Lecture Notes Considered Infringement

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a new lawsuit, taking notes in class is copyright infringement. Of course, it's not quite that simple. The professor is partnered with an E-book maker that wants to sell the material themselves, and the people taking notes pay students to take good ones, then sell copies to everyone else. But that just means that the case will hinge upon whether or not lecture notes are fair use. Either way, I wonder how long it will be before you will have to sign a EULA whenever you walk into class"

Comments

Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Re:Relevant

[LrdDimwit]

Amen to that. Fortunately, this guy's lawsuit is going nowhere (note he's not a legal professor). The entire point of the notes is to take down the ideas contained in the lecture -- indeed, the point of the lecture itself is to transmit ideas! Unfortunately for this professor, ideas are not -- and never were -- copyrightable. Indeed, nobody would ever be able to make a new book, or movie, or song, were this not so; everyone borrows ideas, because at a certain fundamental level all stories are fundamentally the same. But worse, if ideas were copyrightable, then copyright becomes a kind of thoughtcrime.

What you're not allowed to do is copy the way those ideas are expressed; selling transcripts of the professor's lectures would be a no-no. But assuming these notes are actual summaries of the concepts presented in class, this company is free and clear.

Re:Relevant

[CityZen]

I was just thinking that professors should apply copyleft or perhaps GPL to their lectures.

After all, if he or she is a REAL professor, he or she will want the knowledge to be spread & shared as much as possible.

Re:Relevant

[twistedsymphony]

Even if we were to make the jump that the professor's idea's are copywriteable then I'd have to ask the question of what exactly you're paying for when you pay your tuition?

Theoretically aren't your paying for the transmittal and indefinite future use of the ideas discussed in the class? If not then what exactly are your tuition bills paying for?

Re:Relevant

[cattywhumpus]

No the lecture notes are NOT fair use. They're a completely new work and the copyright is owned by the student who took them. Remember, it's not the facts that can be copyrighted, it's the expression. Now if a court reporter took down the lecture verbatim, or someone recorded it, you might be able to make a case. But notes? No way. No how.

Re:Relevant

[Z00L00K]

And don't forget - by writing the things down you will actually engage your brain much more and therefore improve the learning of what's taught.

If notes were to be illegal then the students will learn less and therefore be of less use for the society in the future.

Too much emphasis is made on copyright and patents today so the only profession left where you can make money will be as a patent or copyright lawyer. And since those that are applying and help to make the law are often lawyers themselves this will be a perpetual wheel.

Re:Relevant

[Z00L00K]

And even recording a lecture may actually let the copyright fall on the recording party and not the lecturer.

Go figure if you are recording a nature event like a bird - does the copyright on that movie go to you or to the bird?

Or if you make a movie of some people doing a demonstration. Is it you or the people that get the copyright on that work?

And don't forget that a lecture is fact filtered through the lecturer's view. And a recording will only catch that view from the view that the recording position will provide. This means that any different angle or position in the lecturing hall will provide a different view and therefore be a different work.

And unless it's explicitly forbidden to record a lecture it will therefore mean that you may record it. But some may argue that it should be the other way around - you may never be able or allowed to record anything without a written permission - which means that we are going into a dark future. Owning a pen or pencil will be licensed, knowing how to read is controlled by the government or the big corporations. Thought police everywhere.

The "Freedom to Read (watch)" should be derived of the "Freedom of Speech".

Re:Relevant

[Fulcrum of Evil]

No, you're not getting a license to some ideas - the prof doesn't own them. You're getting a professional teacher teaching some subject matter and some recognition of that after the fact.

Re:Relevant

[WalksOnDirt]

And don't forget - by writing the things down you will actually engage your brain much more and therefore improve the learning of what's taught. I always found the reverse. I could either pay attention and try to understand the ideas presented in the lecture, or I could write what I saw and heard for reference later. Which was more effective depended on the class. There was rarely time for both.

Re:Relevant

[Brother Phil]

According to TFA, he doesn't have a problem with students taking notes - he has a problem with students taking notes and then selling them in competition to his own, which is a different matter. Having said that, given that the student's personal notes are part of the point of the lecture, then if there are copyright issues involved, then I'd say that they are a licensed use of the lecture material rather than an "allowable" breach of copyright. Besides, if fair use is allowable, then how can it be a breach?

Re:Relevant

[Brother Phil]

In terms of a bird singing, then the copyright is yours, but if you record a lecture, then that is a copy of the professor's performance of it, and so it is his or hers. I record all the lectures that I go to because I have Asperger Syndrome, and got the permission of all my professors in advance. Similarly, for one class, I posted my lecture notes and lab results in a blog for a friend that had to quit the class because she was pregnant - again, no problem,but I checked with the relevant professor first, and got his permission.

Re:Relevant

[mpe]

I record all the lectures that I go to because I have Asperger Syndrome, and got the permission of all my professors in advance.

They'd probably notice a video camera if you didn't ask first.

Similarly, for one class, I posted my lecture notes and lab results in a blog for a friend that had to quit the class because she was pregnant - again, no problem,but I checked with the relevant professor first, and got his permission.

Your notes are something other than your (unedited) footage of a lecture.

Re:Relevant

[tepples]

And even recording a lecture may actually let the copyright fall on the recording party and not the lecturer. That depends on the nature of authorship, which in the United States appears to be defined by case law. The person who fixes a live performance such a a lecture in a tangible medium may have a share of the authorship. But there is a concept of "neighboring rights" for performances, implemented in the United States through rules about unauthorized fixation. The personality rights laws of the several states cover the cases where that doesn't apply, as do the private real property laws of the several states when a property owner bans recording devices.

Go figure if you are recording a nature event like a bird - does the copyright on that movie go to you or to the bird? I seem to remember an article about copyright in paintings by a chimpanzee. But I can't seem to find it in the noise results that Google returns, which mention copyright only in the sense of "this article is subject to copyright" rather than "this article is about copyright".

Re:Relevant

[easyTree]

I've noticed that the time has come for a worldwide revolution. No doubt others have noticed this far earlier than myself. These people cannot be allowed to hamstring us further. They make ludicrous rules and we enforce them, upon each other! There needs to be a critical mass of dissenters or nothing will change.

Re:Relevant

[Jurily]

Amen to that. There's a difference between taking notes to easily remember the lecture and taking notes to try to understand it later.

Re:Relevant

[easyTree]

In terms of a bird singing, then the copyright is yours, but if you record a lecture, then that is a copy of the professor's performance of it, and so it is his or hers

That's only because we (by which I mean you, Americans) have the arrogance to believe that the bird has less rights because of its inability to make a rational argument demonstrating its right under natural law to control distribution rights of sounds which exist purely as a side-effect of its mind. With the possible exception of it being unable to afford a lawyer or having the stupidity or arrogance to take that course of action.

Re:Relevant

[tgibbs]

Copyright does, however, protect the expression of those ideas--the order of presentation of those ideas, for example. So to the extent that the notes capture that expression, they may constitute infringement.

Re:Relevant

[August26]

Professors are generally employees of the University or College where they lecture. According to the U.S. Copyright Office:

Although the general rule is that the person who creates a work is the author of that work, there is an exception to that principle: the copyright law defines a category of works called "works made for hire." If a work is "made for hire," the employer, and not the employee, is considered the author. The employer may be a firm, an organization, or an individual.

To the extent the material provided by the Professor can be copyrighted (a big question), the copyright should belong to the University rather than the Professor unless they have an explicit agreement otherwise.

Re:Relevant

[Reziac]

Not only that (I was going to make the same point), but if a court were to find otherwise, it has dire implications: Any streetcorner yammerer could claim that the mere act of *speaking* endowed their words with copyright, and they could then sue anyone who reported a summary of those words. Bye-bye newspapers, whose primary JOB is to summarize and publish other people's words!

Re:Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

To the extent the material provided by the Professor can be copyrighted (a big question), the copyright should belong to the University rather than the Professor unless they have an explicit agreement otherwise.

While I'd argue that it's not "work for hire", the point it mute. Every University I've worked at had very specific rules about who owns the copyright to what and faculty always own their lectures. It's probably different for staff lectures.

Re:Relevant

[Risha]

I had at least one professor who insisted that we stop taking notes during crucial parts of the lectures, in order to make sure we absorbed the concept instead of just writing down a summary of it.

Re:Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

that a professor would even fathom restricting access to knowledge is unthinkable. times like this make me proud to be a student at MIT.

ocw.mit.edu

Re:Relevant

[LifesABeach]

It may sound intolerable, but there is an existing pattern for this type of behavior; It is when the student has to buy the teacher's book(s), and materials for the class that the student just paid for. As for myself, I think I would search for an educator that is not such a show-off; And then tell the rest of the student body the results of that search.

Re:Relevant

[Monkeyboy4]

Your logic only works if you consider a class "a performance". Teaching class may be entertaining, may be a public display, but I don't know of any legal precedent for teaching to be considered a performance in the definition of copyright law.

Moreover, if this logic is brought forward, it would destroy the education system. It is a sad example of how economics creep into realms they don't belong (university is a civic, not commercial, organization) and the economic arguments will corrupt the structure to the point that it ruins it.

Re:Relevant

[Monkeyboy4]

Here's the professors email, for any interested in sharing thoughts with him:

mpm@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu

Re:Relevant

[shiftless]

I agree completely. I do not take notes in class because I do much better if I just sit there and listen and think about what the professor is saying. The teachers back in grade school used to get pissed about me not taking notes, so I'd just pretend to be writing stuff down to placate them.

Re:Relevant

[mollymoo]

Even if we were to make the jump that the professor's idea's are copywriteable then I'd have to ask the question of what exactly you're paying for when you pay your tuition?

You get the lectures. IMO think there is a implied right, morally at least, to make even a verbatim transcript of the lecture, not just notes. However, that's not what this is about, at least not directly. It's about a company duplicating students notes and selling them back to other students. He's not going after students for taking notes. If we say copyright does apply to the lecture notes as a derivative work of the lecture and that the students have an implied license or fair use right to make a derivative work in the form of notes, that doesn't mean they have a legal right to make and distribute further copies.

And please stop talking about ideas being copyrightable, they aren't. This is not about the ideas themselves but about the way they are expressed. Expressions of ideas, which could take the form of lectures, are subject to copyright. Ideas are not. As I see it (IANAL) this case will hinge upon where the line between creating a derivative work (which is subject to copyright) and the extraction of ideas from a work (which is not subject to copyright) is drawn.

Re:Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I have someone read aloud the design plans of the iPod, and write down my own impression, then make an somewhat exact iPod copy, then it's not infringement?
If I do the same to the davinci code is it then "ok" for me to be selling a total ripoff of Dan Browns book?

Simply because you parse his lecture through a human doesn't filter away the fact that it's his material not yours, and that you shouldn't be allowed to make money selling it.

Re:Relevant

[mollymoo]

Fair Use and similar provisions around the world mean newspapers could report on it anyway, just as they can summarise plots and use quotes from copyrighted films and books in reviews.

Re:Relevant

[pbhj]

Or if you make a movie of some people doing a demonstration. Is it you or the people that get the copyright on that work? ...snip...

And don't forget that a lecture is fact filtered through the lecturer's view. And a recording will only catch that view from the view that the recording position will provide. This means that any different angle or position in the lecturing hall will provide a different view and therefore be a different work. (1) Try making a movie of some people performing a hollywood movie rather than a factually derived lecture ... good luck!

(2) Have you read Bertrand Russell? If you look at a table from two angles you see different views of _the_same_table! Priceless!!

Re:Relevant

[jamstar7]

A piece of paper saying that you're EXTREMELY more qualified to do a job than the schmuck sitting next to you?

Oh, and let's not forget the parties and the 'Girls Gone Wild' video shoots...

Re:Relevant

[Reziac]

You're failing to see how this generalizes, or how far-reaching it could be:

What does a newspaper reporter DO?

He listens to someone else's words and takes notes, which the newspaper subsequently publishes and sells to various individuals who had nothing to do with the original speaker. (And sometimes the reporter is independent, not a direct employee of the newspaper.)

This is EXACTLY what this note-taking/publishing company is doing.

Just because the ultimate source is a professor, who plans to publish his own version of these notes, makes it no different than if a streetcorner preacher, whose words are summarized by a reporter and printed by a newspaper, had plans to publish his views.

In fact, a professor's words would have LESS protection, because FACTS are not copyrightable.

IF a court agrees with the professor, then ANY time ANYONE speaks where another might hear, take notes, and pass those notes on to anyone else (which is the essense of all news-journalism, including many blogs and forums like slashdot), becomes a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that copyright is not the right to SELL; it is the right to REPRODUCE.

If someone stole the professor's original notes, photocopied, and published them, then he'd have a case.

But as others point out, when you go into certain professions, you may give up some rights. Frex, if you're a photographer working for NASA, all images taken for NASA are public domain; you cannot copyright them. If you're a professor, whose goal is to impart your knowledge to others, why on earth should said knowledge be restricted? From a standpoint of "information wants to be free", said knowledge should be public domain by definition. Sure, you have to pay to access the *distribution system* (ie. to attend the university) but once you acquire that knowledge, it should be yours without restrictions of any kind.

Another evil side effect of a ruling in this guy's favour could ultimately be more-general restrictions on what you are allowed to do with knowledge garnered through paid education (ie. what you learn in university classes). I leave the implications of that as an exercise to the reader.

Re:Relevant

[Fjandr]

For the sake of argument, the verbatim lecture could conceivably be copyrighted. However, the student's interpretation and works produced are not actually the lecture, but a work derived from the ideas imparted by the lecture. They are akin to a research paper in that they are a restatement of the ideas contained within another work. If anyone owns the copyright to the works (lecture notes) produced by the student, it is the student.

If there can be no derivative works from a lecture, that means there can be no derivative works from a paper. The two are equivalent, apart from the medium through which the ideas are delivered.

Re:Relevant

[Rary]

A public speech is only copyrightable if it is written down, and then it is only the written version that is copyrighted, not the public reading of it. You can record the reading, and then you hold the copyright to the recording, while the speaker still holds the copyright to the written speech. I don't think you could post a transcript of it online, because you would effectively be copying the written speech, which you do not have the rights to.

Re:Relevant

[mrraven]

I am glad to see this was the first response, that was my first thought as well. Next time someone tells you RMS is a dirty hippy point them to read this article and tell them to think before they open their pie hole.

Re:Relevant

[mollymoo]

This case is not about knowledge. It's about copyright. You cannot copyright knowledge and the professor isn't claiming copyright on the knowledge he imports in his lectures. You're just confusing yourself and getting worked up for no reason by complaining about that.

He's claiming copyright on the precise way that knowledge is imported - he thinks the notes of his lectures are a derivative work. A verbatim transcript would obviously be a derivative work of his lecture and thus protected by copyright. The same knowledge but in an entirely different format obviously would not be a derivative work and would not be covered by copyright law. Somewhere between those two extremes there is a line. Which side of the line do you think highly verbose notes which followed the structure of his lectures, used his explanations and analogies, directly quoted large chunks, cited all the same reference materials, reproduced his original diagrams and posed the same questions for further study would lie? That's a whole lot more than merely imparting the same knowledge.

Re:Relevant

[mrraven]

Interesting how the ultra capitalism of "intellectual property" converges on the same result as the ultra communism of Cuba and the ex- Soviet Union, namely censorship and restriction of the free flow of information. Any time a small group tries to impose it's ideology by force whether it's owners or the "inner party" the society as a whole is in trouble.

And no don't try to tell me intellectual property isn't Libertarian, the whole premise of the Libertarian philosophy is that freedom is predicated on property ownership. Libertarians may be really good about resisting civil liberties violations, and the expansion of empire but their idea of extending propertytarian ideas into all aspects of life is terrible.

Re:Relevant

[Reziac]

Erm... if it's infringement for a 3rd party to reproduce notes taken in class, then it's equally infringement for students in the class to take notes and copy them among themselves. That's why this is so important -- as you say it has nothing to do with knowledge, but it impacts severely on whether one is allowed to redistribute knowledge, and the implications are a lot wider than this single case.

Copyright is NOT the right to sell; it's the right to distribute.

(Where is Cpt. Kangarooski when we need him? :)

Re:Relevant

[mollymoo]

If we replace "lecture notes sufficiently close to the original to be considered a derivative work" by "textbooks" or "research papers" I hope you can see that your argument about knowledge is fallacious. Not being able to reproduce entire textbooks or papers verbatim hasn't stopped the spread of knowledge from people who have read particular textbooks or papers to those who have not. You just have to re-write the facts in your own format, your own words. If you can't do that you didn't understand it in the first place. Some people's lecture notes are sufficiently original to be considered new works, but some are simply a "readers digest" version of the original.

The point about students swapping notes being infringement (if the notes themselves are indeed derivative works) is valid, but as the prof (thankfully) isn't going after them directly it's currently moot. I'd hope any sane judge would view any student on the course using lecture notes from any source as Fair Use on the basis that a) they paid for the lectures and b) the motive is education, not profit.

Re:Relevant

[bencoder]

would a transcript not be considered a derived work from the recording? It's not likely to be exactly the same as the original written speech, since changes always occur when you are speaking. And even if it was exactely the same, its not a copy, because you didn't duplicate it.. it's an original piece of work derived from the recording, which happens to be identical to the original written speech (IANAL, this is just interesting to me). I'd like to know of any cases where something like this has actually occurred.

Re:Relevant

[Reziac]

But when you take notes, you DO rewrite the presented facts in your own format -- that's the whole point here, that said notes are a new work based on the same facts, NOT a derivative work of the professor's notes.

A ruling in his favour would also eliminate products like Cliff's Notes.

Re:Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

No, RMS is a dirty anti-semite. Much different.

Re:Relevant

[rtb61]

Then again the whole thing boils down to contracts, contracts between the student and the university and the university and the lecturers and then in turn the indirect contract between the student and the lecturer.

Clarify the contracts and ensure the lecture is properly accessible in their employment contract and students should be able to ensure they have full and clear access to that lecture material.

Clearly this issue reflects greed taking over from any kind of moral justification.

Re:Relevant

[LinuxLuver]

I agree with you. I remember scribbling stuff down madly and being mostly unable to digest it as I was bsy enough just trying to buffer it in my memory for recording when the lecturer spoke too quickly. Later, the notes HAD to be good or I was screwed. Later, I mostly just listened, making the odd major point, then tried to rewrite the recollections more fully in line with the notes. But as you say, it often was a question of either understanding or writing verbatim, but not both.

