Slashdot Mirror
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."'"
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.
Don't protect it.. tell everyone that IP, freely!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
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.
-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.
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!
Good example of this here
Comments have more examples...
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
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.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
"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.
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.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
turnitin is clamming rights to student publications and the eula makes the student work belong to them.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
"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)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
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.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
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.
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.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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!
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Why shouldn't students have full rights associated with the work they create!
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".
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
and I think they're doing a great job at muddying the waters even more by calling it intellectual property (rights).
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
One has to wonder how many of the students that attend those workshops has a computer with pirated music and video.
== 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.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
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.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
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.
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.
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" 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.
Property is theft.
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 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.
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, 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.
> 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.
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?
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.
.. 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.