-copyright economic motives.

Art for art's sake is another motive. This, in a variant form, is probably what's behind most /. posts. People want to express their opinions. Certainly this is true for me (I am also interested in correcting misinformation about copyright). Not everyone cares what people on /. think about them.

Reputation is another motive. But one's reputation isn't necessarily lessened by others' use of your work or even your name. But assuming that an artist's reputation is harmed somehow, then

A good or bad thing?

[rolfwind]

Is this a good thing that students get protected from the random professor who preys on a student's work and makes it their own or are we teaching values and mistrust now at that are at odds with a mostly open society and education?

I'm not against students recieving credit, but as with patents, I'm against people ardently claiming credit for the most insignificant things.

Re:A good or bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you haven't gone to graduate school. If you had, you would be aware that most research is done by students. Professors act more as editors than as authors, though often times they take most of the credit.

Re:A good or bad thing?

[rolfwind]

You're correct, I jumped the gun a bit. I looked at the article again and it is indeed referring to Graduate School students, and not undergraduate, where I believe they are usually at a level where such a warning is warranted.

Re:A good or bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have my respect, sir. It is commendable of you to openly reconsider. I believe the article headline and summary poorly represent the article, and thus taint the reader's view. Slashdot at its finest.

define force.

[Anonymous Coward]

define force in terms of "stopping" someone? political pressure? legal fees?

you can stop people several ways. suing me until i'm broke IS force!

while YOU may not think it's just but how different is copying vs. representing the author? it's a very minor difference considering you're use of force.

as a photographer I'd like to get compensation for the people who stole my photos (thanks to GIS). if i had the business address, i'd pay a visit. if not, i'd take the compensation out of their windows using a brick.

i don't mind equating copyright with theft. if someone steals my photo, digital or print, and can reproduce it without paying me how is that NOT theft?

Re:define force.

[Mr. Slippery]

while YOU may not think it's just but how different is copying vs. representing the author?

Very different. Lying about or concealing the authorship of a work is an incidence of fraud; making a copy of a work is not.

i don't mind equating copyright with theft. if someone steals my photo, digital or print, and can reproduce it without paying me how is that NOT theft?

Stealing something deprives you of it's use; someone who copies our works does not do this, any more than someone who lights a torch off my campfire "steals" my fire.

Is it useful that creators get compensated for their work? Sure. (Just like if I'm the only guy around can make a fire, it's good to keep me happy.) Is a state-created monopoly on copies a good way to make this happen? No. If it ever was, it's not any more, not in an age of widely distributed digital computers.

For several years I've been arguing for a "royalty right" for for-profit use instead of copyright. Making copyies should be unrestricted, but sell a copy and you owe the author a cut. It's similar to songwriter royalties; I can play a Bob Dylan song at home or around the campfire with friends, and be fine, but if I play at a bar to pull in people, or sell CDs with a cover recording, he gets his nickel.

Re:define force.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do it for pay or give it away." I work in the creative field too, and there's two kinds of work I do: (1) free stuff posted to my site. Anybody can have it; it is an illusion to think I can stop them, and for every dollar that I regained tracking down a "thief" to the ends of the Earth, that's ten dollars I could have earned producing more content. (2) Work I do for hire on contract. Not a pixel nor a character is done until the money is already effectively mine, at which point I sign over all rights to the customer. Tah dah! Nothing left to "steal".

And the HELL with this petty "I did it twenty years ago, so I reserve the right to exploit it forever, and stalk anybody who uses it in their forum sig." Enough people attribute me already that it's worth it to give some away. It brings me more business! And if it became necessary to prove that it was my work, I still have an archive with a date stamp to show them in court.

Sorry, but those of us who produce on a daily basis regard the attitude of clutching work from twenty years ago to keep wringing every penny out of it as a sign that the person weren't talented enough to make it in this business in the first place. Why should I be so insecure? I'm the goose that lays the golden eggs; I can always get more! Quite frankly, I'd prefer to *deny* some of the work I did in my student days - it was no good, which is why I was a student.

And for heaven's sake, you work in photography? So watermark it! In the Information Age, media is cheap - deal with it.

Doubtless, you're pissed right now. Sorry, just trying to let you know that some of us have a different way of looking at it.

Re:define force.

[cpt kangarooski]

Before I became a copyright lawyer, I supported myself as an artist. Then and now, I'd agree with the above poster. This is a common and sensible attitude among artists. Certainly it has gone a long way into informing my thoughts about copyright law, where it does and doesn't work well, and how it could be made better for everyone.

Useful information

[EvilGoodGuy]

As a Computer Science student, I feel that I'm being taught pretty well what to look out for, and how to protect my rights. And at least where to go, or who to ask if I have concerns. I'm not sure how other majors are at my school though. While related to everyone in any career area, I know that Computer Science views IP as a pretty high priority.

Summary of the course

[Anonymous Coward]

You can summarize the course in one sentence:

Information wants to be free...but information workers want to get paid.

Re:Summary of the course

[Dun Malg]

You can summarize the course in one sentence:

Information wants to be free...but information workers want to get paid. The class has fuck all to do with payment, moron. It's about not letting others take credit for your work.

Re:Summary of the course

[Locklin]

Funny how the previous article contains a discussion about the "intelligent" comments posted on /. then the following article has half the people thinking who don't even read the summary, let alone the article.

Attribution != copyright

Bad examples.

[lancejjj]

Examples [of an infraction of students' intellectual property rights] include a student not receiving authorship on written work, or having a professor take credit for their work. The rules often change if you get paid.

Employment contracts often stipulate that the employee has relinquished intellectual property rights in the field of business of the employer.

This same idea often applied to graduate students that are paid to help out a professor.

