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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."'"
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.
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.
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.
-Protect IP
-Patents bad
-Steal the music
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.
Very different. Lying about or concealing the authorship of a work is an incidence of fraud; making a copy of a work is not.
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
Academia is (and always has been) as underhanded and cutthroat as everything else.
turnitin is clamming rights to student publications and the eula makes the student work belong to them.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Disclaimer: Carleton is my Alma Mater
.... that, btw, is one of the major reasons why it used to do so horribly in the MacLain's annual university ratings.
Carleton is very, very different from most universities. Last time I saw statistics, around 3/4 of the students were part-time students
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.
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
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.