Re:Relevant

[mollymoo]

Are the notes in question a "Readers Digest" or a "Cliffs Notes"? The former is a derivative work, the latter is not. Without having seen the notes in question you're just speaking out of your ass.

Re:Relevant

[Reziac]

How do people take notes? They hear a speaker, they see a presentation, they scribble down content and context as best they can, but even under ideal circumstances, class notes are a summary and approximation, and are therefore always primarily in the student's own words -- exactly like what a reporter does in the field. There will be snatches of exact quotes (which do fall under Fair Use), but those will NOT make up the main body of the notes. Even someone proficient at shorthand can't keep up well enough to do a full quote of a lecturer.

Conversely, a Reader's Digest Condensed Book (I remember them well :) starts directly from a clean copy of the original work, and excises portions therefrom. It is NOT "notes"; it's simply a selection of the original text. I've read some in both RD and original form, and speaking as an experienced editor myself -- RD's technique is almost entirely to omit sections and excise references to the omitted sections. They do almost no rewriting. So yes, RDCBs are very different from class notes (and from Cliff's Notes).

Re:Relevant

[cpt kangarooski]

I was at a party. I have a life outside of Slashdot, you know. And indeed, with my work schedule, I'll be posting less for a few months.

Anyway, given an ad-lib lecture that is not being simultaneously recorded and transmitted elsewhere, it's probably uncopyrighted enough that anyone can take notes and either have those notes be copyrighted (if the note-taker is being creative with them) or uncopyrighted (if they're uncreatively writing down everything that is said). Adding one of those two elements in, though -- reading a pre-written lecture from notes, or a sufficient simultaneous recording -- complicates matters.

In the event that there is a copyright, students are likely to rely on fair use. I leave the fair use analysis to the reader (I have another engagement I need to go to), but I expect that it would be fair use for a student. A business, OTOH, has greater difficulty with the fourth factor, though n.b. that commercial fair use is possible and commonplace (see Campbell v. Acuff Rose), and that the issue isn't whether the infringer makes money, but more whether the infringement impairs the copyright holder from making money. If the commercial notes themselves are not published, and are only used for purposes of preparing a restatement of the uncopyrightable ideas in some non-infringing manner, then this further aids the commercial user in the analysis.

Copyright is NOT the right to sell; it's the right to distribute.

No, it's a bunch of different rights. Take a look at 17 USC 106 for the main ones.

Re:Relevant

[RobertJon]

IF the teacher is paid by the university, then it's the university's property, not his. That is what completes the relationship: Tuition from student to university, which "outsources/hire" professor to deliver services to student.

Re:Relevant

[mrraven]

If you referring to his support for a Palestinian state, news flash that is the viewpoint of EVERY country in the world other than Israel, the U.S. and one of those dinky island countries Muetra or some such.

Re:Relevant

[Rary]

would a transcript not be considered a derived work from the recording?

IANAL, but it seems to me a derived work has to have some original content.

And even if it was exactely the same, its not a copy, because you didn't duplicate it.. it's an original piece of work derived from the recording, which happens to be identical to the original written speech

It's not original. It's still a copy. If I write a book that is word-for-word the same as another book, but I actually type the whole thing out myself rather than photocopy it, it's still a copy. I didn't come up with any part of it on my own.

Re:Relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK if you take a picture of a copyrighted material, letting it clear that it's a picture, not a copy, the copyright of the picture is *yours*. It's the technique used on German wikipedia for posting comics images and covers. Someone takes a picture of the comic book in perspective, and publishes the picture as GFDL or CC, which then is used in the Wikipedia.

For lecture notes, it should work the same way. If you take notes, it's your perspective.

Re:Relevant

[xycadium]

I really enjoyed that 'Right to Read' story. It was fun and a scary insight into the future. We're all screwed!

Right to Read

[headkase]

This thread just will not be complete without Stallman's Right to Read.

Re:Right to Read

[luder]

The Republicans took control of the US senate shortly thereafter. They are less tied to Hollywood than the Democrats, so they did not press these proposals. Now that the Democrats are back in control, the danger is once again higher.

Huh? Isn't it the other way around? I'm not American, but always thought the republicans were more friendly with the MPAA/RIAA... Weren't they who came up with DMCA, too?

Re:Right to Read

[level_headed_midwest]

Nope, the essay is correct. The Democrats are much more in bed with Hollywood than the Republicans are. Just watch U.S. TV in a few months and you'll see actors and actresses lay praise on Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and hurl epithets at John McCain. The DMCA was signed into law in 1998, which was during Bill Clinton's term.

Re:Right to Read

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The funny part is that this comment is marked informative. I guess it's because there isn't a sarcasm mod.

Re:Right to Read

[garutnivore]

You complain that the comment was marked informative but you don't present evidence that it should not have been so marked. Is it perhaps that you don't have a case?

Re:Right to Read

[westlake]

Nope, the essay is correct. The Democrats are much more in bed with Hollywood than the Republicans are.

The successful Hollywood film generates billions of export dollars. It is a potent expression of American culture abd values, a subversive influence in plsces like China. It is clean industry, skilled labor. It is the electoral votes of California, Florida, New York. The politician of either party ignores it at his peril.

Re:Right to Read

[Murrquan]

It's also corrupt and bent on controlling people and taking their rights away, just like all the other big industries which the politicians ignore at their peril.

Re:Right to Read

[Culture20]

The successful Hollywood film ... is a potent expression of Hollywood culture and values Fixed. No need for thanks. *Rides off into the sunset*

Re:Right to Read

[dryeo]

Wasn't the DMCA passed by a Republican Congress?
Also I can't help but remember that the politicians that have come out of Hollywood have all been Republicans, though you do have a point that lots of the employees of Hollywood are Democrats.

Re:Right to Read

[d34thm0nk3y]

Actually, the MPAA gives roughly equally to both parties, see for yourself:
OpenSecret MPAA campaign finance numbers

Re:Right to Read

[garutnivore]

Thanks. That's exactly what I'm asking for. It is okay to criticize but without some relevant data or a substantial argument to back up the criticism, it is just pointless. Is there a good response to the fact that Bill Clinton signed the DMCA into law? That's the part I think is informative.

Re:Right to Read

[Fulcrum of Evil]

No, it was obviously a joke - in 1998, when congress unanimously voted it in. Republicans controlled both houses, so you can hardly lay this at clinton's feet. The comments about Clinton/Obama/McCain come off as a sarcastic joke - who's going to rebut that?

Re:Right to Read

[mollymoo]

Both chambers of the 105th Congress had a Republican majority in 1998. The President doesn't make the laws and vetoing everything they didn't like would lead to their never being able to pass the stuff they do like, particularly when the Congress is dominated by the opposition. It's give and take - you agree to this, we'll agree to that. I don't know if Clinton was pro- or anti-DMCA, but his not vetoing it doesn't mean he was a fan of it, just that he wasn't extremely strongly against it.

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking lecture notes isn't what's claimed to be copyright infringement, only re-selling the notes for a profit. Fair use does not provide for commercial reproduction.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and fair use isn't some sort of blanket protection that you can slap on something. It is only an affirmative defense for a specific case. And this case is about a business taking notes for profit. It is not about whether all lecture notes will suddenly be found to be fair use. That is impossible by definition.

Re:Correction

[moderatorrater]

Fair use does allow for certain things to be reproduced commercially. How do you write an analysis of Shakespeare (a derived work that's covered by Fair Use, btw) without deriving it somewhat from Shakespeare? Cliff Notes are a commercial reproduction of the main points of the story; isn't that what lecture notes are?

Furthermore, the university should be protecting these students by threatening to end the contract. If the book maker's going to be anal about this, they're going to be anal about something else that's important to the university. Also, an attack on the university's students should be viewed as an attack on the university itself. Every other college should be avoiding these guys like the plague too.

Re:Correction

[Antony-Kyre]

I think you are so correct. I hope your post gets modded up. There is nothing wrong with notes. But when it comes to profiting off them, that is another thing altogether.

Could we by analogy compare this to paying a movie-goer to take notes during the movie, and provide a very detailed summary to a company planning on selling said summary?

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up! This story isn't about students taking notes to learn. This is about a commercial business repackaging a professor's lectures and reselling them for profit.

I wouldn't say it's cut-and-dried, but it's a heck of a lot murkier than the summary makes it appear to be.

Re:Correction

[Planesdragon]

It is only an affirmative defense for a specific case Actually, four specific cases. In the original law, only three -- journalism, review, and education. The fourth, pardoy, was added by way of judicial interpretation of the unexplict statutes and underlying principles.

It is not about whether all lecture notes will suddenly be found to be fair use. That is impossible by definition. Well, only in the sense that a lecture is usually not set in a fixed form, and so isn't covered by copyright in the form usually presented to students.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

*Sigh*

The meaning of fair use is as confused here as the meaning of Godwin's Law. Fair use is a defense, not a right. No material is fair use. That material is only used in a way where if it were to be challenged in a lawsuit, a fair use defense would prevail. How the material is used is just as important as what type of material it is. This is why you can't make a blanket protection with a fair use defense. For those who want a blanket protection, it is called public domain, GFDL, or CCL.

Re:Correction

[gujo-odori]

Movie-goers who take detailed notes during a movie to later re-sell them for a profit are usually called "reviewers." A studio wouldn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of winning a lawsuit against a reviewer who published a movie review. Both the reviewer and the paper profit, and that's totally fair. There's nothing wrong with selling your lecture notes, either. Moreover, in every class I took in college, the lecture was sufficiently derived from the course textbook (none of which were written by the prof teaching the course) that there's no reasonable way a claim of infringement could stand up in court.

Re:Correction

[capologist]

Could we by analogy compare this to paying a movie-goer to take notes during the movie, and provide a very detailed summary to a company planning on selling said summary?

A detailed summary of a movie is not copyright infringement. Such summaries are published all the time. Look up any popular movie in Wikipedia and you'll probably find a detailed summary.

Re:Correction

[SL Baur]

What about in cases where the professor did write the book?

The interesting case I can think of is a textbook like The Feynman Lectures in Physics, which are derived from lectures made when he taught Freshman Physics. Rumor had it that David Goodstein was doing the same thing the year I had Freshman Physics at Caltech - there were often filming crews brought in for key lectures (like the day he derived E=mc**2, to a standing ovation ...).

Re:Correction

[LaskoVortex]

Could we by analogy compare this to paying a movie-goer to take notes during the movie, and provide a very detailed summary to a company planning on selling said summary?

In a word: no. The university has two objectives (1) create knowledge (i.e. research) and (2) disseminate knowledge (i.e. educating). TFA refers to the latter. The knowledge a university disseminates is not (should not be) intellectual property. Many borderline idiots will argue that students pay the university for this knowledge. These borderline idiots are confused. Students pay the university for the service of disseminating said knowledge to said students, providing a venue for said learning and, least of all, giving students tangible credit for the knowledge they have learned. If a professor disseminates knowledge that is considered intellectual property, then he is abusing his post or is teaching fiction (not in the "film studies" sense, etc.). In both cases, he is irresponsible. If a professor agrees to the type of contract mentioned in the TFA, then he has lost his priorities as an educator which is to adhere to the two main missions of a university.

Re:Correction

[GeffDE]

Fair use is only a defense because it is a right. Just as the Copyright Act gives creators of creative works rights (such as a monopoly on distribution), it gives the people observing* those creative works rights too. If fair use were not a right, then the fair use defense would not prevail. Though a strict definition for what constitutes fair use is not set anywhere (and must be proven at each trial), those people observing the copyrighted work have the right to use it fairly.


*(Aside: those people are not 'consuming' because the work is not diminished in any way by the act of observing)

Re:Correction

[Original Replica]

the university should be protecting these students by threatening to end the contract.

Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees? "The university" doesn't have to do jack, the students need to all drop all of that professors classes. It works, at my alma mater I saw a professor let go when his classes dropped to zero enrollment because he had sufficiently pissed off his students. I'm all for professors making a nice buck on the side, publishing or consulting or researching, right up until it starts to effect the quality of work that makes them professors; teaching the students.

Re:Correction

[DustyShadow]

Fair use is only a defense because it is a right. Actually there is a big debate over whether Fair Use is actually a right. On one side, you have the argument that you can't invoke fair use unless you have infringed and thus it is only a defense. On the other, you have that argument that because cases like Eldred v. Ashcroft held that fair use is the Copyright Act's way of protecting Free Speech rights, then fair use is also a right.

I unfortunately think it falls closer to the defense realm. I don't like that though.

Re:Correction

[Koiu Lpoi]

Actually there is a big debate over whether Fair Use is actually a right.

That there's even a debate really shows what a sad state the whole copyright system is in.

Re:Correction

[Ralconte]

You'll see some of the excessively long ones trimmed or deleted, with fair-use violations as the quoted cause. If you give away every possible detail of some movies, no one would want to see them. Likewise, if you photocopy your notes perfectly enough and sold them at a reasonable price, no one would ever go to college, they'd just learn from you. Granted, that's dumb, people are unlikely to read plot of the Matrix and go, "Well, I'm done, no need to see slow motion fighting in THX sound" And of course, people will still go to college for the degree.

Re:Correction

[DustyShadow]

Something to think about...If it is a right, can it be waived in a EULA? I think the fact that you currently can waive fair use in a contract such as a EULA tends to make it lean more into the defense range. I could be wrong though.

Re:Correction

[GeffDE]

I am no lawyer, and definitely not a judge, but the applicable section of the Copyright Act clearly states

...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

That makes it pretty clear that fair use of a copyrighted work is a right because it protects the fair user from being held liable for copyright infringement. Naturally, fair use is also a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. My point in the previous post, which I suppose could have been more clearly indicated with this example, was that if you are sued for copyright infringement, you will not be held liable for infringement if you can demonstrate fair use (using fair use as a defense) because you have the right to fairly use copyrighted works, as explained in the above passage of the Copyright Act.

Also, you invoke fair use as a defense when accused of infringing; the Copyright Act makes it clear that fair use does not constitute an infringement. The Copyright Act gave a number of exclusive rights to the holder of a copyright; the fair use doctrine says that those exclusive rights cannot infringe every citizen's right to use the copyright works for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research." So, I don't know who came up with the idea that fair use is only a defense because you only invoke it when accusing of infringing, but it's stupid. Additionally, you only invoke your first amendment rights when accused of breaking the law; does that mean that the rights guaranteed by the first amendment are only defenses?

Re:Correction

[Guppy06]

"Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees?"

The word you're looking for is "tenure."

"It works, at my alma mater I saw a professor let go when his classes dropped to zero enrollment because he had sufficiently pissed off his students."

And in mine I saw a university resort to either marking classes taught by "staff" or "accidentally" reversing which professors taught which sections, all to ensure that the students had already committed to their schedule before they stroll into class on the first day to see who will really be teaching them.

Worst case scenario: put him on sabbatical for a little bit. Students move on, either by graduating or dropping out, so the collective memory of the student body only goes back so far.

Actually, you should be listening to your own advice: the professor is the university's employee, so this money-making tactic probably has the implicit consent (if not the explicit endorsement) of the higher-ups in the continuing quest to milk money from the students.

Re:Correction

[Guppy06]

"How do you write an analysis of Shakespeare (a derived work that's covered by Fair Use, btw) without deriving it somewhat from Shakespeare?"

Nit-pick: his works are in the public domain.

"Furthermore, the university should be protecting these students"

Ah, to be young and foolish.

"If the book maker's going to be anal about this, they're going to be anal about something else that's important to the university."

There is one and only one thing important to the university: to make money. If anything, I'm sure the university is quite happy to have this publisher rigorously pursue that which threatens the school's cut of the profits from the scheme.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, the primary job of professors (at least as far as they are concerned) is research - some do genuinely care about their students, but even those that do care aren't necessarily good teachers.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, as a prof myself, I can tell you that such profs would usually end up teaching the mandatory first and second year courses. That way, students HAVE to take their course (at least if they want to graduate in that program).

Also, you can go on about employee status all you want, the truth is that copyright to lecture materials traditionally belongs to faculty memebrs as part of academic freedom. Any university that tries to remove that right will get into some very serious labor issues, and they can kiss all their good faculty goodbye. Profs value academic freedom very highly, since it is for many the only reason why they are willing to take the lower salaries at universities compared to industry. Take away academic freedom, and the good people will walk (to other universities or industry), and you are left with all the mediocre folks who can't find another position.

Re:Correction

[leicaman]

Shakespeare is long out from under copyright. It's public domain.

Re:Correction

[causality]

Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees? "The university" doesn't have to do jack, the students need to all drop all of that professors classes. It works, at my alma mater I saw a professor let go when his classes dropped to zero enrollment because he had sufficiently pissed off his students. I'm all for professors making a nice buck on the side, publishing or consulting or researching, right up until it starts to effect the quality of work that makes them professors; teaching the students.

This makes me think about how, historically, the idea that teaching is a profession is a recent development. It used to be something that was everyone's "job", if "job" is what you want to call something that is done willfully with no immediate material compensation. It was something that wasn't left in the hands of specialists, since they were "only" technicians. In Athens, systematic compulsory education was for slaves.

Whether this professor's arrangement constitutes a blatant conflict of interest or not, this is what I'm getting at: There is a very good reason why Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money for teaching.

Re:Correction

[Frequency Domain]

Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees?

**BZZZT** So sorry, but thanks for playing!

Students are neither the boss nor the customer, they are (one* of) the product(s). A campus' reputation rises and falls with the quality of its products.

* - Research is the other major product. Several people have already noted that a lot of professors spend more time on research than on students. That's because like anybody else, they follow the incentive systems, and Department Heads, Deans, Provosts, and Campus Presidents all know that research grants put a lot more money in their hands than tuition does.

Re:Correction

[Dan541]

But,
It's the student who is makeing the notes.

~Dan

Re:Correction

[epee1221]

You most certainly can wave your rights. Consider non-compete agreements, non-disclosure agreements, etc. It's also not unheard of for an agreement to involve waiving one's right to sue before a court/jury.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

The Supreme Court ruled that it is an "affirmative defense" in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. Additionally, you cut off the quote too soon:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include ... The "In determining" means that it is determined by a court, not an individual or copyright holder. Fair use is a defense to be used in court. If you 'claim' fair use you can still be sued because the copyright holder might disagree. Whether the copyright is violated or not will be determined by the court and they will also determine if fair use is an applicable defense. And unlike rights like the First Amendment where you can sue back for SLAPP violations, you can't do that with fair use. Additionally, you have to prove that anything you used falls under fair use, not the other way around. I would say that this makes it pretty clear that it is not a right.