If an employer paid you to write a chapter for a book or to invent a widget, you may not have any intellectual property rights over that work.

If you helped a professor in a lab - and if he's paying you under terms of an employment agreement, that agreement could very well stipulate that you have relinquished all IP rights. Read that agreement before you start to work. If you have a problem with it, negotiate the contractual terms.

This is how a company can "award" employee a $200 "bonus" for an invention that's worth millions of dollars.

Re:Bad examples.

[jez9999]

Sod being paid; my university seizes all the IP to my final year project (thesis)! This is presumably so they can showcase it in their school building if they feel like it, but I presume I couldn't sell it to someone. I don't like it, but what am I meant to do to 'protect' it? They can refuse to mark it and give me a degree.

Re:Bad examples.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sod being paid; my university seizes all the IP to my final year project (thesis)! This is presumably so they can showcase it in their school building if they feel like it, but I presume I couldn't sell it to someone. You can sell it. It is yours, unless you handed the rights over to them.

Regardless, a thesis is worth little if it is not in a library. In academia, success is broad publication and availability, not the opposite.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Extreme danger

[IgnoramusMaximus]

If any sort of this nonsensical "Intellectual Property" will become the standard way of producing research results (as opposed to old-fashioned attribution, to which the students have full rights and the University a moral obligation to protect) then this will mean the death of acedemic science. Period.

If every piece of every half-baked paper will cost $50 to read it, a typical researcher will end up with no viable access to any sort of external research.

But of course the further escalation of "Intellectual Property"-related stupidities is only bound to increase in pace, given how hell bent the "opinion makers" are on introducing greed "motivators" where they were never needed or wanted in order to divide and parcel out the body of human knowledge amongst the "worthy" mega-corporations and billionaires who will become the de-facto gate-keepers to that knowledge and subsequently, for all practical purposes, Lords and Masters of the rest of the humanity.

I foresee troubled waters ahead.

Re:Extreme danger

[noidentity]

You should be more careful where you post your valuable intellectual property. By putting it here on Slashdot, many people can use it without compensating you for the effort that went into it. You should have saved it on your hard drive and never posted it, or better yet, never even saved it. That would protect it much better!

(yes, this growing meme of IP and constant restriction troubles me too)

Re:Extreme danger

[Saxophonist]

If any sort of this nonsensical "Intellectual Property" will become the standard way of producing research results (as opposed to old-fashioned attribution, to which the students have full rights and the University a moral obligation to protect) then this will mean the death of acedemic science. Period.

If every piece of every half-baked paper will cost $50 to read it, a typical researcher will end up with no viable access to any sort of external research.

The obvious citation here: Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read".

Re:Extreme danger

[Sven Tuerpe]

If every piece of every half-baked paper will cost $50 to read it, a typical researcher will end up with no viable access to any sort of external research.

Makes it easier to ign^H^H^Hdiscuss related work in your papers: the author controls the amount reviewers had to spent to verify claims and check for omissions.

Colore me confused

[The Dobber]

-Protect IP

-Patents bad

-Steal the music

Re:Colore me confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all simple once you keep the following principle in mind.

YOUR information wants to be free.

MY information needs to be protected.

For example, the vast majority of people here are not involved in the record or film industries, so copyrights on recorded music and movies are simply a nuisance designed to produce money for someone else. Software released under a free license such as the GPL, however, comes with a license that better be respected, dammit, or we'll hire a bunch of big time attorneys and make sure the offenders rue the day they decided to flout the law.

Likewise record companies ought to face the facts that people think that laws protected their copyrights against free distribution are anachronisms (your information). But if someone tries to send spam to my PC, or worse, makes off with a corporate laptop containing my financial data and purchase history (my information), that's an outrage that should result in firings or dismissals at the company involved. That information most definitely does not want to be free!

Re:Colore me confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so dimwitted.

Likewise record companies ought to face the facts that people think that laws protected their copyrights against free distribution

REdistribution. Copyright is a legal right to prevent people copying and passing on information they already have. As such, it is basically immoral - if they didn't want the info redistributed, they could have simply not released it. Instead, they try to persuade governments to use taxpayer dollars to artificially enforce the scarcity they desire.

makes off with a corporate laptop containing my financial data and purchase history

That would be private information that was never released in the first place. Can you tell the difference?

only copies of information exist. My copy is not your copy. To make a copy of unreleased information, you would have to violate someone's physical property rights. To restrict redistribution of a copy someone else already has, you have to violate someone's physical property rights. I"P" devalues and destroys physical property rights, and it is thus every american's duty to pirate, pirate, pirate. COPYRIGHT IS CANCEROUS COMMUNISM.

Re:Colore me confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow!

This really is a model of how to troll:
1. Intentionally missing the point? ... check!
2. Purposefully abusing synonyms to make it seem that completely different things are the same? ... check!
3. Picking topics that people care about? ... check!
4. Accusing people of being hypocritical? ... check!
5. Leaving numerous logical holes, so that someone will feel compelled to issue a counter-attack ... check! check! check!

I tip my hat to you, fellow AC! You are a great troller!

Re:Colore me confused

[sumdumass]

This is an interesting concept. Without copyright and the controls to who can distribute it, I could buy a book for $20, Then reprint it and sell it for $10.

I would be willing to make $5.00 less then the publisher and author per copy.

How does this play into the free thing? I will state right on the cover that I copied the work so they don't think it is an original book by their favorite author.

Re:Colore me confused

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine; free market at work. The original author should have charged you 20000 instead of 20 - he was just foolish enough to charge you 20, but he freely chose to do so.

Copyrightists are TERRIFIED of free markets. This pro-consumer "race to the bottom" effect on prices is precisely what they don't want.