But I don't want to cut the discussion off too soon without noting that the Supreme Court has never ruled that fair use is a right or not and that they have never ruled that it is strictly derived from the First Amendment (that is the opinion of Congress who wrote the law). Until that is finally settled, there is still going to be a little gray area whether fair use is only a right or whether it is only a defense. But in light of what I have discussed above, I think the judgment will probably favor it being considered only a defense, though these are not strictly mutually exclusive.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

The copyright law says that Fair Use is an exception to the scope of copyright. That is, anything that is Fair Use is by definition not infringing.

Now copyright is an artificial, Government-granted monopoly -- one that always covers speech. If you look at the introductory material on the Copyright Office Web page, it says that copyright covers the creative expression in a work, and only that expression. Anything that is creative expression must, by definition, fall into the category of speech.

So now we know that material covered by Fair Use is speech, AND that it is not subject (at least in a particular context) to the artificial Government-granted monopoly.

Do you recall a document called the Declaration of Independence that states that all humans have certain inalienable rights? That among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness?

Or another one, called the First Amendment, that prohibits the Government from interfering with the exercise of Free Speech?

Fair Use doesn't need to grant you additional rights to speech. All that it needs to do is to reduce the scope of the monopoly, then, once there's no infringement, your inherent, inalienable rights kick in.

Obligatory warning: I am not a lawyer. :-)

Re:Correction

[schwnj]

Unless they are tenured, as most professors are (at most four-year colleges). If the professor has too few students enroll in a class, he will have to make it up (i.e., it won't "count" toward the required number of courses that need to be taught), but that is usually a small number. For example, at my university, if at least 15 students enroll in a 150-person class, it will still count.

And, if it is a research university, the school usually doesn't care what the students think of professors.

Re:Correction

[m3ntos]

Exactly, I paid my own way through college and often went to office hours to express the my concern with the return on investment I was getting. If that didn't work it was like any other value proposition, just go talk to that persons boss or supervisor until you find someone who understands the impact of a vocal customer with access to other customers and the ability to communicate potential solutions/resolutions.

Re:Correction

[Foobar of Borg]

Taking lecture notes isn't what's claimed to be copyright infringement, only re-selling the notes for a profit. Fair use does not provide for commercial reproduction.

If the class is, say, a basic physics class, how could the professor possibly sue over students selling their notes? The professor is distilling knowledge of things like Gauss's law and the students are taking notes based on that. The professor does not own any sort of copyright to Gauss's law, so the students' notes are *their* understanding of what the professor explains to them about Gauss's law. In other words, the students' notes are *their* distillation of the knowledge presented to them through lecture, reading, et cetera, and are thus the students' copyrights.

I just don't see how someone's notes on someone else's explanation of a subject matter can be copyrightable. A particular work covering a subject matter would be, but then one could read that and a few other works on (e.g.) electromagnetism and produce your own work, and that too would be copyrightable. That's all the students are doing. They are making their own particular work based on what they have learned from other sources.

Re:Correction

[level_headed_midwest]

Most university students rarely forget that professors are employees of the institution they pay money to attend, especially when the professors do something ridiculous. However, professors do not consider themselves employees of a university in the normal you get paid Y dollars to do X job like everybody else does. Most universities also do not consider professors employees in the same way that they would other staff, like the secretary or janitor. Professors have a very nebulous job description of "you'll do research and (maybe) teach every so often if you want to and we'll pay you." There are few specific requirements, most of which involve the minimum amount of classes they have to teach, ADA stuff, and to some extent class scheduling. Just about everything else is at the professor's discretion under the umbrella of "academic freedom." Couple that with tenure and you have what is essentially the ability to do pretty much whatever they want to and have permanent and largely complete immunity.

And a few words about this topic from a student's perspective:
1. DO NOT EVER BRING UP THE ISSUE OF A PROFESSOR BEING AN EMPLOYEE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN FRONT OF ANY PROFESSOR. EVER. This is an absolutely sacred issue to them as they don't want the cushy perks to go away. You'll get as strong of a reaction out of the professor as you would dropping a 10 kg block of elemental sodium into a hundred-liter tank of boiling 10 M HCl.

2. "Academic freedom" WRT lecture notes means that they absolutely control anything related to giving out lecture notes. They can do anything from publish their entire annotated lecture notes online and expressly tell people it's okay to sell them to prohibiting taking of any and all notes, electronic or written, during their lectures. And there's not a thing you can do about it- I should know, I have tried and got ripped a new one on several occasions.

3. "Academic freedom" only applies to THEM, not you. You have to jump through any and all of their hoops, no matter how inane. You cannot turn in work on a yellow paper with medium green lines and get credit if the professor said only yellow paper with light green lines will be accepted. If they want you to turn in your work written in Klingon or Ogrish, that's what you have to do. They can keep anything you hand in and not give it back to you to study later if they so desire. They reserve the right to change exams completely a day before they are scheduled and completely change the format too, if they so care to. They can make you submit your papers to anti-cheating sites for archiving if they want to. They can punish you in the grades department if they don't like the subject of an assignment where they explicitly said they are grading the content only.

4. Most professors are reasonable to work with and don't run under the umbrella of academic freedom and tenure. If something is a problem, they will most likely work with you and the class to solve the problem if it is at all possible, and if not, explain why it isn't possible. The ones that do claim "academic freedom" typically are the pompous, self-righteous, egomaniac asshole type that like to be known as "the hard professor" and teach one or two freshman or sophomore classes that are required in a major. Their aim is to be THE ONE to "weed people out" as it gives them their jollies. This means they will be absolutely pedantic and grades will be artificially low. You also likely won't learn much as they tend to teach things in such a contorted manner so you don't actually understand the material, otherwise you may do "too well" on the exams without going and stroking their ego during office hours at the coffee shop. If you happen to have to take a class with one of these clowns, get out of it if it is at all possible as the class will want to make you tear your hair out. You can sometimes get around these professors as there are often more than one professor that teaches these classes. Either transfer out into another section or drop the class and wait to take it until you can get another professor. You'll be much happier.

Re:Correction

[ravenshrike]

Except it's not criminal to then use the 1st amendment, just a breach of contract.

Re:Correction

[harlows_monkeys]

Furthermore, the university should be protecting these students by threatening to end the contract

Maybe things have changed since I went to school, but I would expect the University's view to be that students should attend class and take their own notes. Why would you think they would want to encourage students to skip class and buy notes from a third party?

Re:Correction

[Ox0065]

You mean to say 'a defence of their rights under law'.
If successful, then a successful defence of their rights under law, against what, if not the abuse of their rights under law?
or rather threats of retribution, should they choose to exercise their rights.

Seriously! What do you mean when you say 'it is only a defence'.
You make defence against an aggressor sound like a bad thing.

Re:Correction

[Original Replica]

Universities are a service industry not a product industry. Maybe most students get duped into thinking that they are product, but if I'm paying $30k+ a year you bet your ass that I'm gonna get the service I pay for. Research grants only show up if you have students to provide free labor, it's much easier for students to transfer schools than for professors or campus presidents to find new jobs. There is no one with a more flexible mobile life than an average student: no mortgage, no spouse, no years invested in a company, not even furniture worth worrying about, already moves twice a year. mobility + control of the revenue stream = you the boss. The same understanding holds true later on in the work force: if you are truly good at what you do a small to medium sized business needs your labor more than you need their job. Yes I have used this in my own career, and yes I am treated with courtesy and respect by my bosses and I am paid well. Act like a serf and you will be treated like a serf, act like a valuable asset and you will be treated like a valuable asset. Don't be a diva, just don't bow and scrape to the bossman or the Dean. Mutual respect makes for a very pleasant environment for work or school, but that is rarely present if you allow yourself to be seen as a "product" or "interchangeable cog".

Re:Correction

[thegrassyknowl]

how could the professor possibly sue over students selling their notes?

Quite easily really. The world has become fascinated with the buzzwords of terrorism and copyright. It wasn't yesterday where (on Trashdot) we were alerted to some wanker trying to say people who do one are the other.

In this copyright crazy world everyone can sue for everything being copyright. Everyone wants a cut of the proverbial pie and they'll stop at nothing to get it. It's the old "but they're doing it too" mentality.

Re:Correction

[happyemoticon]

What's the difference between me taking the notes and selling them and me writing a book with information I originally learned from the notes and selling that?

I think the thing that bugs me about the idea of enforcing copyright on a lecture is that most of the lectures I have heard, while almost universally insightful and enlightening, have been about fairly non-disputable points of fact or well-established pieces of knowledge that don't belong to them or me. Does my philosophy lecturer own the right's to Hume's Fork or Occam's Razor? Is my programming instructor going to ask me for a nickle every time I write an try-catch block?

Presumably, the lecture itself is a creative work by the professor and falls under the prevue of copyright to some extent. But interpreting the lecture into a series of bullet points, unless some of those were original, novel ideas created by the professor, would seem to annihilate any direct claim the professor had in terms of copyright, the same as if I said:

• Orphan boy is abused by foster parents.
• Boy finds out he's magical and goes to magic school.
• Boy has various adventures involving traps, basilisks, werewolves, dragons, mazes, and bad wizards.
• Boy defeats big evil wizard and bones his best friend's little sister.

it would not seem to be under the copyright of JK Rowling, God willing. At least that's my instinct. And I think the heart of the problem is that "intellectual property" itself is a weird, synthetic type of right which has grown beyond its original boundaries like some kind of white-collar carcinoma.

Re:Correction

[Ox0065]

Correct me if I'm wrong. The lecture is a performance. As I understand it, the students could walk in & record the whole thing, and then sell THEIR recording. Then again, I don't live in America. Copyright law's pretty much back to front over there, privileging means at the expense of ends.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU for correcting the mistakes in this forum about fair use not being a right. When I see posts like that it makes me crazy about how uninformed people are, but I was at work and couldn't post back.

But unfortunately you made some errors in your explanation as well, so please indulge me while I make some slight refinements to your argument and corrections.

There is no question that fair use is a right. Just because it is also a legal defense doesn't matter - the two are not mutually exclusive.

Hey, Slashdot dummies who never got any civics education in school? Here is the basic primer - play along now...

The whole premise behind US government is that every person is endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. In order to protect these rights, citizens consent to the government placing a few restrictions on people - the whole purpose of the restrictions is to stop people using their rights in a way that takes away other people's rights. It's supposed to be a balancing act.

So for example, my creator gave me the ability (the "right") to swing my arm around with my fist closed. There are a few laws that reasonably limit that, though. The essence of the state of those laws is as if they are saying, okay, swing your arms with closed fists all you like. We'll even specifically condone doing so and clobbering someone else's head under controlled circumstances (boxing). Otherwise, make sure when you're swinging you don't crash your fist into somone else's head, or property.

So you wanna go out into a field and swing your arms when nobody is nearby? Of course, you have that right. Want to do so in your house, for ten hours straight - and even clobber your own furniture? Sure, you were born with that right. But we, the government that you created, are going to stop you if your arm swinging hurts someone else ... and only then.

ALL US laws are like that - every single one. So when you think about the law, never talk about government giving people rights - under the US theory, that's impossible. You're born with 100% of the rights that you are capable of exercising.

Instead, start from the premise that you have the right to do ANYTHING you want ... unless for some reason because you could hurt other people, there is some limited government law slightly restricting your right.

So, repeat after me - fair use is a right. It's also a defense in copyright lawsuits (the nature of the defense is more accurately stated along the lines of "But, hey! I have a defense! I was exercising my rights!") Fair use is a right. There are a few restrictions on your originally 100% fair use rights, meant to protect copyright holders from being harmed by you. Those restrictions, and the way your fair use rights work in relation to those restrictions -- are described in part in copyright statutes.

But there are reams of case law stating specifically that you have way many more fair use rights than are described in the statutes. Which of course is as it should be and only makes sense. You start from the premise that you have 100% ... and then check to make sure whether or not or how much your rights were whittled down a little.

Okay, get it? Class dismissed now? You have rights. Use them freely. God wanted you to do so. That's why she made you the way you are. The only thing governments can do is take away rights. Hopefully, in limited fashion.

And don't let uneducated Slashdotters (or, in all likelihood, industry trolls) ever tell you otherwise.

Re:Correction

[Tuoqui]

Fortunately Shakespeare is public domain having been written before what was it 1920...

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees? Maybe in the US, but where I live if you have a problem like that you're on your own.

I attended a course where the professor loved to make students fail at his exam - easy, he just had to ask for things he didn't explain until the student fails to answer correctly.

That year, 6 students over 50 got the pass mark, everybody else failed (you can take the exam 5 times a year here).

I failed too, and I was really pissed off. The following year, I read 5 books on the subject and all his articles - I got my pass mark too (while I deserved a good one). Asshole.

That year, the course had 15 students - most of them pissed off students from the year before. Did that made him change his attitude towards his students? No. You need to fire those professors, if you're a dick, you can't change.

Re:Correction

[Z00L00K]

Oh sure - but if a professor makes out the rules his/her own way that professor wouldn't be very popular or long-lived when it comes to lecturing.

It's the kind of person that will get a special room in the basement where they can continue to do their research and take on any student that dares to approach.

Re:Correction

[jeepien]

Obligatory warning: I am not a lawyer. :-) Yeah, I guessed that.

Re:Correction

[IKILLEDTROTSKY]

The problem is it doesn't need to stand up in court. They just throw around a few lawsuits and everyone freezes.

Re:Correction

[jeepien]

Rumor had it that David Goodstein was doing the same thing the year I had Freshman Physics at Caltech - there were often filming crews brought in for key lectures (like the day he derived E=mc**2, to a standing ovation ...).

Rumors were right. His ca. 1985 lectures, augmented with voiceovers, live actors, animations, etc., became a classic video series "The Mechanical Universe", that covered Newtonian mechanics, and later augmented to an "... And Beyond" version that added electromagnetism, relativity, and quantum theory.

By now, millions of college and high school students (my students among them) have seen David L. Goodstein, and are still groaning at his puns, and chuckling at the 1980's college "fashions" seen in the lecture hall.

You can view the series at the Annenberg website: http://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html.

Re:Correction

[SL Baur]

Rumors were right. Yeah, I googled it after I posted that.

By now, millions of college and high school students (my students among them) have seen David L. Goodstein, and are still groaning at his puns Heh, like putting Descartes before the course?

You can view the series Thanks for the link, but I already paid $10k+ to see it live the first time.

chuckling at the 1980's college "fashions" seen in the lecture hall. Eek! That would include me! Ur, Caltech students at that time were not exactly among the best dressed students in the University world.

I never had any personal interaction with Dr. Goodstein other than sitting in his lectures, but I do recall that he was perhaps the most entertaining and best lecturer they gave us poor frosh.

Re:Correction

[SL Baur]

Hmm. Missed a comment.

His ca. 1985 lectures, They were filming in the 1980/1981 Physics 1 class, though I don't know how long they were taking footage afterwards. I think that was also the first year they gave him the Freshman Physics class.

Re:Correction

[Jesus_666]

And in mine I saw a university resort to either marking classes taught by "staff" or "accidentally" reversing which professors taught which sections, all to ensure that the students had already committed to their schedule before they stroll into class on the first day to see who will really be teaching them.

That wouldn't work at mine - we decide which classes we officially enroll in about one wonth into the semester. That allows the students to drop classes that aren't what they thought they are or where they don't agree with the lecturer's style. While you could drop a class after enrolling that counts as failure and you only can retry the same class once, so it's good to know whether the class is right for you before enrolling.

Then again, we don't pay per-class tuition but just a global per-semester fee.

Re:Correction

[Axess Denyd]

Wow, you've just reminded me of every reason that I completely and utterly despised college.

Except "Three quarters of the professors have exactly zero understanding of the subject they're supposed to be teaching", but maybe that was just my department at my college.

Re:Correction

[GeffDE]

I would still say it is a right. The part of the quote I did not include did not apply to the clause stating that it is not an infringement to use a copyrighted work for a few uses. Indeed, at every trial, you do need to prove that what you used was fair use; but that is because you have an innate right to fair use, but not to any other type of use unless you reach an agreement with the copyright holder. The court's decision on whether a copyright was infringed hinges on whether the use was fair because fair use is protected explicitly by the Copyright Act, making it a right.

The affirmative defense of fair use is like the affirmative defense of self-defense: you have a right to it, but you still need to prove that your actions were justified. Also, I never said that fair use was only a right; my point was that it is also a defense because it is right.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're right that there is a big debate over whether "fair use" is a right, for the analogous legal idea in Canada ("fair dealing"), there now exists precident at the level of the Supreme Court that users have rights that are in symmetry with copyright holder's rights. Here is a decent summary on wikipedia about fair dealing in Canada. The most relevant bit is this:

"The fair dealing exception, like other exceptions in the Copyright Act, is a user's right. In order to maintain the proper balance between the rights of a copyright owner and users' interests, it must not be interpreted restrictively. ... 'User rights are not just loopholes. Both owner rights and user rights should therefore be given the fair and balanced reading that befits remedial legislation."

I can't argue with that. So, in some countries the legal system seems to be developing the idea that users do have rights under copyright.

As you say, cases have leaned one way or the other depending upon the country and jurisdiction. In some it is strictly a defense.

Re:Correction

[Maximalist]

Shakespeare is in the public domain. No copyright, no monopoly on derivative works, no fair use defense needed.

Re:Correction

[easyTree]

Why is five the maximum score? Also, why cannot we have more than one axis simultaneously?

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Even reselling the notes isn't technically infringement. In '95 I sold my notes to Nittany Notes at Penn State. They, in turn, resold notes to students who missed class. It was great and I got a discount on notes for other classes. Notetakers had to maintain a high GPA to work for the company.

To avoid being sued, there were very specific rules. One was that the professor's words could not be scribed verbatim and figures could not be copies but had to be redrawn. This was, of course, before the web allowed sharing of PowerPoint slides and lecture audio/video. This company has been legally challenged by the University and professors and won every time. They are still around.

This is a really old theme though: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/12/165218

Re:Correction

[iamwahoo2]

But wait a second. Do we believe that everything the professor is presenting is derived from his own research and experience. Most of the time, the professors are presenting lectures and notes that are derived from the course text book in the same fashion that the students are deriving their notes from his lecture or texts. The school is selling access to this lecture. They are no better than the people selling the class notes because they are in the exact same business.

Re:Correction

[guywcole]

If you're going to argue the finer details, let's be clear:

[T]he fair use of a copyrighted work... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall includeâ"

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. So, there are six purposes, all in the (current) statute. You're right that parody is only a judicial construction, but it's not really an addition, just a recognized combination of criticism and comment. And the economic purpose isn't technically a restriction, but just one necessary factor to be considered.

I like how the act is technically ambiguous about which way those factors should weigh (is a for-profit reproduction more fair or not?). I can't imagine something more ambiguous than "consider the nature of the copyrighted work". I especially like how the lawyers run in with case law established before the statute was written to define what it means. Why do we bother writing statutes if they can only mean what the courts already decided? I feel like we could save a lot of time by replacing the U.S.C. with "Title I. What they said. [Points at executive and courts.]".

Re:Correction

[masterzora]

I'd like to see which ones are trimmed as "fair-use violations". I'm a fairly active contributer on-and-off, and I usually see them trimmed as being too cumbersome and more information than needed rather than as fair-use violations....

Re:Correction

[FailedTheTuringTest]

A studio wouldn't attempt to sue a reviewer who published a review -- that's the "criticism" purpose which is expressly permitted in copyright law. However, if the "review" went beyond a plot summary and critique of the movie, and included a verbatim record of everything that was said (i.e. if it looked like what you and I would recognise as a script) then you can be sure the studio would sue, and win. It would be up to the court to decide whether a particular case crossed the blurry line between synopsis and script.

A similar distinction exists for public speeches. No-one would sue a newspaper for reporting a summary of a speech and quoting a few key phrases, but publishing an entire speech word for word might be actionable, depending on the circumstances and if the speech-maker saw a benefit in pursuing it. The estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, for example, holds copyright to King's "I have a dream" speech and has sued to protect it.

These might be taken as precedents when considering a lecture. The concepts and ideas communicated are not copyrightable, but the form of expression of them is, so I could imagine a court deciding that lecture notes that summarise the ideas in a lecture wouldn't violate copyright, but that a transcript of the lecture would.

The fact that the professor's lecture is derived from the textbook is irrelevant. The professor is allowed to do that because copyright law explicitly allows copying for education and criticism. The professor can even distribute photocopies of articles and book chapters for the entire class -- in the UK educational institutions pay fees to the Copyright Licensing Agency for permission to make copies of copyrighted works for students registered in their courses, and I suppose something similar probably exists in the USA. But students are not in the same position. Students are not allowed to make and distribute a derivative work from the textbook, or photocopy and distribute chapters of a book. Students can do these things for the purpose of personal use and study, but they do not have permission to distribute those personal-use copies, either for free or for profit.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether this professor's arrangement constitutes a blatant conflict of interest or not, this is what I'm getting at: There is a very good reason why Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money for teaching.

It must be nice to have the luxury of feeling that way about other people's livelihood, knowing it will have no impact on your own.

-- Your friendly neighborhood graduate student, teaching a class and working 60 hours a week for 20K/year, for love of the subject...

(Not that I'm complaining, exactly, obviously I chose to be where I am, but then to have someone come along and make snarky comments about the fact that I'm paid for teaching, especially when I see precious little of the actual tuition from the class, is kind of annoying. Keep in mind that most professors could be making more money for fewer hours of work if they had just stopped after a master's degree and gone into industry, and that they are smart enough to realize this, and chose their current profession anyway.)

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, people could learn from you. In fact, if you learn to actually reproduce in person the information - i.e. to teach it - you could end up teaching the same class! You could become a professor yourself! The horror! What ever will we do if knowledge doesn't die out with its discoverer or legally-approved successor!

(Note: possession of the opinion motivating this post is copyright infringement. Use of this viewpoint can be licensed for $500/head or $50/argument.)

Re:Correction

[Ralconte]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Plot contains a few examples, and the bulk of the discussion.

Re:Correction

[jeepien]

They were filming in the 1980/1981 Physics 1 class, though I don't know how long they were taking footage afterwards.

The earliest copyright date I saw was 1985, but that might have been a recompilation of the earlier material with the "...And Beyond" stuff.

It's possible they used lecture footage from one year, and then took their time in post-production. They staged historical vignettes with actors playing Galileo, Newton (young and old), Keppler, Leibnitz, et al., and then-modern settings such as a boat full of drunks lost at sea (Vectors) and Chalky's Billiard Parlor (Momentum).

Apart from the clothing, the "modern" scenes naturally look the most dated. The Coast-Guard radar sets and the Cal-Tech linear accelerator control room look like museum pieces, with physical analog meters, nixie tube readouts, actual push-button switches, and nothing recognizable as a computer anywhere in sight.

But he did use a laser to sight his dart gun for the Shoot-the-Monkey demonstration. Hi tech!

add tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Yougottabekiddingme

Offically gone too far

[timmarhy]

The end game to all this will be copyright being abolished due to it being rendered unworkable.

Re:Offically gone too far

[Anonymous Coward]

The end game to all this will be copyright being abolished due to it being rendered unworkable. The only thing that will happen to copyright is to make it even more restrictive. Look at the complete and utter failure that the War On Drugs is. It does nothing but give more power to the government and destroying lives and freedom, while doing absolutely nothing to meet it's intended goal of stopping drug use.

Re:Offically gone too far

[mrbluze]

The end game to all this will be copyright being abolished due to it being rendered unworkable.

It seems that in addition to death and taxes that copyright infringement is the third of the certainties everyone will encounter during their lives.

This is really turning into a war between the greedy and the needy.

Re:Offically gone too far

[Breakfast Pants]

You are correct sir. However, I don't think it will come from a lecture notes case, but rather from an email forwarding case: anytime you forward a email from someone to someone, without explicit permission, you are violating copyright (at least in the 'States, where everything automatically gets a copyright unless it is explicitly disclaimed).

Re:Offically gone too far

[Anonymous Coward]

Alas it seems that "unworkability" doesn't prove much of a hindrance to most forms of insanity.

Re:Offically gone too far

[Oligonicella]

So you are in favor of allowing large corporations to simply take whatever they see that they like, reproduce it in mass and swamp the little guy out of any living?

Re:Offically gone too far

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put an artificial value on your imaginary property and expect to make a living from it, why, yes, better prepare to fight the big guys for it. The little guy gets swamped out by big corporations anyway, with complex copyrights even more.

Re:Offically gone too far

[tepples]

This is really turning into a war between the greedy and the needy. What isn't? The history of the world is the history of class conflict.

Fair use

[mathnerd314]

Wouldn't it be considered fair use since it's for educational purposes?

Re:Fair use

[Brian Gordon]

Teachers have that right, not students.

Re:Fair use

[aeflash]

It seems like the professor was upset with people buying lecture notes, and just played the "zomg copyright infringement" card in a feeble attempt to get people to stop.

Re:Fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

The students have fair use because they are using it for educational purposes. The companies re-selling the notes, however, are not using it for educational purposes but for profit-making.

Re:Fair use

[muindaur]

Actually students do have that right. Fair use allows students to use quotes from copyrighted books in papers, a clip from a movie, or use a clip from a song in a presentation if it pertains to the research that's presented to a class.

Re:Fair use

[piojo]

Teachers have that right, not students. You say that as though "fair use" were well defined. If there's one thing slashdot has taught me, it's that there are several factors that go into determining whether something is fair use, and there's really no way to make a definitive judgement about it (unless you're... um, a judge).

I'm sure there are circumstances where a student could be considered an educator (if they are a tutor, for instance).

I believe that if an employer pays an employee to produce a work, by convention, the employer owns the copyright. I'm really curious whether teaching falls under this scenario. It seems like at the very least, the student (the client, the one paying for a service) should be entitled to a non-exclusive right to use class materials (produced by the teacher for the class) for any purpose... but I really don't know. In this case, I wonder if the teacher sold or gave rights to multiple parties in a way he shouldn't have?

Re:Fair use

[hcmtnbiker]

Not exactly....

Copyright Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. Classroom notes easily fall under that. If someone didnt show up for a class your notes could effectively teach them the material. Or it could fall under research which you are sharing with the fellow student. It will be fun to see how this plays out, but I cannot imagine the teacher winning this case.

Re:Fair use

[CastrTroy]

I wonder if the students could be sued for copyright infringement for writing something down on an exam the the professor said during the class. Think of what they are saying. They are saying you are not allowed to write down what the professor is saying, or I guess, summaries of that. So you probably wouldn't be allowed to write stuff down after you left the class. And oh, yeah, you wouldn't be able to write out the answers on the exam if it required writing something that the professor talked about in one of the classes.

Re:Fair use

[CastrTroy]

I can not imagine somebody would want to be a teacher, and at the same time, try to stop their students from taking notes. I think this story missed april fools by a few days.

Re:Fair use

[sixsixtysix]

what if the companies are student-run, to learn how to make money?

Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking stupid. That's all I have to say

Re:Yeah...

[kramulous]

I was just about to take a swipe at the mods for modding you to hell for what is basically an insightful comment. But then I realised that I read at -1.

Hey wait a minute!

[Dunbal]

The TEACHER is the one who should have to sign the EULA, since after all I am paying HIM.

Re:Hey wait a minute!

[BorgCopyeditor]

No. You're paying the university, which has the right to accept or reject you and limit your behavior in various ways or for various reasons having to do with its overarching education mission. Don't like it? Try hiring a professor all on your lonesome.

Re:Hey wait a minute!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did a game company or music label sign your EULA, you pay them.

Re:Hey wait a minute!

[jonberling]

Agreed! The student's should pressure the school to drop him as a professor. If that doesn't work, then they should try to convince other students to avoid his classes. Maybe then Dr. Bozo would get the hint that his students are his customers. And acting like the RIAA doesn't work.

Re:Hey wait a minute!

[jonberling]

Hmm. Maybe a better anaogly is: try getting together with 30 other students and hiring a professor as a group? Still, a more reasonable solution would be to address your grievance to the schools administration (they are usually very accommodating). If that fails then there is more then one school in Florida.

Re:Hey wait a minute!

[Anonymous Coward]

If that fails then there is more then one school in Florida.

Hopefully one that teaches proof-reading.

Who cares, really?

[crowbarsarefornerdyg]

So what if a shill ^H^H^H^H^H paid student takes notes and gives them to the publisher. Unless you're distributing the notes YOU took, how the hell are they going to know that you wrote down similar information from the same class?

Re:Who cares, really?

[crowbarsarefornerdyg]

Nevermind. I know this is Slashdot, and most people don't actually RTFA, and I posted my previous comment before doing so. Ahh well, chalk it up to lack of caffeine and/or nicotine in my bloodstream.

a tough call.

[metamechanical]

The answer is simple:

Boycott his class. "Wildlife Issues in the New Millennium" sounds replaceable to me.

Re:a tough call.

[Hercynium]

I agree, but I'd like to play devil's advocate, because this professor may have a 'valid' case, despite being an ass who doesn't deserve to teach.

An analogy: Let's posit that I have just attended an 'all-hands' meeting where I work and the owner has some interesting news about what the company is about to do.

Just because what is said is distributed openly to all attending, we are not allowed to re-distribute that information outside the company. If the owner then takes that same information and sends it to the newspaper, I *still* have no right to distribute it on my own.

If this information makes him rich, guess what... I'm still poor. If he orders that all copies be immediately returned or destroyed, I am bound by copyright to comply. The information is entrusted to me for uses which the owner defines at his whim.

People can argue that a University lecture simply does not have the same rules, but let me make some comparisons. There is an exchange of money - the student pays for the privilege to attend, and use the information learned in lectures to obtain a degree. The professor is paid to distribute information to the students for said purpose.

At this point I'm getting tired and I'm just going to continue by spouting my semi-organized musings on this topic of which I know nothing canonical.

Yes, I'm bored and drunk.

If there is a contract between the University and the professor giving the professor complete ownership and rights to any information he/she passes on to students, then the professor may have a case. His case could further be propped up if a University lecture is legally considered a private forum, like the hypothetical company meeting.

Furthermore, if there is a contract between the University and the student binding him or her to use information from lectures only for the purpose of passing the course, that gives the professor further support for legal action.

(BTW, I don't remember ever signing such an agreement in school - explicit OR implicit - does anybody??)

Granted, I think that selling your notes (and buying other people's notes as a substitute for attending class) is morally dishonest, but shouldn't be criminal. This stems from my opinion that despite the financial exchanges between University, student, and professor, a University lecture exists for the distribution of information that should be publicly available. Please note, however, I also believe that a professor should be able to reserve the right to block attendance to his/her lectures as he/she sees fit, at least to the extent that University policy would allow. The arseholes hopefully would be discovered quickly and when students begin dropping those classes, perhaps would be ousted... on second thought, universities do really stupid things backing their faculty sometimes...

SO... have I fanned the flames of a possible debate? Will Richard Stallman beat down my door? Discuss.

Re:a tough call.

[schon]

Just because what is said is distributed openly to all attending, we are not allowed to re-distribute that information outside the company. What does that have to do with copyright?

You are so wrong on so many levels it's hart to know where to begin correcting you.

First of all, what is said in a meeting is not subject to copyright - if you write down your interpretation, that written transcript (if it's subject to copyright at all - see below) is copyrighted by you (unless you have a clause in your employment contract stating that your employer owns all creative works you produce during working hours - however you could just write it down after work and be safe.)

Second, facts (which would cover 99.9% of what was said at such a meeting) are not subject to copyright, so copyright wouldn't apply there either.

Now, if what is said in the meeting is a trade secret, then you might be forbidden from disclosing it, but copyright *still* wouldn't be applicable. Also, if what is said pertains to your company's stock, it might be considered insider information, which might also forbid you from profiting from it - but there is still nothing regarding copyright that would stop you.

Copyright covers *copying* - not facts someone tells you. It's not "fact-right" or "information-right", it's copyright.

No notes?

[dws90]

If this lawsuit succeeds, does that mean students won't have to take notes anymore?

This may be the first fair use lawsuit where college students actually support the person suing!

Re:No notes?

[CastrTroy]

I'm not sure where you went to school, but most students I know actually wanted to take notes. So they could, oh, I don't know, study from them and pass the exams. This isn't grade 9. If you're going to university, you should be taking notes. Personally, I didn't take a lot of notes, as I felt I learned more by just listening. But I was sure to copy down anything that looked really useful, or at least a list of important topics so I could read about them in the text afterwards.

Re:No notes?

[T23M]

If only that were beneficial to the students...

Re:No notes?

[Arancaytar]

Uh, bear with my ignorant optimism here, but I thought that along with the majority of college students attend lectures to learn, not to sleep.

Ridiculous

[Princess Aurora]

This is pretty ridiculous. If the professor wants to protect his copyright, then he shouldn't be putting the material up on the blackboard for everyone to freely see.

Last time I checked, the point of going to class is to get notes and learn new material. If you are forbidden to take notes, why go? All the material from any class can be found in a textbook somewhere--and most college students can read on their own. Basically, the professor is telling you "Just buy my book," at which point the lectures themselves become almost pointless--one can stay home and just read the book, since you can't write anything down on your own, your lecture notes are the book. Furthermore, if you can't take your own notes, why pay for the class? Textbooks are cheap. Just buy it and read it.

This professor is probably tenured, which is fortunate for him, since pulling a stunt like this is probably a one-way track to getting denied tenure.

Re:Ridiculous

[coren2000]

It's not his material. As an employee of the school his work at the school belongs to the school.

Re:Ridiculous

[Princess Aurora]

That's not wholly true. A professor can write a textbook based on his own lecture notes and the school he teaches at will have no claim to that material. Patents for research done at a particular university will be owned by the researcher, not the professor, etc. Basically, the work professors do remains their property because if it didn't, universities wouldn't ever be able to get anyone to work for them because professors are fairly attached to things they spend years developing. Anyway, I screwed up and didn't understand the article. I thought the professor was selling the notes through this company, not some renegade company selling a new version of Cliffs Notes.

Re:Ridiculous

[The -e**(i*pi)]

In my school, North Carolina State University, you can be kicked out for preparing abstracts/transcripts of lectures (sounds like notes to me, and since i'm not the judge they can pick what it means) to sell to other students.

http://www.ncsu.edu/stud_affairs/osc/AIpage/cheatingpolicy.html

Re:Ridiculous

[westlake]

All the material from any class can be found in a textbook somewhere

I'll take it as given that you have never attended a lecture or audited a course taught by a firs-rate teacher.

Re:Ridiculous

[CastrTroy]

I took a course on assembly programming. The prof spent more than 1 lecture reading sections from the text which was basically a listing of the instruction set, and the definitions of the instructions. He wouldn't show us how to combine the instructions into useful programs. No, he would simply just read the instruction and it's definitiion straight out of the text, and then continue on with the next instruction. One of the worst classes I ever took. But the labs were kind of interesting.

Re:Ridiculous

[Princess Aurora]

I'm a 3rd year graduate student, and I most certainly have attended great lectures. The material is found somewhere--sometimes in a research paper or other publication if it's cutting edge. I've certainly never heard of a professor hording knowledge and keeping something ONLY in their own lecture, which is what you seem to suggest. If a professor presents something, it'll be published somewhere (or about to be published). If it's completely their own, then it'll be their own publication.

Re:Ridiculous

[Princess Aurora]

I'm not sure what you're going for. If you mean to say, "People who just read the book are bad lectures," yes that's the case, but "textbook somewhere" doesn't necessarily mean that there's one book that contains EVERYTHING the professor says. However, if the professor is presenting good information, then someone else somewhere will have written it as well (or maybe the professor himself in his own book or published paper). Maybe it would take 17 books to contain everything that the professors says, but all the facts are out there somewhere.

Re:Ridiculous

[aztektum]

Last I checked, in most cases, students pay to take the class. Hence his "notes" on the blackboard aren't free to begin with.

Re:Ridiculous

[QuantumG]

Copyright is ridiculous.

Re:Ridiculous

[Solandri]

This is pretty ridiculous. If the professor wants to protect his copyright, then he shouldn't be putting the material up on the blackboard for everyone to freely see.

Last time I checked, the point of going to class is to get notes and learn new material. If you are forbidden to take notes, why go?

You're thinking of trade secrets. The whole point of copyright is to allow the copyright holder to disseminate his work in whatever manner he sees fit. If the professor wishes to share his lecture with students in a class but not with a company wanting to distribute it as an ebook, that is his prerogative. In other words, just because the professor consented to students copying his work for their own use, that does not mean he also granted the students (or the ebook company) the right to redistribute it.

What's the difference with the *IAA? As far as I know, only the most extreme elements of the anti-*IAA movement believe copyright should be abolished. Most believe copyright is useful, but the pendulum has swung too far in favor of copyright holders. For the professor's actions to parallel the *IAA, he would have to be filing lawsuits against random students and ebook distributors in a fishing expedition. Instead, he's doing exactly what everyone here has been asking of the *IAA - track down through legal means exactly who is doing the infringing, and file suit against them.