Re:Colore me confused

[Anonymous Coward]

A question for ya - what work have you ever published - books, software, music, or film - that had any market value whatsoever? No, blog entries don't count, and neither does that nifty Perl script that you "released under the GPL" that does report formatting of some system usage statistics (it doesn't count because there are about 20,000 similar ones).

People without talent want to tear down those who have it.

Re:Colore me confused

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, mr. AC? What about you? My perl script is more valuable to me than any of your idiotic comments.

People who only think they have talent like to think they're being torn down when the truth is they're useless whiny bastards.

Here is an example of why this is important

[Anonymous Coward]

There can still be some pretty extreme cases that are clearly wrong. A friend of mine was a grad student at the UW-Madison where she wrote a paper (she was the first author, and the professor was the 2nd). When the professor submitted the paper, the porf switched the order of the names (made themselves fist). When the paper came back from review, the prof switched the order back, so to the student it still looked like they were the first author. This was all done in Microsoft word, with reversion history being recorded, so it was pretty clear what was going on. I'm not sure this is illegal, but it is clearly immoral, and exploitative. I looked at the University handbook, and it was clear that if a student had done this, they would have been violating a rule. It was unclear if there were any rules like that that applied to faculty. I wrote a letter to the head of the department, but never heard back.

If anyone knows the head of the Bio-eng department in Madison, maybe ask him why all of the phd students for some of his professors quit after getting their masters.

Re:Here is an example of why this is important

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, author credits and sequencing of an academic paper are by agreement of the contributors. Want someone to help you with some research? A big negotiating point is both if and where your name appears.

Obviously, in your friend's case, it wasn't clear to those involved who should appear where. From the outside, it is impossible to tell what sequencing was agreed upon. Primary laborer does not mean that you must be listed as first author.

Academia is not a democracy and is not democratic.

Re:Here is an example of why this is important

[mikael]

When the professor submitted the paper, the porf switched the order of the names (made themselves fist). When the paper came back from review, the prof switched the order back, so to the student it still looked like they were the first author.

That seems odd. Normally, when a paper is reviewed all references to the authors are removed to prevent any prejudices/favouritism from creeping in (At least for UK journals).

Re:Here is an example of why this is important

[ebuck]

It's been a long time for me, but I used to work in the Biological Sciences.

There's an agreement within Biology that the first listed author is the "primary" author of the work; that is, the person who championed the project, did the bulk of the research, and basically was in charge. The last name was for the person who provided the mentor role; that is the guidance to avoid pitfalls, the initial peer review, and typically the laboratory. In papers with more than two names, the intermediate names are listed in order of contribuatory importance.

I think you've misunderstood the implied cultural aspects of name order within Biology. If this were a car race, the professor would be viewed as a sponsor, and the primary author as the driver. For the professor to swap names would be to have the sponsor claim that they drove across the finish line while the real driver was in the restroom.

In big business, eventually the brightest get burnt out after having their ideas rehashed and claimed by others, but in Biology a good first authoriship makes career determining awards, like whether you'll obtain grant funding or be passed over. If this is true, I wouldn't be suprised in the least, and the professor has majorly screwed over his pupil.

Academia is not democratic, but it's not trial by combat either.

Re:ATTN: SWITCHEURS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame Jobs, he is the one begging the PC to switch.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'll be brief

[voice_of_all_reason]

This isn't an indictment of profs at all," said Howlett.

If the whole IP system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

Re:Ladies and Gentlemen, I'll be brief

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPAA would like to know your ISP and email address...

Re:Ladies and Gentlemen, I'll be brief

[Brickwall]

Perhaps we can get Senator Blutarsky to reconsider some copyright laws.

Good example of it....

[Col Bat Guano]

Good example of this here
Comments have more examples...

Why protect your IP?

[krogger]

I don't get it. My ISP changes my IP almost every week. Why would I need to protect it?

Re:Why protect your IP?

[lilomar]

Well, then! That is just the kind of thing that needs to be nipped in the bud! You need to send your ISP a DMCA notice to take your IP off of the intra-tubes! And to stop changing it around!

Re:Why protect your IP?

[attilaedin]

I can't believe this is it. I just found this site not too long ago and have found it very useful in my line of work. Thanks guys for all your help and hard work! RM to iPod http://www.rm-converter.net/

Intellectual Property (IP) is a Two-Way Street

[reporter]

Intellectual property (IP) is a 2-way street. The news article mentions that Carleton University is teaching its students to protect their IP.

However, the students should also be taught to respect IP. Respecting IP means to not steal another person's IP.

About 10% of Carleton University's student is foreign students. 25% of the foreign students are Chinese students, and China has one of the highest rates of stealing IP. Indeed, vendors openly sell pirated movies on the streets of Hong Kong -- right in front of the police, who do nothing.

Re:Intellectual Property (IP) is a Two-Way Street

[Anonymous Coward]

About 10% of Carleton University's student is foreign students.

That's actually misleading. According to my relatives who attend Carleton, the actual distribution is closer to 75% foreign in engineering, math and science, but only about 5% foreign in the arts, humanities, business, etc. Overall it may amount to 10%, but it varies significantly depending on program.

Re:Intellectual Property (IP) is a Two-Way Street

[SwedishPenguin]

Indeed, vendors openly sell pirated movies on the streets of Hong Kong -- right in front of the police, who do nothing. That's hardly something unique to China, when I lived in Washington Heights in NYC a couple of years ago, vendors selling pirated movies on the sidewalk was a pretty common sight, sometimes with the cops just a few meters away, doing nothing.

Re:Intellectual Property (IP) is a Two-Way Street

[Mr2001]

However, the students should also be taught to respect IP. Respecting IP means to not steal another person's IP. Oh, I don't know about that. Maybe before we teach them to "not steal another person's IP", we should teach them the fundamental reason stealing is wrong: when you steal something, you deprive the rightful owner of that thing.

You can teach this with a simple thought experiment, simply by asking, "If someone stole your car, would you be upset because he got a car without paying for it, or because you didn't have it anymore? If he could make a copy of your car, leaving the original intact and untouched, would you even care?"

Once that lesson has been taught, any clever student will be able to conclude on his own that it's impossible to "steal another person's IP".

Re:Intellectual Property (IP) is a Two-Way Street

[SAABMaven]

> vendors openly sell pirated movies on the streets of Hong Kong

Heck, they're selling them openly on the streets of New York City. But the way immigration is going, they're probably the exact same people.

Re:Intellectual Property (IP) is a Two-Way Street

[Peter La Casse]

Once that lesson has been taught, any clever student will be able to conclude on his own that it's impossible to "steal another person's IP".

It is possible, but it's a lot harder than e.g. copyright infringement. Stealing somebody's copyright or patentable work or trademark involves convincing everyone that said "IP" actually belongs to the thief. This is hard to do, but not impossible, especially when one party is a poor student and the other is a rich university.

I'm curious about how this works in other fields. When a music major writes a song as part of the work done in pursuit of a Master's thesis, does that song belong to the university?

It's no different today, paco.

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher education has always been funded by the elite of society. The first European universities usually had some affiliation with the Catholic Church. And this remained the same throughout the Middle Ages, with many being funded not only by the Church, but also by the emperor, monarch, or leader of the region. As science and mathematics rose, military leaders saw the battlefield benefits of such developments, and further provided funding and support.

And it's the same today. The elite of today's society tend to do their business behind the facade of corporations. Even if they don't understand how the technology developed at universities works, they do know how to profit from the sale of such technology, or from the sale of the companies that develop and produce such technology. So it's no wonder that corporations will be providing funding to universities. It's just a continuation of the trend that has been followed for around the past 1000 years, or longer if you want to go back to ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt and Sumer.

Re:It's no different today, paco.

[Foobar of Borg]

So it's no wonder that corporations will be providing funding to universities. It's just a continuation of the trend that has been followed for around the past 1000 years, or longer if you want to go back to ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt and Sumer.

Not just ancient Sumeria, but also ancient Babylon. In fact, universities are one of the institutions founded by the Lizards who control our world. I have all the rock-solid irrefutable proof right here ! In fact, that is why we really went to Iraq. To free the Lizards who were trapped in an ancient metal box with cuneiform writing. All this stuff about oil and Saddam and insurgents is just a front. We want our Lizards back!

Ethics

[WED Fan]

At least someone is teaching ethics. Nice to see the pedulum might be swinging back away from the selfish "I want it so I have a right to copy it" crowd.

Re:Ethics

[Locklin]

This is very different from copyright enforcement. This is about attribution. Huge difference.

Most graduate students would be more than happy to have thousands of people read their thesis. The problem arises when they don't get credited, or someone else claims ownership.

This is very different from students wanting $20 from you to read their paper.

Re:Ethics

[RockoTDF]

Someone give this guy some mod points, he just nailed the point I was basically trying to make earlier.

Re:Ethics

[Mr2001]

Nice to see the pedulum might be swinging back away from the selfish "I want it so I have a right to copy it" crowd. And back towards the selfish "I'm lazy so you have to keep paying me for work I did years ago" crowd?

Re:Ethics

[WED Fan]

And back towards the selfish "I'm lazy so you have to keep paying me for work I did years ago" crowd?

Your envy is showing.

If what they produced years ago is still selling, that only means it still has value, and people still want it. So, why not get paid for it? You should try producing something of value that will be around for awhile. Bet you could do it. You just have to get off your...well, your father was probably right.

Re:Ethics

[Mr2001]

If what they produced years ago is still selling, that only means it still has value, and people still want it. So, why not get paid for it? Hey, what brilliant logic. Let's apply it to something else! Say you're a tailor, and Mr. Jones comes in for a suit, for which he pays you $1200. The suit is so impressive-looking that it seals the deal at Mr. Jones's job interview that afternoon, and he ends up landing a $500,000/yr position. Clearly that suit had a lot more value than you thought at first, right? So tell me, how much of that $500,000 does Mr. Jones owe you each year? He might not have gotten the position at all if he hadn't worn it, so does he owe you his entire income?

You should try producing something of value that will be around for awhile. Bet you could do it. Been there, done that, wrote a sig about it. I'm just not a greedy bastard.

Re:Ethics

[WED Fan]

Hey, what brilliant logic. Let's apply it to something else! Say you're a tailor, and Mr. Jones comes in for a suit, for which he pays you $1200. The suit is so impressive-looking that it seals the deal at Mr. Jones's job interview that afternoon, and he ends up landing a $500,000/yr position. Clearly that suit had a lot more value than you thought at first, right? So tell me, how much of that $500,000 does Mr. Jones owe you each year? He might not have gotten the position at all if he hadn't worn it, so does he owe you his entire income?

Very bad comparison, and not a logical progression on the idea. But, that doesn't stop those in your crowd from using such idiotic examples.

Your argument, applied to music would have you buying the CD and paying each time you listen to it. No, the only time you pay for it again, is if you buy the disc again. If you don't want to pay for the music again, take care of your CDs, or make a fair-use back up copy of it and store the original. But, to claim some nonexistant right to software that you have not payed the required fee for is dishonest, immoral, theft, anti-social, and in many cases, a crime.

A better comparison is the taylor designs the suit pattern and licenses it. It becomes popular, for every suit sold with that pattern, he gets a cut. Later, the suit comes back in style, if the license is still valid, he still gets a cut of each suit sold that used the same pattern.