Re:Ridiculous

[westlake]

I've certainly never heard of a professor hording knowledge and keeping something ONLY in their own lecture, which is what you seem to suggest.

There is a profound difference between knowledge and understanding.

You may know the facts, or at least think you do. But there is no engagement, no passion, in an encounter with a textbook.

Re:Ridiculous

[Princess Aurora]

I misunderstood the article. I thought that he was selling his notes through this company, and making sure that no one else could take notes. That's not what's happening. I read the abstract, kinda skimmed over the article, and got tangled up in the part about how a completely different not-related-to-absolutely-anything-in-the-article company sells the professor's e-books.

Re:Ridiculous

[Princess Aurora]

The point is that if someone has a completely unique idea on, say, why the American Revolution occurred--some new understanding of the events that led to it--he wouldn't keep it to himself and put it only in his own lecture. He'd certainly try to publish it somehow--unless he thought it weren't good enough to get out there, but then why would he teach that idea? If he couldn't find anyone willing to publish it, meaning no one in the academic community supports it (thinks its interesting, or has merit), then how good can it really be?

I didn't mean to say that a book can replace a discussion. Rather, every piece of information or understanding can be found somewhere, or will be found somewhere soon (pending publications). Finding it is a different matter (this is why we have lectures and discussions in the first place).

Of course, the real problem is that our discussion here started from my misunderstanding of the article (thanks, abstract!).

Re:Ridiculous

[SeaFox]

This is pretty ridiculous. If the professor wants to protect his copyright, then he shouldn't be putting the material up on the blackboard for everyone to freely see.

I'd just argue that since I paid tuition to take the class, I've already paid for my notes, so if I'm not allowed to take any, I should get a copy of the ones the publishing company is making for free.

Re:Ridiculous

[oldhack]

Dude, you're one pompous ass.

Re:Ridiculous

[eggnoglatte]

So? All you paid for is access to the information, not the right to redistribute, especially commercially. This is like selling counterfeit CDs, and damn right the prof has the right to stop it.

Re:Ridiculous

[westlake]

Dude, you're one pompous ass.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

Re:Ridiculous

[harlows_monkeys]

Last time I checked, the point of going to class is to get notes and learn new material. If you are forbidden to take notes, why go?

Have you considered actually reading the story?

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

At my university, the student union would recruit a course reporter from every course. The course reporter gets a token reward for their troubles. Their task apparently used to be to take quality lecture notes, which the student union would sell to students at the cost of copying.

However, in my time, the professors, concerned with the quality of the notes, would typically have prepared the lecture notes themselves. They just handed their notes to the course reporter, who carried them to the student union to be copied and collected their reward (some free lecture notes).

Re:Ridiculous

[Tuoqui]

Wow the entire thing is set up in the way 'Whatever the Professor wants, the Professor gets'... Sounds like you need to get your student body involved in altering some of those rules. It looks like if the guy pulled this off in your school he'd be successful if he called them all on cheating.

Re:Ridiculous

[Brother Phil]

Basically, he sells lecture notes through a company, and another company is buying notes from his students and selling them. He says that students taking notes is fair use, but another company selling those notes is infringement.

Re:Ridiculous

[SanityInAnarchy]

That link kind of disproves your point:

Six readily accessible chapters were later compiled into a book entitled Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, and six more in Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time.

Sounds like a textbook to me.

Look -- a lecture, almost by definition, is not engagement, it's presentation, and a presentation can simply be duplicated. Anything good in a lecture is either already published, or likely to be published soon. For that matter, sometimes lectures are recorded, and effectively become a textbook themselves -- or at least another reference material.

Again: A lecture is not engagement. A conversation is engagement. Some professors choose to have a conversation and call it a lecture, which is probably a better way of teaching, and cannot be duplicated. There are certainly other ways of teaching. While I am mostly self-taught, Wikipedia is no substitute for an actual classroom -- but the lectures themselves, at least, contain nothing in the way of facts or understanding which cannot be found elsewhere, even in print.

And I'm sorry you can't find passion in textbooks or papers -- you must not have found very good ones, then. There are at least two separate books I've read on programming which got me excited about it, taught me to see it as an art, and fed my imagination with possibilities -- and that's on programming, even introductory programming, which you would expect to be a dry subject.

Re:Ridiculous

[Prune]

Reat the fucking article! The suit is not to prevent anyone from taking notes, but to stop the commercial sale of notes derived from his lectures. Totally different. That your post, which addresses a fantastical situation having nothing to do with the case at hand simply shows that no one on this site bothers to read an article before commenting on it.

Re:Ridiculous

[Prune]

"sounds like notes to me" Huh? It's actually a proper, precise description of the concept that people refer to as "lecture notes" than the actual term "lecture notes", because the latter could refer to various things such as the professor own notes, or notes you took during the lecture about your daydreams, etc. But saying "sounds like notes to me" means that you see their phrase as less clear, which is strange, to say the least.

Re:Ridiculous

[iamwahoo2]

That is because they do not want you to help someone else cheat. They are not claiming it is because you are infringing copyright.

Re:Ridiculous

[oldhack]

I'd bet Feynman would think you're a pompous ass also if he saw your comments. Imagine him saying it in thick Brooklyn Jewish accent. ;-) You gotta chill, man.

Publish it yourself on the web

[Anonymous Coward]

The real solution to companies like that is to put your class notes up on the web so they're always available to your students. I don't know why more professors don't do that.

Re:Publish it yourself on the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Many wish to encourage lecture attendance, and I'm all for that. Those who don't care either way though have lots of options, including in some cases even putting lecture audio or video on the class website (I heart these professors :-).

Re:Publish it yourself on the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Lecture attendance is so overrated. :) I put all my lecture notes and other materials on the web. This makes it easier for students who are legitimately absent to get access to what they missed and I'm not bothered by the others as long as they don't come and complain that they're doing badly in the class.

Keep one thing in mind

[GoodbyeBlueSky1]

A lawsuit can claim *anything*, it's only a problem if a judge/jury upholds a stupid claim. Inevitably there will be comments below about how bad the U.S. legal system is, but despite my (many) misgivings about this system I just don't see this case having any legs whatsoever. It's patently ridiculous, pun intended.

However, this does not mean we all can't gnash our teeth over the story. Just remember to direct it at the dickhead who initiated this suit. I hope every U of Florida student that sees this avoids anything this guy teaches. I also hope that every single author cited in his class texts (which I'm sure were all written by him, the norm for college courses) sues HIM for profiting from their ideas.

this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[pbhj]

RTFA, please.

The first sentence of the abstract is plain wrong.

Taking notes from the lecturer on a course you've paid for (or the tax payer, depending on your location, has) is fine. You create a derivative of the lecturers copyright but it's either allowed contractually or fair use for educational purposes (again depending on jurisdiction).

Making a "slavish" copy of the lecturers notes and then selling them is not allowed and impinges on the ability of the lecturer to sell his own work for publication. In this case I don't think it's just infringement it's also immoral.

It's pretty straight forward.

Now if the company were giving away copies of the notes then it might be interesting ...

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[QuantumG]

Helping your fellow students and asking for compensation for the work you did and they couldn't be bothered to do is immoral? Man, what a fucked up world you live in.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[MightyYar]

I'm pretty much with you except on the "immoral" statement. I don't see how copyright has anything to do with morality. People who copied others' works were not immoral before copyright was invented, and they are not immoral now.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[LaskoVortex]

Making a "slavish" copy of the lecturers notes and then selling them is not allowed and impinges on the ability of the lecturer to sell his own work for publication.

You do realize the difference between what a professor might publish (original research) and what he might teach in class (standard knowledge in a field), don't you? Publishing the former would be considered a serious breach of ethics (though it does not stop some scientists from doing this). Publishing the latter is what the professor is already doing by making notes in the first place. Barring a professor's presenting information in some brilliant new way, he is probably just rehashing his notes from the courses he took in college or is rehashing them from a book. Either way, neither could be remotely considered original research. If he is losing money by someone publishing his notes, he needs to reexamine his priorities as an educator.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[radl33t]

Wow, you are a total clown. This is a company ripping off someone's copyrighted work. It is not about students helping students. It is about a quick buck at the expense of someone else's work. Your opinion is astonishing, moreso if you actually RTFA.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[QuantumG]

The law is the law dude, equal protection under it and all that. You can't have one law for students and another for companies. Copyright law is stupid, end of story. Oh, and don't call me names, child.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[Pinckney]

I'd like to back the parent up, but add some details. From the article

"Professor Moulton used an overhead projector in class and would write out the high points of the lecture and that's what Einstein's Notes' note-taker would write down," says Sullivan. If, as this seems to suggest, Einstein Notes prints the high points as they were written by Moulton, it would seem to be copyright infringement. Furthermore,

A less exotic copyright claim in the lawsuit alleges that Einstein's Notes also copied and reprinted hundreds of test prep questions included in the professor's text book and in his course software. I don't know if a test prep question can be copyrighted, but the presentation of hundreds together almost certainly can be.
Furthermore, to Moulton's credit, his attorney says "[Personal notes are] absolutely fair use."
On the other hand, I'm not sure how his lectures are not Work for Hire. I don't think Moulton can claim to be the copyright holder, although UF probably could.
IANAL. Personally, I don't believe in copyright as it exists (primarily due to its persistence and the danger inherent in any Fair Use), but this does seem like a fairly straightforward case that even I can support. The publishers are infringing his (or the school's) copyright by reprinting elements of his lectures verbatim. I do not like the implication that lecture notes are derivative works though. The factual information and the opinions expressed by the lecturer are not subject to copyright.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[Colonel Korn]

QuantumG: The point, which was pointed out in many posts before yours, is that the company is reselling the material. That obviously puts it in a different legal context. Furthermore, OF COURSE you can have one law for students and another for companies. A vast subset of law works exactly like that.

Before getting all worked up, stop for a second and think about what you're saying. radl33t called you a clown, but that didn't mean he wasn't exactly correct and that you weren't patently incorrect.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[rizzo420]

How is publishing his own original research a breach of ethics? Professors everywhere already do just that. Most do it in journals related to their field, while some may also publish a book or something similar based on that research.

And since when are all college courses simply "standard knowledge in a field"? Clearly, you have not taken any higher level college courses beyond the requirements for a bachelors degree. Professors teaching a doctorate, or sometimes even masters, level course most definitely teach based on their own original research. I've even taken undergraduate courses with professors who taught based on their own research to a certain degree. In that case, it was only to enhance the "standard knowledge", but in many graduate level courses, it's the original research that is being taught.

I will say that I do agree that this whole copyrighting of lecture notes is a bit crazy, but only when you consider that some entrepreneurial student might try to sell their lecture notes from this class, which I consider to be legally questionable in the first place, regardless of whether or not a professor is doing it himself.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[DustyShadow]

This is a company ripping off someone's copyrighted work. Well, the first question in any copyright case is: "Is there a copyright?" There's an easy answer in this case to that question. I'll let you guess.

There can be no "ripping off" when you have no copyright.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[LaskoVortex]

How is publishing his own original research a breach of ethics?

Its not. Either you misunderstood, or I wasn't too clear. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I meant that publishing someone else's original research is a breach of ethics.

Clearly, you have not taken any higher level college courses beyond the requirements for a bachelors degree.

I have a BS, MA, & PhD. Last count, I had about 12 research articles. My 3 first author papers have an average citation rate higher than the average Nature Journal article. I know a thing or two about the business of which I speak.

Professors teaching a doctorate, or sometimes even masters, level course most definitely teach based on their own original research.

In a classroom setting, this doesn't happen and is irresponsible at the very least. The research needs to be peer reviewed before its taught in a classroom. Your version of ethics may vary, but no one I know would do such a thing. Perhaps you are confusing teacher-student relationships with advisor-student. The latter do not occur in a classroom.

I will say that I do agree that this whole copyrighting of lecture notes is a bit crazy, but only when you consider that some entrepreneurial student might try to sell their lecture notes from this class, which I consider to be legally questionable in the first place, regardless of whether or not a professor is doing it himself.

I can't parse this, so I don't know whether to insult you or simply not respond. I'm a slashdotter, so my instinct is to argue. I have taught college level classes. If a student took my notes, polished them up to the point that they could be sold, sold them for a profit, and proved to me that she did it, I'd bump her final grade up a letter if she didn't already have an A.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[QuantumG]

Furthermore, OF COURSE you can have one law for students and another for companies. No, you can't. You can have one law for non-commercial use and another for commercial use, but if the student is selling their notes then they're exactly the same, under the protection of the law, as a company.

What's so hard about that?

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[Frequency Domain]

Well, the first question in any copyright case is: "Is there a copyright?" There's an easy answer in this case to that question. I'll let you guess.

There can be no "ripping off" when you have no copyright.

Are you trying to infer that there's no copyright if there's not a copyright registration? You're wrong if that's what you think. Copyright, unlike patents, resides with the author from the moment of creation. Registration makes it easier to establish which of two duplicate works was the primal one, but isn't required if you can produce some other sort of evidence. For instance, I was told by a campus lawyer once that sending a copy of my work to myself via registered mail and then leaving the envelope sealed, so a judge could open it with their own hands, would be just as effective as registering a copyright and more secure if there was something I didn't yet want to divulge to the rest of the world. The only thing I've explicitly registered copyright on was my PhD thesis, but I've signed over my copyright to lots of articles to get them published since then without formally registering my original copyright in the first place. I also have a whole pile of copyright transfers in my file cabinet from the time when I edited a conference proceedings.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[QuantumG]

This form of argument: are you saying X, if so you're dead wrong [continue with long diatribe] is the kind of shit politicians do. If you were speaking to the guy in person he would have cut you off after the pause for the comma because he didn't say that and he is not saying that. You're putting words in his mouth.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[eggnoglatte]

OK, I'll take a "guess": yes, there is a copyright. EVERY work of authorship (including lecture notes and whatever) is AUTOMATICALLY copyrighted, although whether the author enforces copyright is his/her own business. That is the law, deal with it.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[DustyShadow]

Ok, I'll admit I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if you are one but I am a law student and I have a strong interest in copyright law and have taken courses on it. My opinion probably counts more than yours on this topic.

His lecture is most likely highly factual. Facts are not granted copyright protection. Thus, no copyright.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[eggnoglatte]

Well, I've taken a few courses on copyright law myself, and what is more, I've had to go through with defending some copyright of my own work (with the help of a lawyer, of course). These guys are copying down, word for word, the contents of the overhead transparencies. Wanna a bet whether that is a copyright violation?

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[radl33t]

You are a total clown.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[radl33t]

You are a clown. What exactly did he say? Ignorant nonsense. Hey look, you have something in common! honk, honk

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[AK Marc]

OK, I'll take a "guess": yes, there is a copyright. EVERY work of authorship (including lecture notes and whatever) is AUTOMATICALLY copyrighted, although whether the author enforces copyright is his/her own business. That is the law, deal with it.

Is a transcpript copyrighted? If so, then by the person that spoke the words, or the person that wrote them down. I'm not aware of copyright applying to spoken words. If you get a blind person to take down all they hear (blind so there is no question of whether he got anything from the writing on the blackboard or any other written material in class) is the result of that copyrighted by the professor? What if the professor was reading from a script? What if he had no written script? And not every authorship is copyrighted. You can't copyright facts, only creative works (or creative arrangements of facts). Everyone says this is simple, then gives their opinion (the opposite of someone that says it is as simple). Yet no one can even agree on what the issues are.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[houghi]

I got payed doing others homework by not getting a beating.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[QuantumG]

stop trying to apply common sense to copyright, it doesn't work like that.

Once something is "fixed", it is automatically copyrighted. If the copyright owner finds another work that is sufficiently similar to his own and he decided to sue, then it doesn't matter how the material got from the original to the copy.. about the only way you can show it wasn't copied was to prove that it was created before the copyright owner's work was, or find some third work that was created before the copyright owner's work and show that you had copied from that. And unless that third work is in the public domain or under a permissive license, you're just opening yourself up to another lawsuit.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

His lecture is most likely highly factual. Facts are not granted copyright protection.

But the way a set of facts is presented can be protected by copyright.

Neither you nor the guy you're arguing with knows enough about this case to decide which party is in the right.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[DustyShadow]

But when there are only a few ways of organizing a certain set of facts, you won't be able to copyright it. Read the Feist case. Most subjects taught in schools really only a have a minimal number of ways of being organized.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[iamwahoo2]

How are the student notes anymore a derivative work than the professors' lecture notes which are usually derived from a text book? Why is it wrong for the notes company to sell these notes but the schools can make money by selling access to the professors "derived works"?

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[Dire Bonobo]

Professors teaching a doctorate, or sometimes even masters, level course most definitely teach based on their own original research.

In a classroom setting, this doesn't happen and is irresponsible at the very least. The research needs to be peer reviewed before its taught in a classroom.

Nobody in my field agrees with you.

In upper-level classes, it's expected that profs will talk about their own research to a certain extent, both to attract students who are interested in working on it and to excite students with knowledge and ideas that are cutting edge. Accordingly, they'll talk about their current research projects, which typically will include a mix of published and unpublished work.

If the work is good - and it's not that hard to tell that about your own work - it doesn't really matter if you talk about it before it's peer-reviewed to students in a seminar-style course. They're there to get a taste for the field, learn some cool things, and get their hands dirty in cutting-edge projects of their own. Giving them a peek at research that's taking shape isn't "irresponsible", it's a valuable piece of moving students from thinking about assignments to thinking about research.

If a student took my notes, polished them up to the point that they could be sold, sold them for a profit, and proved to me that she did it, I'd bump her final grade up a letter if she didn't already have an A.

That's your choice to make; don't presume you have the right to make it for anyone else.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[pbhj]

>>> "asking for compensation for the work you did and they couldn't be bothered to do"

Part of passing a course is being bothered to do the work ... so you're not helping really.

Also you're taking the notes anyway. I have no problem with passing your notes on to be read by someone else. Mass-reproduction of your notes again is fine, *provided* they are not a copy of the lecturers notes.

For example if you use the lecturers material to write _your_own_notes_, ie they use other sources include other material excerpts and have additional original material. That there is fine.

That however is not what the subject of the post is.

The world I live in is "fucked up" as you describe but I consider myself to be one of the least fucked-up bits. Students that think they should repay their professors by taking their hard work and exploiting it to make a fast buck (whether it's legal or not) I consider to be in one of the more fucked-up bits.