Good luck, in life, with your economic model. It doesn't work in the real world, but if it makes you happy, more power to you. You'll earn some cache with some in your community, maybe some recognition, but, son, the world operates on money, and you can be more effective, globally, with some cash backing you up. Think of the hunger you can help with, the disease, the poverty, if you can make money in a wealthy part of the world, and redistribute it to a poor part. That's why I demand money for my efforts, and enforce my licenses, and sue the thieves.

Try being a force for good and wealth in the world, rather than fighting it because you envy it...but, your father was probably right.

Re:Ethics

[Mr2001]

A better comparison is the taylor designs the suit pattern and licenses it. It becomes popular, for every suit sold with that pattern, he gets a cut. Later, the suit comes back in style, if the license is still valid, he still gets a cut of each suit sold that used the same pattern. Sure, why not! Why should he ever have to work again? He designed one suit, he should be able to retire and live like a king!

Good luck, in life, with your economic model. It doesn't work in the real world, but if it makes you happy, more power to you. Actually, it does work quite well, and it's in use in nearly every industry except the few that are based on copyright.

You see, "my economic model" is one where people who aren't selling a physical product get paid for the work they do, not the work they did 70 years ago. If you want to write a book, find someone (or a big group of someones) who wants a book written and get him to pay you. If you want to design a suit, find someone who's looking for a new suit design and get him to hire you. If you want to get paid twice, design two suits.

Again, if you want to see this model in action, go talk to your local mechanic... or accountant... or barber... or teacher... or landscaper... or CEO...

You'll earn some cache with some in your community, maybe some recognition, but, son, the world operates on money, and you can be more effective, globally, with some cash backing you up. Thanks for the life lesson, gramps, but I already do have cash. Believe it or not, I get paid for writing code, and no one involved the process has to worry about selling copies or tracking down those dirty hippies out there who share information with each other. I'll leave it to you to figure out how I do it.

Try being a force for good and wealth in the world, rather than fighting it because you envy it...but, your father was probably right. Put down the bottle and look at yourself, old man. You aren't fit to lick my father's shoes.

turnitin clamming rights to student publications

[Joe The Dragon]

turnitin is clamming rights to student publications and the eula makes the student work belong to them.

Lol Carleton

[stratjakt]

"Intellectual property" lol

How many Carleton undergrads does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Just one, but he gets 3 credits for it.

LOL

(Seriously, it's like Canada's DeVry, except with lower standards)

Re:Lol Carleton

[Anonymous Coward]

At my (Canadian) Alma Mater, they used to say that the Carleton motto was: "the K in Carleton stands for Quality" ...

Re:Lol Carleton

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Canada's Devry would be... Devry. Not surprisingly, Canada's Devry is in Alberta.

This is promising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd thing to say, my anonymous parent. In my experience working in/at/for universities for the last 7 years, the student body seems to have become a petri dish of plagiarism and failed (or rather, passed-and-pushed) high school graduates. Damn kids can't write. I'm looking at you, Wikipedia.

If you *do* the work, by all means take charge of your IP. Smart people need incentive to keep creating. So long as they are also being taught about the Creative Commons. After elucidation comes better choice and control.

What about public funded schools and scholarships.

[sumdumass]

How does public funded schools and scholarships fit into this.

Surely if my tax dollars pay part of the tuition for the student copy writing everything he does as part of his education, then we deserve a portion of anything made from it.

I don't think it will come to this, it doesn't with the patent the schools own because public money funded the research. I just don't think it is right, it should be public domain if public money was spent to develop it.

Re:turnitin clamming rights to student publication

[Anonymous Coward]

>turnitin is clamming
What, no oysters?

Re:Canada? I'm actually surprised!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very silly view of Canada.

U of T and IU don't seem to be plagiarism

[bigbigbison]

Since I go to IU and I'm interested in intellectual property, I was surprised I didn't hear about this. Well I did a little digging and according to the article I found it seems like the professors named him as co-author on an article without telling him and he feels like they misrepresented his findings. Certainly it is a problem if the professors distorted his findings, but they did seem to give him proper credit. I'm not sure what that would be called, but it doesn't sound like plagiarism to me.

Re:U of T and IU don't seem to be plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

And it doesn't sound like a problem of attribution, either, since it's pretty common for professors to insist on coauthorship of research papers from their students.

So the real problem was the student wasn't told the paper was being prepared, nor was he given a chance to review it or present in his own voice.

A vaguely similar thing actually happened to me many years ago. I developed an custom application for third party software package over the summer and left to go back to school. A year later, I found that several people at the company wrote a paper on my application, with me listed as a coauthor (my name was spelled wrong). It wasn't a big deal, though, since it was presented at a conference for the third party software as a novel use of their script. My whole reaction was, I thought it was funny.

Re:U of T and IU don't seem to be plagiarism

[bigbigbison]

Oh, and it should be noted that one of the professors alleged to have misappropriated the article is a member of the faculty of IU-Kokomo, a small satellite campus, and not the main IU campus at Bloomington.

Re:U of T and IU don't seem to be plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

"is a member of the faculty of IU-Kokomo, a small satellite campus"

Doesn't matter, IU is IU. Regardless of the campus. Professors like this give everyone in the system a bad name. And we all get our paychecks from the same place.

I had one professor at IU take code that I had written and sell it as his own. I only found out after being contacted directly when they looked through the source code, found my name in the headers, and was contacted because the code said CONTACT XYZ@NON-IU.Address IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS. Claimed that when they contacted the prof, he charged them, but didn't know what he was doing.

Luckily, this guy was run out before he made tenure as he as just a bad professor...which is exactly what a university SHOULD do.