FWIW

If you want to help your fellow students that much arrange a study group and you can go over the professors notes and include example problems from other sources and add your own illustrations and analogies, etc., to aid the learning process.

If you do that you'll realise why the professor deserves to be paid for his hard work.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[pbhj]

If a student took my notes, polished them up to the point that they could be sold, sold them for a profit, and proved to me that she did it, I'd bump her final grade up a letter if she didn't already have an A. How about if that student was then given your job because they know the course better than you ... their notes are better after all.

Wouldn't you want it to be acknowledged that it was your work originally and all she did was shine it up.

In copyright terms, that means asserting your "moral rights". You choose like Dire Bonobo says whether you feel you should be financially recompensed or not.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[pbhj]

Most of my lecturers at Uni wrote at least one of the text books we were using. That's true in Maths, Physics, Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology courses I took.

You're not allowed to copy out the text book and reprint it as a new work. Why then should you be able to do so, just because they spoke about that same material?

Copyright terms are a separate issue entirely and I know this is no defence against those that disagree completely with compensating producers of creative works.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[iamwahoo2]

We are talking about notes here. Nobody is copying anything down verbatim. When I was in school, I almost never wrote a full sentence when taking notes. I also took notes from the text books just like the professors did. There is no difference. If the student notes are considered derived works and protected by copyrights, then so is 99% of the stuff that the professor is presenting.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[pbhj]

Er, did you read my post. Sure those profs derived the work from the facts they presented but the presentation, compilation, description and what-have-you is theirs - they wrote the books that the lecture is based on.

If you want to argue that all text-book level science is derivative and can't be copyrighted then that's a different question.

Also, often at Uni the pace of lectures was such that all I could do was near verbatim copy, particularly things like QFT as it took a couple of days to understand the content of that one hour enough that you'd know what is and is not so important - most of it being formulas, you can't exactly study a proof if you only have one lemma and the final equation or you only noted one axiom, etc..

Sure there are other text books, but they present a different course of study. There was probably only one course where I couldn't actually have studied the subject had it not been for the use of the prof's book, however.

But the fact that there are other presentations doesn't mean that I can use any particular one how I see fit.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[iamwahoo2]

Well, if at Fantasy University, where every professor is coming up with their own textbook and unique presentation of formulas and writes out their entire lecture in their unique presentation format which has to be copied down by the students verbatim in order to pass the test. Then I grant you, he may have a basis for copyright.

But in the real world, where the rest of us went to school, the professor presented his lecture and wrote only the important formulas and facts on the board. The formulas were, of course, verbatim or nearly verbatim from the text book, which he did not write because, like most profs, he does not have the time to write a book for every class that he teaches. In this case, there is no basis for copyright. There is no originality, unique ideas, nor unique or artistic presentations.

Notes have been sold for a long time at universities. It is only a problem now because both the prof and the notes publisher are competing for the same market and the prof wants a monopoly. Like so many people out there, he is in it for the max financial gain.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[iamwahoo2]

But that is not really answering the question in relation to the article. If you are lecturing, and I am taking notes, in the method of my own choice. Do you own the copyright for my notes? or do I? I agree with the grandparent. If the notes were made by the student, then if copyright belongs to anybody, it is to the student. It is not a strong enough tie to claim "derivative work".

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[eggnoglatte]

I doesn't matter what you agree with. The law does not differentiate between different forms of copying.

If you take a book, and sell manually re-typed copies, that infringes copyright just as if you had photocopied it. Hell, even if you go to a Brittney Spears concert, write down the score and lyrics, and re-perform the songs commercially, it STILL is a copyright violation.

The notes you take in class are your fair use copies of the original material. You are not allowed to resell them without permission.

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[TheoMurpse]

If you've taken "courses" (plural) on copyright in law school, I'm surprised that you didn't encounter 17 USC 103. Lecture notes, even if purely factual, would still be protected under copyright by virtue of the fact that the creative organization and compilation of otherwise uncopyrightable information is still copyrightable. I learned this in Intro to Intellectual Property my 2L year. Here's another link about compilations of facts and copyrightability.

Jesus, even the most famous case in copyright law, Feist Publ'n, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 488 U.S 340 (1991), para. 8, says so (emphasis added):

This case concerns the interaction of two well-established propositions. The first is that facts are not copyrightable; the other, that compilations of facts generally are.

Doesn't it burn when you assert that your opinion is more valuable than someone else's, and then proceed to be proven wrong by direct citations?

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[TheoMurpse]

Most subjects taught in schools really only a have a minimal number of ways of being organized.

Well, gosh, I guess college textbooks aren't copyrightable, then! Let's get to pirating, fellas!

Re:this is clear infringement for commercial gain

[pbhj]

Who do you think writes the text books?

These are top lecturers at their countries top Uni. I did say "text books" which is perhaps misleading you to think they covered a range of topics. They cover the material for the course.

If you've taught the same material for 10years doesn't it make sense to bind it as a book?

Stephen Read and Crispin Wright (I remember their names cause of the joke, "Read and Wright") wrote a logic book, theirs was published and is translated in 4 languages I think. Most weren't published outside the Uni.

Last points .. in this Fantasy University (I've clearly created in my mind) if their course content is so generic why would anyone want to copy it? If it's generic they can write their own content entirely unrelated to the course presentation and sell that? And how did the lecturers at Fantasy Uni' get such high gradings for their teaching standard (Uni's in the UK are, or at least were, inspected by a government sponsored agency) compared to other Uni's - surely they just all teach the same thing in the same way?

--
PS: I've never seen this sort of thing in the UK, but then I attended Uni rather than paying someone else to do it for me.

you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[wizardforce]

If I remember correctly, facts can not be copyrighted. Copyright implies that there is some creative work being done that should be compensated. Just as a list of telephone numbers can not be copyrighted, so shouldn't a list of facts.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative works can be copyrighted, and many lectures can be considered creative works. This makes less sense for some subjects, especially math and the sciences (and especially since in many of these cases the professors draw their lecture notes directly from lessons in the textbook), but even in those cases there is some creative effort that goes into, e.g., the structure of the lecture or the techniques used. And in the humanities, where lecture content is less about "facts" and more about ideas, this kind of creative lecture content is much more prevalent.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[lbft]

Whilst that agrees with my understanding, here in Australia a telco successfully sued out of existence a company that was selling a database of telephone numbers that they typed in manually from the phone book. If I remember correctly the argument was that there was creative work in the assembly of the list.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you've never created a lecture before.

By your argument, are all non-fictional works lists of facts that can't be copyright protected?

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[wizardforce]

I see you've never created a lecture before.

To claim that the lecture is a creative work they're going to have to show evidence of this. Being a biochem major, the vast majority of the lectures I go to on a daily basis are little more than a list of facts.

By your argument, are all non-fictional works lists of facts that can't be copyright protected?

If they are indeed no more than a list of facts then they shouldn't be copyrightable period. I do think that the presentation of facts in a creative way is most likely patentable but facts themselves are not.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[Anonymous Coward]

*copyright able not patentable stupid me.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[Princess Aurora]

Being a biochem major, the vast majority of the lectures I go to on a daily basis are little more than a list of facts. Are there not textbooks on biochemistry? Usually, those are nothing more than collections of facts, so they can't be copyrighted?

A lecture is usually a collection of facts, but (if it's not a "read from text" lecture) it is from a variety of sources and assembled in a slightly different manner from the originals. That makes it similar to a research paper, like the ones you had to write in high school. I'm sure you wouldn't claim that the papers you've written didn't require some creativity and wouldn't be worthy of consideration for copyright because you just collected facts, right?

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[jonberling]

I've never taken a biochemistry class before, and I'm trying to keep it that way. However, if a textbook is full of nothing but facts then the the context of the book is NOT copyrightable. However, the page layout is. In other words: if you distributed a text file that contained all of the same information in the textbook, you'd probably be OK. But if you photo copied the book and sold it on e-Bay you'd be in trouble.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[david_thornley]

When I was teaching, I did my best to find some creative way to present things. It wasn't always successful, and sometimes I didn't have any good ideas, but I put a lot more creative work into my introductory C courses than just reading aloud from K&R.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[commodoresloat]

Who said anything about copyrighting facts? Or lecturing about telephone numbers? A lecture is generally something more than a list of facts or numbers. I don't think I would want to attend a class were the lectures consisted only of the professor reciting data without any analysis, discussion, context, or without putting the work into some sort of expressive form, which is what copyright law protects.

Re:you shouldn't be able to copyright facts

[Iamthecheese]

Okay! lets make a list of facts...

The first four bytes of Windows Vista are 10110011 00000010 11100101 11110000
The second four bytes are 00000000 00000000 11011000 00000000

Different from

The first words of his lecture were, "Hi and welcome to my class."

how?

You probably already sign a EULA. . .

[MistaE]

. . . when you enroll in your institution. The question should be, rather, when universities will put these absurd provisions in your contract before even allowing you to sign up for classes.

Re:You probably already sign a EULA. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currently a graduate student and have spent years both working at and taking courses at college. There is no contract at a college beyond course syllabi spelling out the expectations of each course and the requirements for a degree. Note-taking is considered de riguer and if any professor told me otherwise, I (and I suspect most of my classmates) would stand up, walk out of class, and march straight to the Dean's office to make very loud objections.

Re:You probably already sign a EULA. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother with copying the lecture notes? The TESTS are where it's at. I was once in an MBA finance class where 90% of the students had copies of all the various permutations of the professor's tests. Guess that might help explain the mentality driving the development of "exotic" loan products and other economic ills we now face.

Education is fair, but who's notes are they?

[gnutoo]

Fair use does include educational purposes, which is why professors are free to copy sections of text into "their" notes. These notes are sold exclusively to students. That might be covered. The whole point of the educational exemption was to make sure students get the best notes possible.

The other issue is who really owns the notes. I can be sure that I own my homework solutions and essays even though they are "derived" from my notes. My lecture notes are something else but they are generally as variable as homework is. No two people's notebooks ever look alike. There are differences in layout and emphasis. More astute students will put in things from their texts and other sources. We're not talking about Gilbert and Sullivan productions here where the words and notes must be perfect, we're talking about an interpretation of a lecture.

Re:Education is fair, but who's notes are they?

[demeteloaf]

From the article, it looks like the professor has registered a copyright for the lecture, and uses transparencies to show the main points of the lecture. The notes sold copy the transparencies verbatim and are sold for profit. While it may not be 100% clear cut, in my mind I probably side with the professor in this case.

Re:Education is fair, but who's notes are they?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I can be sure that I own my homework solutions and essays even though they are "derived" from my notes.

Depends what you're talking about, but in the general case, I'm not sure I agree.

I frequently read documentation for the tools I use, particularly the languages. Should my programs be considered derivative works of ruby-doc.org?

Of course, it also begs the question of whether the documentation is itself derivative of the tools...

I'd say it depends entirely on whether it's a full-on derivative work, or merely something which relies on, borrows from, quotes, etc. Unfortunately, I don't know of a clear definition there, and I'm not sure there is one, legally.

Re:Education is fair, but who's notes are they?

[eldepeche]

Sounds to me like the professor should patent a method for summarising a lecture and a method for putting a lecture summary on a transparency.

Redistribution of Facts

[fishthegeek]

There are only so many ways that one can say "Beavers build dams." Given that notes are brief statements of fact by definition I can not see how the notes can be considered derivative as they are nothing more than statements of fact in most cases. There might be a small case if the entire lecture were recorded verbatim and then sold as such but there isn't a college student within a gazillion miles that will write that much that fast. This seems analogous to the evening news where simply repeating facts regardless of the source represents no copyright infringement.
My favorite quote from TFA is

But James Sullivan, Faulkner Press' attorney, says the suit isn't about money for the professors, it's about protecting its intellectual property. followed at the end of the article by

The lawsuit seeks any profits made off of the Moulton study guides.

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[BorgCopyeditor]

Given that notes are brief statements of fact by definition I can not see how the notes can be considered derivative as they are nothing more than statements of fact in most cases. LOMFLMAO. So, I studied for 15 years and practiced teaching for 10 so that I could robotically enunciate mere facts? "Mercury is a liquid at room temperature. Bears hibernate. Aristotle was not Belgian. etc. etc. etc." What do you think a professor is? A fact-beacon? Beaming out facts to illuminate naturally occurring ambient students?

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[SideshowBob]

No he didn't say that, he said lecture notes are.

And by the way, did you personally invent or discover everything that you teach? If not, then how can you lay claim to ownership of the intellectual property? Maybe you have some license payments headed your way...

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[slimjim8094]

Congratulations, you're a teacher. But the facts that you're giving as notes are - by virtue of them being notes - facts. I can't infringe upon 'mv^2' or 'm*a'

Now if this was about his analysis of the facts, he might (but probably doesn't) have a case.

A teacher does more than 'robotically enunciate mere facts' - they help you understand the 'why' of facts and how they're useful. Why the net force of a constant-velocity object is 0 (but I'm pushing it!). Why the Russians acted the way they did in the 1940's. Why Shakespeare uses a certain word over another (his intended nuance). Why e^(i*pi)=-1.

Lectures don't have much of that. That's why you study, do the assigned problems, and talk to the prof.

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Bears hibernate.

If you went to school to teach about bears you need to go back (or ask for a rebate). They do not hibernate.

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[DustyShadow]

LOMFLMAO. So, I studied for 15 years and practiced teaching for 10 so that I could robotically enunciate mere facts? Yes.

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[jonberling]

Bad teachers are :) Trust me, I've had too many of those!

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Given that notes are brief statements of fact by definition [...]

That's the key flawed assumption you're making. Notes aren't necessarily that; notes can in fact be word-by-word transcriptions of what the lecturer said. There are many books out there that are nothing other than edited student notes of lectures; Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale is one, as are many of Wittgenstein's posthumous books.

There are very many fine lines here; the general sort of question is to what extent the notes in question reflect the knowledge taught by the lectures, versus to what extent they reflect the specific form that the lecture took. Notes run all the spectrum from "brief statements of fact" to, again, verbatim transcription. Also, your assumption that the content of lectures is "statements of facts" is wrong. Whether the content of a lecture is factual or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is the right balance between the lecturer's intellectual property rights over the use of their original work, versus the students' free speech rights to discuss or critique it. And guess what? It tends to hinge on details, not generalities.

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[fishthegeek]

Yes I agree that a student is capable of writing a reflection of the knowledge of the instructor. The instructor that taught was also at one time a student too whose instructor did that for him. The fact that knowledge as expressed as a fact is NOT copyrightable seems to have escaped you. Only the specific presentation of that knowledge is copyrightable. Secondly I did not assume anything about lecutres being "statement of facts" the notes usually are. I'm a highschool teacher and I can absolutely promise that my lectures aren't just rote fact repetition. I acknowledge that the knowledge I have is directly releated to the learning that other people have done along with my own discoveries added along. I teach to make high quality IT people - not to make an extra buck off of the knowledge that I'm already being paid to distribute. You might like splitting hairs and in this case I think the hair is decidedly too thin to split. The lecturer is being paid at the public expense since he is at a public institution. The taxpayers have offered and he has agreed to distribute his knowledge for the purpose of educating. Your claim that the lecture may or not be factual is complete void of substance because the lecture isn't at the root of the debate - the students notes are and like it or not they are more than likely factual tidbits expected to be on a test.

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[Dire Bonobo]

Given that notes are brief statements of fact by definition I can not see how the notes can be considered derivative as they are nothing more than statements of fact in most cases.

If lecture notes are nothing more than statements of fact, they're either bad notes or from a bad lecture.

More effort and creativity goes into preparing (good) lectures and handouts than you seem to believe. If it was all mechanical and prescribed by the material, why do most people find lectures more illuminating than textbooks? Why are some textbooks bad and others good?

The situation is not as simplistic as you suggest.

My favorite quote from TFA is

The lawsuit seeks to dissuade lawbreakers by taking (allegedly-)illegally-gained profit away; how is this surprising or shady?

Re:Redistribution of Facts

[fishthegeek]

Uh. No. I mentioned in an earlier response that I am a teacher. Not to brag but I am an award winning one at that. You do not seem to understand the purpose of the notes else you wouldn't focus on the lecture. Notes are there to highlight important things that will likely be assessed at a later point. Facts and such are those things that are assessed.

Textbooks aren't very illuminating because textbooks can not paraphrase or realize that the reader isn't getting a good understanding. That is why we have lectures... to paraphrase and assess understanding as well as many other things such as adding to the text.

I never claimed anything mechanical about lecturing at all - you probably didn't RTFA and apparently didn't read my post either because your assessment of my post is wildly inaccurate based on what I actually said. Think about it for just a second - if the notes contained volumes of things that aren't likely to be assessed than that is a sign of poor note taking skills not a poor lecture.

We need an accounting major here...

[NotQuiteReal]

The lawsuit seeks any profits made off of the Moulton study guides

Seems like a little Hollywood Accounting could easily show that there is no profit for that particular guide...

Rights to shakespear

[phorm]

Out of curiosity, does anyone actually have the rights to Shakespeare's work (in its original form). Somehow I doubt he's collecting any royalties on them at this point.

Re:Rights to shakespear

[AnyoneEB]

No, in fact, all of his works can be found on Project Gutenberg, although you may notice a good number of minor differences from the versions you have seen before because any published edition has copyrighted touch-ups to the spelling and formatting.

Re:Rights to shakespear

[Anonymous Coward]

Shakespeare's ghost does. Under new copyright laws, copyright is the creator's life + 50 years + creator's afterlife.

Re:Rights to shakespear

[westlake]

Out of curiosity, does anyone actually have the rights to Shakespeare's work (in its original form).

The "original form" doesn't exist.

What we have are incomplete and sometimes contradictory readings based on the manuscripts that found their way into print.

Shakespeare himself was perfectly capable of cutting and splicing scenes that ran too long or got in the way of a successful bit of stage business that appealed to an audience.

His plays will always have to be edited for reading and performance.

Re:Rights to shakespear

[Anonymous Coward]

To the best of my knowledge, the works themselves are not under any form of copyright. Some scholars have suggested that fact as a reason why printed versions of his plays became very popular very quickly - they could be printed without worrying about copyright.

Re:Rights to shakespear

[westlake]

To the best of my knowledge, the works themselves are not under any form of copyright. Some scholars have suggested that fact as a reason why printed versions of his plays became very popular very quickly - they could be printed without worrying about copyright.

The First Folio was entered into the Stationer's Register in November of 1623. For all practical purposes, a printer's guild copyright, backed by the crown. The First Folio

I think you'll discover rather broad sweeps of English and American history where Shakespeare's plays are read because they cannot be performed - at least not in the uncensored originals.

Re:Rights to shakespear

[Panoptes]

William Shakespeare himself was a victim of piracy by Elizabethan and Jacobean printers, who would send their agents to see his plays in order to memorize and reproduce them for illicit reproduction and sale. An excellent account of this practice may be found in "Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates" by Alfred W Pollard. Plus ca change...

"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[capologist]

Why does a professor have a copyright on his lectures, anyway?

When I was working for a software developer and wrote code, I didn't get a copyright on the code. My employer owns the code the code that I wrote.

The same way my employer paid me to create code, the school pays the professor to create and deliver lectures.

If anybody owns a copyright on those lectures, shouldn't it be the school?

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[Princess Aurora]

No, work at a university is very different from the usual work-product for companies. Tenure and professors owning their own material is designed to prevent abuse from universities. Because the purpose of universities is the advancement of knowledge and not commercial gain (like your code example), there needs to be some protection afforded to those doing the actual advancement.

An example. A professor does great research at a particular university. Not being tenured yet, the university doesn't have to pay that person much. Now, say the university feels that this person is unlikely to repeat his results and denies him tenure. If the university were to own the work, they could just cut everyone loose, stifling the incentive for professors to work toward great results. Furthermore, the university could prevent that professor from presenting the work to others or otherwise publishing, thus making the professor equivalent to a post-doc to other universities--meaning the time spent at that university went to waste completely. Having professors own their own work affords protection for the untenured, as well as the tenured--a university could put a gag on things they don't like if they owned the work, or otherwise prevent its publication.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[proxima]

Why does a professor have a copyright on his lectures, anyway?

If anybody owns a copyright on those lectures, shouldn't it be the school?

This is an interesting difference between academia and the business (i.e. "real") world. I suspect that it comes from a combination of considerations and cultural aspects:

1.) Professors do research, and submit that research to journals for publication. Those journals often require the professor to sign over the copyright of the paper before publication. It's easier for professors to do that if they have the copyright in the first place.

2.) What about lectures? Some (a few) professors make a ton of money (or little money and a lot of recognition, in some cases) by selling their books. These books start out as lecture notes, typically, especially at the graduate level. Professor's salaries don't vary that much, so this is one way in which the better/harder working/better known professors can earn relatively more pay. That keeps them at a university that can't afford to pay them what they'd get if they quit and just published their textbooks, which is good for the university.

3.) A big consideration is probably the culture that a professor's work is not so much for the university itself, in the sense that professors move between universities all the time and take their research/lab/lecture notes with them. Would you honestly expect professors to have to somehow re-write their lecture notes upon moving to a different university? It just doesn't happen.

4.) Tenured faculty have a fair bit of power over university policies, if they collectively put their minds to something. While works created by staff and non-faculty might be the automatic property of the university, faculty (in the U.S. at least) typically get the copyright for much of what they create.

It's tempting to draw parallels between programming and research/lecture notes. The cultures, though, are quite different. In general, academics share their resources pretty openly, at least up until the point it becomes a textbook. To the extent that academics write code, it often isn't under an explicit license at all (which can be inconvenient if you want to properly include it in something for redistribution).

Patents are another issue altogether, and one where the university stands to make a great deal of money. I'm not at all familiar with the general breakdown of rights about those, but it seems that both the inventors and the university get a cut in many cases.

So what's up with this professor? It sounds like somebody is peeved that his students aren't attending class and would rather pay somebody to come in and take notes for them. Many good professors do the exact opposite and post class notes online, though they may not include quite everything that's worth getting from a lecture.

If notes were a substitute for a good lecture, most of us would learn by buying the best notes from the best professor in the world on a subject (which is only sometimes available as a textbook). On the other hand, a bad lecture is worse than a decent set of written notes. The solution is not to sue them, but to improve your lectures!

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[Princess Aurora]

I forgot to add that your resume in an academic setting and your resume in a business setting are very different. In business, when you go from one job to the next, they will not ask you to provide samples of everything you worked on at the former job. A general list of duties and responsibilities comprises your resume from a job, not an exact list of everything you made/worked on while you were there.

In an academic setting, what you did (and often who you did it with) is far more important than where you did it, and it's not impressive to say, "I worked at MIT for 5 years" if you didn't do a single thing worthy of publication while you were there (probably why you're applying for another position ;)). A list of places and general list of what you did doesn't cut it in academic positions--they want to see WHAT you did, how good your work was, directly. Your papers and writings are your resume, not the list of universities you worked at.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[Princess Aurora]

1.) Professors do research, and submit that research to journals for publication. Those journals often require the professor to sign over the copyright of the paper before publication. It's easier for professors to do that if they have the copyright in the first place.

An important part of the professor owning the copyright is the ability to publish. If the university owned the copyright, they could deny permission to publish a particular result. That power would grant universities the right to quash anything they don't like and keep potentially unpopular opinions or research inside--thus doing the exact opposite of advancing knowledge, the goal of the university!

Another thing to add is that if the professor leaves the university for whatever reason, he doesn't have to turn over all his notes that he used to teach classes there. Or if the professor wrote up notes and had them printed for purchase as a self-made textbook for students (like a coursepack--you know what I mean), then leaves, the university doesn't retain the rights to use those notes afterwards unless that professor gives permission, or there was a previous agreement that the professor was writing the notes FOR the university, as far as I know.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[lancejjj]

When I was working for a software developer and wrote code, I didn't get a copyright on the code. My employer owns the code the code that I wrote. That was the deal you made with your employer - common in the software business. They could have let you retain copyright. Remember that employment agreement you signed? It explicitly mentioned that they own all your works that they pay you for (and maybe even more!)

The same way my employer paid me to create code, the school pays the professor to create and deliver lectures. If anybody owns a copyright on those lectures, shouldn't it be the school? It depends on the contract the school has with its professors. In the higher ed world, it is common for the professor to retain the rights to his or her own work. Unlike the software business.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[IKILLEDTROTSKY]

The thing that always strikes me as funny about these kinds of things is that for 99% of the class the prof. is really just repeating what he learned long ago. It's like allot of rich people today saying "you can't mooch off me! I earned everything I have", except their Harvard education and 2 million dollar start up fund daddy gave them.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[mollymoo]

An important part of the professor owning the copyright is the ability to publish. If the university owned the copyright, they could deny permission to publish a particular result. That power would grant universities the right to quash anything they don't like and keep potentially unpopular opinions or research inside--thus doing the exact opposite of advancing knowledge, the goal of the university!

No, no, no, no, no, no. You cannot copyright ideas. They may have a claim on the original paper, even on the data, but they cannot stop a guy walking out and saying "I have discovered that if you do X and Y then Z happens". An NDA might stop them (or rather, give them legal comeback if it happened), but copyright sure as hell can't.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[mollymoo]

Erm, make that "facts and ideas", then it would make more sense.

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[Princess Aurora]

Result = paper. You can't just put out a random result without some sort of formal writeup, which would be subjected to the copyright. :)

Re:"professor's copyrighted lectures"

[mollymoo]

It wouldn't be subject to copyright if you wrote it after you quit.

Knowledge=Power=Money

[AmericanBlarney]

This is why I find much of the academic community to have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. Does the professor have some intellectual property claim to the knowledge? Maybe. Does he have a right to make some money by sharing that knowledge? Certainly. Isn't that what the university salary is for? I think so.

Limited to liberal arts?

[cuantar]

I keep hearing about this sort of nonsense, but I have yet to experience anything even remotely resembling it for myself. I'm a science and math student; maybe it's limited to the liberal arts? I suspect every one of my professors would most likely be opposed to preventing the spread of course material!

Another Money Grab

[kilodelta]

When I did the college thing in the 90's the instructors would put all their notes slides in public folders to do with what you please.

Now the damned profit motive has moved into the classroom.

Definition of "Lecture"

[aegl]

Lecture (noun) : The process by which the notes of the teacher are transformed into the notes of the student without passing through the brain of either.

Re:Definition of "Lecture"

[Anonymous Coward]

Lecture (noun) : The process by which Ahem. Isn't a process a verb?

Freedom of Information

[Egdiroh]

Does Florida have a freedom of information act? The lectures are a work product for the university. This is the university of Florida, which I think makes it a stat university, so the university is the state, and the state (I hope) has no secrets. So the lecture contents can't be secret.

quiz show fail

[BorgCopyeditor]

The same way my employer paid me to create code, the school pays the professor to create and deliver lectures.

Bzzzt. No, I'm sorry, that is not correct, but thank you for playing. The analogy you were looking for was doctor to hospital, doctor ... to ... hospital. We'll be right back with more "Guess The Terms of My Employment" after these messages.

Not neccesarily on fair use

[Todd Knarr]

I don't think the case'll turn on whether taking notes is fair use as on whether or not the student's notes constituted a copy of a protected work. Facts, remember, can't be copyrighted. I can write down stock market quotes and republish them in my own format all day and the source I get them from can't (absent some contract with me) touch me. The prices are facts, not expression. I can't copy their layout and formatting, but the numbers themselves are fine. So the question would be, are a student's notes recording, in their own words with their own formatting and layout having nothing to do with the professor's written lecture papers, the lecture a copy of the professor's work, as opposed to a wholy new work embodying the facts the professor used in his work? I think the simple analogy should convince the judge: "Is a movie review, summarizing the movie in the reviewer's own words and without copying any footage or exact lines from the movie itself, a copy of the movie?". The likely answer to that question is "No.", and the same for the notes.

Re:Not neccesarily on fair use

[mollymoo]

Try this analogy instead: Let's say you make a dramatisation of a historical event into a feature film (movie), you use compound characters, invent scenes to explain background, liven it up with some love interest and generally give it your own emphasis. Is my film which follows exactly the same characters through exactly the same plot and had exactly the same main scenes as your feature film a copyright violation? It is, because it's a copy of your film, not my interpretation of the historical facts.

I don't know the details of this case, but I can accept the notion that there can come a point where the notes are so close to the original lecture that they are a derivative work of that lecture, rather than an original restatement of the knowledge imparted by that lecture.

Information restriction is what they used onslaves

[CrazyJim1]

I'm against everyone who thinks information is property. I give out my ideas freely for people to use them, and I admire people that code things for open source.

Q: Why can't the internet just be one global library?
A: Because people are greedy bastards that want to use information to make money.

Know notes? No!

[Crash Culligan]

dws90: If this lawsuit succeeds, does that mean students won't have to take notes anymore?

Worse, how much credit does a student get if he completely blanks on a test, thereby demonstrating that he's done his civic duty by not remembering someone else's intellectual property?

Wait, the *professor* has a deal?

[Trailer Trash]

I'm missing something. The guy's at work, but he's selling part of his work product to someone else? I could see the university making this sort of a deal, but I'm not sure how the professor can claim rights to the work that the university is paying him for.

I almost hate to say it,

[pitchpipe]

but most college professors suck. If they want to start treating their lectures as "Intellectual Property" I am fine with that, but they better damn well have a lot more "Intellectual" in them before they start calling them that.

Really, what we need is for the best professors to produce video lectures, especially for the subjects that change little from year to year (calculus, etc.) The rest of the professors can do what they want without having to bore us with teaching a subject that they seem to have little interest in, and the graduate students can grade our work and answer our questions.

Things seem to be heading this way, but not fast enough.

Spite

[Morosoph]

I get the impression that the professor wants to penalise those who couldn't make his lecture (and therefore understand his slant). So instead of having a purer skill-based outcome (since all are clued up as to the professor's outlook), insiders are to be preferred over outsiders.

Disgusting

[assertation]

This is disgusting. The professor & the e-book company should be arrested and beaten.

that wat up peepz

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit im glad i didnt' go to school

fast and loose with taxpayer money

[fermion]

The reason that we fund public universities, the reason that we fund public education, is to promote the creation and distribution of knowledge. To distribute such information efficiently, there has to be a minimum of regulation to hinder the efficiency. Likewise, persons nibbling at the public purse cannot be allowed to misuse such funding for personal gain.

This professor is paid to deliver effective lectures to the students. The students and the country has already paid for that service. The action of this professor does not seem to indicate that he is fulfilling this function. First he has created a conflict of interest. He has set up a situation in which he will profit from doing his job badly. If he gives a bad lecture, students will be forced to buy the notes. The professor profit at the expense of the taxpayer and the student money.

When I was in school, professor notes and solutions were in the reserve stack at the library. Some profs were writing books and we were given pre press copies. Some profs had completed books, and we were required to buy, which was perfectly legitimate. What never happened was a prof tying to con me for more money on top of what he had already agreed to be paid as part of his or her contract with the university.

A lot of people talk about the fall of the US educational system. Perhaps the most scary thing is profs being no longer concerned about the education of students, but the pure extraction of profit from the public and private coffers.

Ah

[pitchpipe]

I was modded by a college professor B^)

The Lawyer is a Monster...

[MosesJones]

The lawyer is James Sullivan... where have I heard that before.. ahh yes Monsters Inc. So now it becomes clear, making kids laugh wasn't enough either, now its back to getting Slashdot to scream on mass by attacking fair use.

Smart ploy Sully, smart ploy, it'll get us out of this energy crisis for sure.

twitter again

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to invite all your sockpuppets so they can take lectures with you.

EULA for an Education

[PPH]

The way I read TFA, the lawsuit seeks to prevent an existing practice of students selling their notes to a publisher. That the professor has sought a side deal with another publisher to sell notes isn't what concerns me. At some point, a student should expect the knowledge that they aquire in class to be theirs to use as they see fit in their careers. It appears that this lawsuit seeks to encumber the use that students may place upon this acquired knowledge.

At what point may a student consider this knowledge to be unencumbered by an instructor's or a schools property rights? Or will they have to cut the institution in on any income derived from their education in perpetuity?

Got a couple defenses here for the defendant

[DustyShadow]

TALA (This ain't legal advice)

Defense #1: The work must be fixed for this dude to claim copyright.

17 USC 102(a) - "Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression . . ."

17 USC 101 - ". . . A work is âoecreatedâ when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time . . .

A work is âoefixedâ in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. . . " So. . . If the professor is not either reading from a pre-prepared script or recording his lecture, he cannot claim copyright in it in the first place. This is pretty basic copyright law that students learn in the first day of a copyright course. I'm sure that his lecture is read from his notes but it is unlikely that it is read directly from it and I highly doubt he is recording it (which could be a way of fixing it that would give him copyright in it, assuming that it is copyrightable material.).

Defense #2: Dude probably owns no copyright even if it is fixed.

Facts are not copyrightable. This is even more basic shit that has been said by many courts including the Supreme Court. Assuming this guy is teaching a standard subject, the things he teaches are not owned by him. He cannot seriously try to claim copyright in the history of the United States or the Pythagorean Theorem (I haven't RTFA so I don't know what he teaches). The only possibility for a copyright here is what is called a "thin copyright" which would be in his "organization of the facts." So he's gotta prove that the notes taken by these students are organized EXACTLY as he organized them. And that may not even work. If it is some basic subject where the organization of teaching it is basic, (such as any professor teaching history would start from early then move to later, or any math professor starts at 1+1 then moves to 1+2) then the organization would be so basic as to not warrant any copyright.

So my point is: defendant's motion for summary judgment that cites heavily to Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service is hereby granted.

Re:Got a couple defenses here for the defendant

[argent]

Did you read the article? He claims they copied what he wrote down on overhead projector transparencies.

Re:Got a couple defenses here for the defendant

[DustyShadow]

Did you read my post?

(I haven't RTFA so I don't know what he teaches) My second argument still wins though.

Re:Got a couple defenses here for the defendant

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude teaches 'Wildlife Issues in the New Millennium'

Dude writes down key points on an overhead.

Note-takers for the company being sued write down verbatim what the dude
writes on the overhead, and sells these word-for-word copies for profit, with
a big fat copyright notice on the notes they sell.

Dude probably has a case here...

Great Idea

[porcupine8]

And watch grades plummet. I don't take notes to read them later. I only refer to my notes later in rare classes. I take notes because the act of writing something down helps me remember it - I highlight articles for similar reasons, because it helps me focus, not because I only want to read the highlighted parts later.

Not to mention, it keeps me actively engaged and AWAKE. I don't think I could sit through most lectures without doing something active. Plus, if all of the information needed is in these notes and a student taking notes wouldn't find anything extra to add, what's the point in going to lecture?

And I won't even get started on modern learning theory and the fact that you actively construct knowledge rather than simply absorbing it, and how note-taking (while only a small step in the right direction) can help facilitate that...

Never mind, I RTFA

[porcupine8]

From the summary, I thought that the ebook company was the one paying people to take notes they could then resell. I didn't realize they were suing someone FOR doing that. Still questionable on the suing, but not as completely ludicrous as I thought.

Don't feel too sorry for the notes resellers

[carlzum]

The summary implies this is a fair use issue for students. I'm in no way defending the US copyright system, but this case is about class note resellers. I know at the University of Florida there were several shops that resold class notes, invariably to the students that skipped the lectures and were cramming last minute for exams. Most professors hated that their lecture transcripts were being sold for profit. I think one shop was sued unsuccessfully when I was a student. This looks like another legal maneuver to stop them. I don't see anything in the article that would prevent students from taking notes for personal use or sharing freely with other students.

Nonsense, Work-for-Hire

[friartux]

If tuition was paid, can't the lecture be considered work-for-hire, and thus the shared property of all tuition-paying students?

Furthermore, if the professor draws a paycheck from the university, how does he have the copyright rather than the university? Does he lack standing to legitimately file suit?

And finally, if he's conveying knowledge -- the knowledge cannot be copyrighted, can it? Only the exact expression of it can be, not any notes or works written therefrom. Otherwise every textbook writer out there would be... well, SOL.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I do read too much Groklaw.

Re:Nonsense, Work-for-Hire

[p0tat03]

Nonsense, if I pay the movie theater, does the conveyed performance belong to me? Heck no. The fact that money was exchanged does *not* imply employment.

Facts

[Gyga]

Sorry you can't copyright facts or ideas. As long as the notes aren't copied word for word then they're fair use. If they're word for word then they can be used as personal copies (not sold).

Re:Facts

[argent]

The claim is that the notes WERE copied word for word from what he wrote on the overhead projector.