I do some software development for the university these days, but mostly to support my research (though the last project that was for taking care of my lab ended up being the basis for a much larger project). Only complaints I have these days is making certain profs know that if I do the majority of the writing, I'm first author regardless of his or her position. And if they use my data as ANY sort of basis of their writing, I'm in the top three (they are free to gather their own data otherwise...but they aren't using my lab or subjects otherwise).

Its not that I don't hear this from others, but more often than not, its confusion on what their true role is in the university. For instance, I had one employee demand that I pay him for his code after we GPL'd it, because he thought it was his and should have been consulted before releasing it. Even though he was paid for his work and I make it a policy that coding is to be done only on departmental equipment and on the clock. Several profs also demand that they are first author regardless...which is fine. I can always find a different writing partner, either here or at another university (which ends up looking more impressive in the end). Some people don't get this honed out before starting. It will happen to everyone ONCE...and its a learning experience, not malfeasance. Some just don't realize work done *IN* class or with the consultation of a professor does somewhat belong to him (and thus the university) -- so it is always better to make certain you don't do anything you are attached to, or bring in work from outside (in my case, I created a module that hooked into my previous work, getting permission to bring in previously copyrighted software with the knowledge that the only thing being submitted for grade was the external module that could work as a standalone if needed....though pretty limited in scope).

I have to post this anonymously because of my position.

Re:U of T and IU don't seem to be plagiarism

[MadMidnightBomber]

Which brings up a good point- it's just as bad to name someone as a co-author on a paper s/he doesn't agree with. If in doubt, ask.

safety

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say this is a pretty good idea. Students always get so many people breathing down their neck about how they have to make sure they can authenticate their work and make sure they are quoting precisely in order to not be accused of plagiarism. I never thought of it before but it would be pretty easy for an authoritative figure in a class to just go ahead and steal a piece of work a student did, though you would think the student could keep track and keep drafts in order to prove it's theirs and not the teachers. One really good example of this is I went to a school that followed the international baccalaureate program and any essay you turn into them in order to receive your diploma automatically becomes their property. This means I could never reuse my own essays for anything else or reprint them with a different intention because then I would be plagiarizing. To me that's pretty much completely absurd that I have no rights to my own work, and I am talking about four years worth of essays and projects, no small feat.

Re:safety

[Nosferatu Alucard]

As an engineering student, I have problem with others using my work. As long as im credited, that's perfectly fine by me. I think this article is basically stating that the students are being trained to protect their rights, not to cash in on them. Nothing about making the work cost money to read/use, just credit where credit is due.

Re:safety

[ChemE]

The point of IP is to prevent other people from making money from your work. You may do what you wish with your work. You can make money like Bill Gates or you can let other people use it freely as did Linus Torvalds.

Academic Software

[Anonymous Coward]

My personal opinion -- I have no problem with requiring commercial users to pay for academic software. I don't agree with academics charging other academics. If that is the case, then publishing in academic journals, conferences is just free advertising. I recently attempted to obtain a simulation package that required 250 euros for academic users - to defer the costs of distribution?
Does anyone agree that this is disengenious?

What if all academics withheld key aspects of discoveries until suitably compensated by interested individuals.

Great

[beaner354]

Why shouldn't students have full rights associated with the work they create!

flip/flop

[lilomar]

After RTFA, I have changed my origional reaction of "Great, all we need, more people convinced that copyright is god." I think that in this situation, the students do need to be educated, so that they can receive attribution. I just hope that the include alternative concepts of copyright, like Creative Commons.

I'm an undergrad at Carleton...

[chris_eineke]

and I think they're doing a great job at muddying the waters even more by calling it intellectual property (rights).

Hypocrisy?

[DerekLyons]

One has to wonder how many of the students that attend those workshops has a computer with pirated music and video.

ensuring

[adrianmonk]

== Grammar peeve alert. Skip it if you don't care about using the right word at the right time. ==

They are not "insuring that they are being properly recognized" as the summary says. If they were insuring something, they would talk to an agent, get a policy, and pay premiums. Instead, they are ensuring recognition for their work.

Mixed feelings

[PPH]

If this is aimed at bringing students up to speed about the legal side of creative work, I'm all for it. On the other hand, if the universities are trying to protect their own interests in students' work, that's a problem. I can just see the day when universities demand an NDA and a piece of the profit for works derived from the knowledge they are supposed to be propogating for at most a tuition.

Re:What about public funded schools and scholarshi

[MajroMax]

Surely if my tax dollars pay part of the tuition for the student copy writing everything he does as part of his education, then we deserve a portion of anything made from it.

As a grad student at a Canadian university, let me tell you: pay us more if you ("the public") want to take a stake in our work. We're paid at essentially a subsistence level, not at a "work for hire" level.

Stealing attribution, however...

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

But the fine article was speaking of fighting plagiarism.
What if someone took the pink slip, your proof of ownership, from your car and replaced your name with his? Even if all he has is an exact copy of your car and your car itself is intact and untouched, if the pink slip is in his name then everyone will think that he has the original.
Suppose then that your car is a vintage model. Your original 1933 Duesenberg is worth millions. Exact copies of that car, since they are now easy to make and considerably newer, are worth about $1000. You will be publicly humiliated, lose credibility as a car collector, or worse if everyone believes that your (genuinely) original car is a replica because someone stole and altered your pink slip.
In universities, it matters greatly whether your work is original or an exact copy. Original work is valuable. Exact copies are at best wastes of time and at worst reasons to fail you from class.

Re:Stealing attribution, however...

[Mr2001]

But the fine article was speaking of fighting plagiarism. True. Attribution is indeed something that you can be deprived of when someone else takes it.

The comment I was responding to, however, was speaking of piracy.

Re:Stealing attribution, however...

[TeraCo]

You mean robbery on the high seas right? That's the only possible conclusion I can draw from your splitting of the 'theft' hair.

Re:Stealing attribution, however...

[Mr2001]

If "piracy" were commonly associated with theft on the high seas these days, then I'd probably take a stand against it.. but the fact is, it isn't. When you say "piracy", the first thing that comes to everyone's mind is copyright infringement - unlike "theft", use of the term "piracy" doesn't have the effect (anymore) of associating the harmless act of copying with a forceful, universally despised crime. Hell, even high seas pirates are considered cool, like their mortal enemies the ninjas.

Re:Stealing attribution, however...

[phiwum]

The term "piracy" has been used to describe copyright and similar infringements since 1701. I suppose it's time to get used to this usage.

(See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pirate)

Re:I can't belive not one mention yet of

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey fuckface, give me your daughter's number. She needs to suck some cock right now (not including yours).

Re:What about public funded schools and scholarshi

[sumdumass]

If the tuition at the university is offset by public funds, you are already over paid for the effort. It is the public finds that gave you the position to do the work you claim ownership too. So at least while you enjoying it, the repayment should be public domain.

And If you or your university didn't receive public funding, then do whatever you want. It doesn't concern us. I'm willing to bet that it would cost a lot more if public finds didn't go into it. You tell me.

Copyright by default

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a graduate student at the University of Victoria. One of the main guidelines when we write our thesis is the copyright section. We have to be sure when we finish up our thesis that on the cover page that there is a copyright notice stating that the thesis is copyright of the student. This is not a new thing, and it is something that applies to every discertation work. If your thesis work involves something that is in the private sector, you have to negotiate the copyrights before you even start your project. That is the party about academic freedom, so that the corporations that fund the university are independent of the academic process.

However, I still hate the fact that when I write a scientific paper based on my Masters project, that it will be copyrighted of whatever journal I chose to submit to.

use PGP digital timestamping service

[anwyn]

If students would use
http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper/stampinf.htm/ the digital timestamping service,
they can prove at what time they created a given document.

Tag Story: oxymoron

[mqduck]

"Intellectual property" is an absurd oxymoron. Any socioeconomic system that requires a concept of such a thing is truly twisted and outdated in the "Information Age."
I expect to be modded as Overrated. But this is a sentiment I can't help but express strongly.

University vs. Professors

[ChemE]

There is one thing missing in the above discussion and that is how the universities treat the professors with respect to intellutual property rights. Usually if a professor invents something new, then it is the University that gets the patent rights, not the professor. In addition, most universities, at least in the US, take a certain percent of any research grants (the call it "overhead").

So I think teaching intellutual property rights to students is a bit ironic, to say the least, since the university wants to take the rights from the professors.

The Academic Research Mill

[SAABMaven]

This story is funny in that it's a reaction to very old news. Only part of the average university professor's income comes as salary. The balance comes from consulting.

Sometimes entire courses are designed around a research contract. The professors use students work verbatim... if the work is really good, the professor will tear off the title page and affix his own, and collect the check.

This is why the professors are so adamant, before approving your research, to know what the results will be. The 'A' student is one who is good at massaging the statistics to produce the correct results. The 'B' student is one who does the above, but also challenges the professor, engages in debate, tries to learn and understand. I was a 'B' student before burning out to 'C' level because I no longer cared. Later on as an intern with a government agency, I saw one of _my_ papers with the professor's cover page instead, on file. As it was research into land speculation, it was very sensitive. I played dumb and found out that the City had paid $100,000 for it (in 1988 dollars).

The picture's changed today; in that universities are paying speculative baseball-player salaries to big name professors, and don't care that it pushes middle-class kids out of an education (they're cannonfodder anyway, why bother?). But the Academic Research Mill keeps turning.

What the american university system is really teaching you is that those who make the rules almost never have to live by them. Makes sense, then, that this particular news is coming out of Canada, which never had that ill-advised Colonial Rebellion which converted Rights under the British system, into mere Priveleges.

If he could make a copy of your car...

[Animaether]

"If he could make a copy of your car, leaving the original intact and untouched, would you even care?"

I've been running a similar argument for a while now. Let's put it this way..

If my car was a copy itself - naw, I wouldn't care. If the person I copied it from allowed me to do so and gave me the right to let others make copies - naw, I wouldn't care.

Chances are, however, I paid money for my car. So do I care if somebody comes along and makes a copy of my car without going through the same effort of paying for it? I just might.

What if it gets a little bit more intrigueing. I paid for the car in blood, sweat and tears - as I built it pretty much from the ground up. It's a one-of-a-kind car. I have no intention of selling it or giving it away, etc. Then somebody comes along and makes a copy of it. Would I care? Yes.

Now let's say I have every intention of selling it - for $60,000 because the market is telling me that's what people would at least be paying for the thing. Now somebody comes along and makes a copy and puts it on sale for $4,000. Would I care? Hell yes.

In all of the above cases - I still have my car. And by some people's thoughts, no harm is done. True to the letter, but not true to the spirit.

Once everybody can make copies of everything physical, that's when these car analogies, or rather: digital vs physical analogies, will start to make sense. Because then I wouldn't care if I couldn't sell my car for $60,000 to be able to have housing, eat, etc. as I would just copy the housing, copy the food, etc. The baker would copy his flour, the farmer would copy his wheat, and so forth and so on all the way up to raw materials suppliers who, presumably, would be making these available for free because they enjoy doing so, and everything else they need, they can copy themselves.

Until then, though, whether it is theft or IP infringement (be it copyright infringement, patent infringement, trademark infringement, etc.), it's illegal all the same and students should be tought that it is such. Whether they grab the latest movie off of bittorrent 5 minutes after the class exits is then up to them, but if somebody were to then do much the same to them, I don't think they can cry foul.

Just my 2 unpopular cents.

Re:If he could make a copy of your car...

[Mr2001]

Chances are, however, I paid money for my car. So do I care if somebody comes along and makes a copy of my car without going through the same effort of paying for it? I just might.

What if it gets a little bit more intrigueing. I paid for the car in blood, sweat and tears - as I built it pretty much from the ground up. It's a one-of-a-kind car. I have no intention of selling it or giving it away, etc. Then somebody comes along and makes a copy of it. Would I care? Yes. In those examples, what you're experiencing is nothing more than jealousy. You're in essentially the same situation as if your girlfriend had left you for someone else, and now you're mad at the other guy for "stealing" her away from you - but in both cases, you don't really "own" what you've lost, so the problem is entirely in your head. You aren't entitled to be the only guy who dates her, depriving everyone else (and her), just like you aren't entitled to have the only copy of that car, depriving everyone else of that car when it would cost you nothing to let them use it. Your feelings are painful but ultimately cruel and irrational, and the sooner you get over them, the better.

Now let's say I have every intention of selling it - for $60,000 because the market is telling me that's what people would at least be paying for the thing. Now somebody comes along and makes a copy and puts it on sale for $4,000. Would I care? Hell yes. This time, you've made an obvious mistake.

Presumably you knew that you were living in a world where cars could be copied as easily as music files, so if you intended to make money by designing cars, why did you design the car for free, before anyone had agreed to pay you, hoping to make some money later by selling copies? You knew from the beginning that that scheme wouldn't work, because you knew that as soon as someone saw it, they'd be able to make their own copy! You have no one to blame but yourself for choosing an obviously unworkable business model.

Instead, what you should do is find a group of car enthusiasts and convince them to hire you to design a new car for them. Once you're done with that, it won't matter how many copies they make, because you will have already been paid for the time you spent designing.

Whether they grab the latest movie off of bittorrent 5 minutes after the class exits is then up to them, but if somebody were to then do much the same to them, I don't think they can cry foul. I agree. But there's a big difference between downloading a movie and putting your name on someone else's paper, and I think the latter is what students would be concerned about.

Funny Carleton Story somewhat related

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Carleton Alum. A few years ago during my ENGINEERING ETHICS course, 30 students were busted for plagiarising their final project. When they announced it in class, it was the funniest moment of my life. I am glad to see Carleton doing something about it!

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2002/07/04/plagiari sm020704.html

MRI's

[Rac3r5]

This reminds me of a lecture I had at my uni when I was taking e-business law and the topic was copyright and IP.
The professor brought along this guy who said he came up with the concept of exciting the hydrogen atoms for imaging which is used in MRI's.
The whole concept was the basis of his grad paper. While searching for a supervisor, his supervisor was reluctant to accept him based on the concept, but eventually did. After he finished his grad paper, his supervisor took credit for it. He said he let it go because he needed a reference.
kind of sad that this stuff happens. This guy now has a bunch of MRI facilities and doing quite well, but he was really simple and humble which impressed me a lot.

I also remember another idea that I'm not sure was stolen. In my first year of Uni, everyone had to take an intro to business course. In the course we had to come up with a business plan for a concept and present it to venture capitalists and they would judge how valid our plans were. This one team presented the idea of software rental for the gaming industry. The venture capitalists told that team that the concept was flawed and not good. Then 2 yrs later I see that yahoo games came up with the same service where you pay a monthly fee and you can play x amount of games. I think what a lot of students in the tech industry need to do is get a minor in business.

bad analogies

[Animaether]

.. and they forever will be, and you are correct on every point.

Though I'd hate to tell any developer of a GPL piece of software to just "get over it" when a commercial entity takes their code, sells a binary version for profit and never releases the source code again.

Nor would I want to tell a photographer "sorry mate, but you're in the wrong business" if he wants to sell prints, if everybody would just print / buy copies for next-to-free when he wants to make a living sell them at $10/print. ( In your example, the photographer would get a lump sum from e.g. Corbis instead, and leave the worries about copies to Corbis - and yes, Corbis does worry, and does very actively police news outlets and graphics agencies to see if they're using Corbis content without having licensed it). Not for the base reason of "everybody knows it's illegal, but they do it anyway - sorry, chum".

That said - why would the student be concerned? Presumably, it's their paper, they already published it, they already reaped the benefits; just like the car designer who gets the money and doesn't worry about any copies / misrepresentations (get over it!). If they didn't, then I guess they went about things the wrong way?

Things are never that simple - but to many students, it is.. except when it affects them.

Re:bad analogies

[Mr2001]

Though I'd hate to tell any developer of a GPL piece of software to just "get over it" when a commercial entity takes their code, sells a binary version for profit and never releases the source code again. Well, I think the lack of source code would be offset by the fact that anyone would be able to share that binary version for free, disassemble it, reverse-engineer any new features, and add them back into the open source version. It'd be a hassle, but not impossible... and I'm saying that as a GPL developer myself. (Yes, I have gone after people for GPL violations, but I'd happily give that up in exchange for an end to copyright.)

Nor would I want to tell a photographer "sorry mate, but you're in the wrong business" if he wants to sell prints, if everybody would just print / buy copies for next-to-free when he wants to make a living sell them at $10/print. No one wants to deliver the bad news, but it has to be done. If I want to make money at something that obviously won't work, I hope someone tells me I'm making a mistake before I've sunk too much time or money into it. Just because the photographer wants to sell copies doesn't mean selling copies makes any economic sense, or that our laws should be set up to facilitate it: some people want to make a living by running pyramid schemes, but I don't think we should indulge them either.