Re:Facts

[Gyga]

What did he write? If he is like my teacher then it is just a list of subjects.
examples:
my history teacher's last overhead (first bit): "WW1 (the Great War), machine guns, "he kept us out of the war", Woodrow wilson, 19th admendment, Republicans not divided anymore, booker t washington, ..."
calculus: "definite intergrals, indefinite intergrals, trig intergrals, L' hopital's rule, mean value therom, f' f'' f''' relationships"
I don't think any of these lists could be copyrighted.
TFA just says he "used an overhead projector in class and would write out the high points of the lecture" Doesn't seem like it would be much of the lecture he is writing out.

Re:Information restriction is what they used onsla

[westlake]

I'm against everyone who thinks information is property.

Then you won't mind if I "borrow" your bank card. The balance on your account is, after all, nothing more than an entry in a ledger.

No, I think it's fair use.

[Anonymous Coward]

A) It talks about them selling the notes in the summary, so I don't understand that.
B) Fair use isn't off the table just because money is made.

Copyright is not all-encompassing. You cannot copyright facts to begin with. Educational uses are given lots of leeway. People get blinded by money, but that does NOT make a use unfair.

Ultimately, it comes down to which outweigh which. I can understand that you have an opinion whereby the money aspect outweighs the rest, but I respectfully disagree. I think that the transformative nature (in that the notes are being made more available to those who couldn't or didn't take them) is what people pay for, rather than the information in them in and of itself.

Every idea is built on another, with precious few exceptions. Everyone wants to say "they used my idea to make money!", but that's not always the whole story. Clearly, people are doing something with those notes that makes them worth paying for, or they wouldn't be bought. They're definitely not a replacement for going to lectures (which is what the professor is being paid for). So just because they're getting a piece of the pie doesn't mean they're getting more than their fair share.

But that's just me, and I'm no lawyer.

Don't argue, this is completely fair.

[explodingspleen]

I don't know how many of you ever saw Dr. Starret try to write the lowercase Xi on the board, but it definitely qualifies as a unique artistic creation, as would pretty much anything else he wrote. Now, if they were to print a typeset version in a recognizable font, then he would be fully justified in prosecuting them under the DMCA for circumventing a copy protection measure.

Meh

[Guppy06]

A college professor trying to sell an ebook of notes and students trying to sell theirs. Why, exactly, must college be both the center and the promoter of so much bullshit?

School is for learning? Not money?

[TheNucleon]

Good grief. School is for learning, not money. There, I said it. The copyright implications of this are just a symptom of the wrong focus on all sides.

The over-the-top monetization of the university experience is apparent:

Students treat college as a necessary evil that will lead them to jobs (therefore, money).
Universities are charging excessive, through-the-roof tuitions which will take students years to pay back.
Students are buying notes instead of sitting in the classroom taking the notes.
Other people are sitting there taking notes with the express purpose of selling them.
A semester's textbooks can cost more than the starving student's automobile.
Now we have professors filing lawsuits to protect the dollar value of their lecture IP.

After all this, universities have the gall to phone up alumni for donations. Many years later, my wife still can't shake the calls from her alma mater. They tracked us down in ANOTHER STATE.

Disappointing.

Lecture note infringment?

[CFBMoo1]

From Kid: Mommy I can't get my homework done. I didn't have the money to pay for class notes.

*FLUSH*

That's the sound of whats left of education in America going down the toilet.

There is a simple solution for the professor.

[memorycardfull]

If the professor posted detailed and complete annotations for all lectures online, there would be no market for someone else to sell the material. The university and the professor are already being paid very well to disseminate the information. If some else can make a living by supplementing the course material, it just says to me that the student didn't get what they paid for in the first place. This is especially true if students can substitute lecture notes for attending the lectures and still perform well in the class. If it is possible to read a book and study a text outline of the professor's focus on the material and still do as well as others who attended the lectures, then what is the thousands of dollars in tuition paying for? The part where the prof takes something fascinating and makes it mind-numbingly dull for 50 minutes a day?

"Teaching the Students" != Students Selling Notes

[Chibi Merrow]

I happen to have been one of those "employees", until just recently, and I was involved in a minor scandal regarding republishing of lecture notes. I was a Research Assistant involved in helping teach a Senior/Graduate level computer graphics course. As part of the course, we provided PDFs of the lecture notes and slides on the University's Moodle site for students to use as study aids. Two of the students decided they were going to get rich, started a commercial, advertisement supported website to host lecture notes, and took the PDFs from the Moodle site for our class and put them on there.

There's three obvious problems with this:

1) The files are marked "not for distribution outside of class"
2) The files are available freely to anyone actually enrolled in the class, making a mirror pointless (especially one which makes the mirrorer money...)
3) The slides, in addition to having copyrighted works of the professor and RAs teaching the class, include excerpts from textbooks and supplementary materials from the publishers, reproduction of which is legal in limited (ie: academic) circumstances by a Professor but expressly forbidden for commercial use. The distribution of them on the Moodle site was done only for the benefit of the students, but if the publisher were to find these materials being distributed from a commercial site and track their origin back to us, we could be held liable.

In the case of us (the faculty) being held liable, we'd have no choice but to just NOT distribute any of these materials, which just screws over the students in the end (I'd like to see them pass the exam without them!). In the end, the two students involved were pointed to the notices on Moodle (and the syllabus) not to distribute the slides/notes and given a choice whether to remove the files from their site or receive an F... Thankfully they chose to remove the files.

So you want to sell your lecture notes? Fine, but make sure they're YOU'RE lecture notes, not just a copy of what the Professor's provided... A better option would be to use something like Moodle inside your University to share notes between fellow classmates... If your University doesn't have something like Moodle/Blackboard available for students, get on their case.

this school you speak of doesn't exist

[commodoresloat]

...and most college students can read on their own wow, what university do you go to? I want to teach there.

Textbooks are cheap. Now I know you're making this school up!

How detailed is this 'book'?

[Anonymous Coward]

A REAL textbook, ie, one that is loaded with details over its hundreds of pages will contian MUCH more information than the professor's one semester course. There is a reason a professor will spend years writing a good textbook. If this professor's book is a bunch of fluff, like I suspect it is, then the student's notes might be superior learning aids than his book.

$20,000 later and. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't do what I want with what I learn from the school? I thought that was what I was buying: knowledge that I can use profitably in the future. If I pay some assholes $20,000 a year to hear them talk, don't be mad if I try to make a couple hundred bucks back in the form of good note-taking.

Nittany Notes

[jdc180]

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think this was brought up and shot down with Nittany Notes at Penn State.

Department of Redundancy Department

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but Guppy06 just fucking said that, 27 minutes ago.

Try reading the thread before you post in it, you redundant douche.

You know, in an UPS or other back-up power supply, redundancy is great. On Slashdot, redundancy just makes you a douche.

**** 27 minutes later ****

By the way, redundancy isn't so great. It makes you a douche. Isn't it great that redundancy isn't great? It makes you a douche.

Re:Department of Redundancy Department

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but Guppy06 just fucking said that, 27 minutes ago.

Try reading the thread before you post in it, you redundant douche.

You know, in an UPS or other back-up power supply, redundancy is great. On Slashdot, redundancy just makes you a douche.

**** 27 minutes later ****

By the way, redundancy isn't so great. It makes you a douche. Isn't it great that redundancy isn't great? It makes you a douche.

OT, but relevant...

[Captain Sarcastic]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but there are cases where college materials can be protected by copyright law.

Tests done for schools (law boards, EIT (engineer-in-training) tests, medical and nursing assessments, and so forth) are often done by companies that hold copyright on their materials... to the point that, when I took my EIT, I had to turn in all of my notes and scratch paper along with the bubble sheet. At the time, I thought it was silly.

Then, later, I got a job working for a company that provides online tests (along with the old paper-and-pencil ones) for a limited variety of schools. One of the things I had to do was write code that disabled the right-click button so that the students couldn't just do a copy-and-paste of the content and provide it to all of their classmattes. The company had invested a considerable sum to develop the tests, and didn't want people either copying the questions for study or for less-than-scrupulous professors getting ready-made exam material.

When we licensed the schools to use our tests, part of the agreement was that they would also act to protect our investment, and there were a few students who were drop-kicked from their classes when we found that, due to a careless professor's scheduling, they had managed to take our tests about 100 times.

Now, I think that this professor is going way overboard with the lawsuit, but I wonder if the next step is going to be these students suing my old company by claiming that our copyrighted works were no longer protected because they'd been transmitted over the Internet.

Disabled Students...

[xclr8r]

Have notes prepared for them by students paid for taking notes at my college. The college actively recruits note takers for this purpose. Just because the disabled student doesn't go to class doesn't mean that the notes are destroyed the dissabled student still gets them.

Defense #1 was addressed in TFA

[Andyvan]

The article addressed the "fixed" requirement. Apparently the lectures were recorded, and the lecturer wrote on the overheard transparencies.

Just passing along the facts, I have no idea if that's sufficient.

-- Andyvan

The administration won't like this

[Mr. Freeman]

I wonder how long it will be until the college tells the professor that he can either allow his students to take notes, or find somewhere else to work and fund his research.

I can't imagine that the students are happy with a "no notes" rule, and I'm sure the college will be receiving complaints left, right, and center about this.

UF and Professor Profit

[Snowspinner]

It is worth noting, UF has been critical of the practice of profiting off of course materials for some time - and Moulton has been expressly targetted for criticism. This is an older article on the situation.

As someone who teaches at UF, the opportunities to distribute material to students for free or without profiting are numerous - there are multiple places that will print coursepacks within walking distance of the University, and the library provides an excellent electronic reserves system over which digital materials can be distributed. The only reason to distribute course notes for $50-100 electronically, as Professor Moulton does, is to make money off of your students.

Other professors at UF, as described in the article, offer $30 e-workbooks of extra credit through companies they own - in other words, directly allowing students the option of paying the professor for higher grades.

The depth of conflict of interest involved here is disgusting. Regardless of the legal merits of the case (I am not a lawyer and do not know), UF should forbid this sort of naked profiteering off of students.

Re:"Teaching the Students" != Students Selling Not

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU'RE lecture notes No! You're lecture notes! But, if you want to compare my lecture notes with yours, I'd be happy to.

some infringement is more equal than others

[drfireman]

I don't know that there's a real good guy in this story, but I'm going to nominate the lawyer, Sullivan, who in a paragraph that tragically has no direct quote, describes student note-taking as "protected infringement" (I'm quoting the article, possibly not Sullivan). I liked this phrase a lot, but I wanted to google it, in case it turns out to be some kind of standard legalese. No, it seems like Sullivan just about has it all to himself, if he in fact said it.

Re:some infringement is more equal than others

[TheoMurpse]

I agree. "Protected infringement" is a more artful way of saying "fair use."

Good points, but ...

[celtic_hackr]

If you RTFA, then you'd know that the professor wrote the book and has a copyright on it, but also copyrighted the lectures, which are recorded, and the "official" notes, which are also for sale to the students. The students take notes of the the notes/lecture, and sell them to the company who then package it and sell it. To me this seems like entrapment by the professor, for no other purpose than to keep students from selling notes they take of his classes.

The solution here is simple ... don't take any of his classes.

It's a vile business he's up to, I wonder if he used to work for SCO? He may just have a case here, but only because he's intentionally baiting and trying to prevent others from selling notes they take of his classes. Which hopefully are protected. This is a tough one, common sense says this is protected use, by careful reading of copyright law and precedent, but the professor seems to be trying to push to the limit the restriction of fair use by making and selling his own notes. So this case really hinges on whether he has the exclusive right to notes of his classes, simply by making his own notes to sell. If he wins, it could be disastrous for companies that make supplemental material for college and grade school classes.

So... like... yeah... well...

[iminplaya]

what?

"Students are allowed to take notes..."

[dturk]

An article about this topic came up in the University of Texas newspaper recently.

http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2008/03/20/University/Student.Sites.May.Violate.Ut.Rules-3276620.shtml

I absolutely couldn't believe it. The best quote: "Students are allowed to take notes for two reasons: Notes are available and helpful to recall information, and some students keep their notes as a part of their lifelong journey of obtaining knowledge."

Well, gee, thanks! I sure am glad the University is allowing me to take notes.

What the HELL?????

[IHC Navistar]

A school is a place of education, NOT A PROFESSOR'S BUSINESS!

By accepting his salary, the professor already has given up his rights to his lessons, since the institution has effectively "bought" his lessons/teaching by employing him and paying him for his work.

Additionally, what are professors doing treating their own classrooms as captive-audience MARKETPLACES?! Classrooms are where people go because they want to learn, not because they want to pay money to get into a class AND pay the professor money to buy a textbook he wrote so they can complete the class.

If you ask me, allowing professors to force students to shell out more cash so they can complete the course by buying materiels produced by the professor, for the explicit purpose of earning additional money for the professor, IS A MAJOR CONFLICT OF INTEREST, and NOT in the best interest, or spirit of the students or institution. Students already pay to be taught, which means, they have the RIGHTS TO THE LESSON AND ITS CONTENT, regardless of the order it is in or how detailed their notes are. If I sat in a class that I didn't pay enrollment fees for, the school has every right to remove that person from the classroom. But, if I sit in a class that I have already PAID for, then each student has the legal right to be in the class, the rights to the lecture, and the rights to copy the content for their own uses.

1) Professor owns rights to lesson
2) Professor sells rights to lesson by accepting payment or compensation from the University for the teaching of the lessons.
3) University "buys" lessons from professors by paying professors a salary, wages, or other non-monetary compensation.
4) Students buy the rights to the lesson by enrolloing in the class and paying enrollment/university fees to the University, which now owns the rights to the lesson
5) Since students have paid for the lesson, they have the right to now do as they please with the lesson's content.

The copyrights, if any, travel like this:

1) Professor owns rights to lessons.
2) Professor sells rights to University.
3) University now owns rights to lesson.
4) University sells rights to students.
5) Students now own rights to lesson.
6) Since students now own rights to the lesson, they can do with it as they please.

I would hope somebody files a suit against the schools for breach of contract, breach of confidence, deceptive business practices, fraud, and financial abuse of students by employing/allowing corrupt and slimy professors to take money from students just so they can PASS the class, on top of what the students already paid JUST TO GET INTO IT.

Someone ought to make an example of this scumbag and spike his head onto a fencepost in the midle of campus. I sure won't stop them. Hell, I'd buy the post for them!

Re:What the HELL?????

[freedom_india]

Yup.
The college should sue the professor for using its resources to conduct his business, and get back the money it paid him as salary.
After all when the professor accepted employment at the college, he agreed to seel his services exclusively to the college during the time periods he was at the job in college.
The college has first and sole rights of sale.
And this professor fellow has sold those rights to college.
Doctrine of First Sale dictates the seller cannot resell the same property as it would be double-selling and hence cheating the buyer.
I say the college sue this guy first, get back the money it paid him as salary, and then dismiss for violating his contract.
I would pay my college lawyers to do this.

Who needs lecture notes anyway

[wikinerd]

In 99% of the cases, professors do not teach anything original or new in the class. Whatever they say is usually already included in scientific papers or books. When taking lecture notes you do not need to record everything the professor says, you only need to capture their references to concepts, ideas, discoveries, research, studies, or other identifiable things so that you can know what your professor wants you to know. You then just open your books or search the academic literature and learn what you need to know (and at a much higher level than your classmates, I would say). For example, if during the lecture the professor refers to the OSI model, you write down in your notes "OSI" and then you open Andrew S. Tanenbaum's "Computer Networks" book at your home and find the relevant pages either by memory (if you had previously read the whole book) or the index (under the term OSI, it's actually pages 37-48 in the 4th edition). As simple as that!

Re:Who needs lecture notes anyway

[Dire Bonobo]

In 99% of the cases, professors do not teach anything original or new in the class.

You miss the point of lectures.

People don't go to lectures because that's the only way to learn information; people go to lectures because that's a more effective way to learn information, at least for most people. Most people learn faster and better from having the material presented in a well-thought-out, structured, and consistent manner than they do from reading about it "when they get time" from a book that can't see when they're not getting something and can't respond to questions.

Social pressure isn't the only reason people go to lectures, you know.

There certainly are some people who can learn just as much from textbooks on their own as they can from lectures. Such people are a minority, though, so pushing solutions that work for them isn't going to be helpful to the average student.

What copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't most of the lectures contain "knowledge"? Can a Physics professor claim copyright on Newton's Laws of Motion? No matter how he teaches it?

Let the free market rule...

[Digestromath]

If he wants the profits from a study guide for his class, let the lazy bastard write it himself. He could probably do a better job. Isn't this what the free market is all about?

Florida

[nguy]

Furthermore, the university should be protecting these students by threatening to end the contract.

Hey, this is Florida we're talking about. They had a student thrown in jail and working chain gang duty for two months because he refused to sign over his inventions to the university:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE2D81739F937A25755C0A960958260

Greedy bastards all of them ...

[jopet]

I am used to professors giving out their lecture material for free or just the cost of copying and i am used to students sharing lecture notes for free or just the cost of copying.
All people involved in this are greedy and I am happy that I don't have to be in their class. I hope these people fight for years and spend all their time and money on this pathetic issue.

What you always paid for

[Anonymous Coward]

"If not then what exactly are your tuition bills paying for"

What you always paid for... getting a diploma. Yes, sure, there is an element of learning, but most of the information that you learn in life will not come about from those 4 years at a university. You may not even learn to think clearly at a university.

Pay attention...

[Tastecicles]

There will be a quiz at the end. Permission to take notes for personal use is granted. When I went to college you were pretty much fucked if you didn't take notes, there was so much information flying out from behind the lectern it was impossible to absorb even a tenth of it. You /had/ to take notes just to get ahead of what was expected of you from the assignment. The number of students around me that panicked when their pens ran out boggled the mind. I used an automatic pencil and had at least two spares. Hell, even the lecturers had a box of pencils ready at the door for anyone who happened to forget to bring even one! They knew the score! Fair use be damned, copyrights be double-damned - note-taking is an absolute necessity in a college lecture!

The professor is beyond ridiculous

[Orange Crush]

So, a company takes notes and sells them to students. Clever students figure they can do better and do the same. Just because they're making monetary gains off of this, it's somehow wrong. God forbid they start using the skills and knowledge they learned in college at their jobs. When I got a bonus for putting together some great financial projections for my boss, do I know owe money the professor who taught me how to do it? Sorry, I paid my tuition. Whether I make a few bucks off what I learn and interpret from your lectures now, I make a few bucks off it later, or I drop the class and make better use of my time and tuition money.

Whose employees?

[tepples]

the university should be protecting these students by threatening to end the contract. Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees? For the same reason that people inside a Best Buy store forget that the sales associates are their employees. (Bonus points for finding where our analogies fail.)

Notes

[mapkinase]

IMHO, it makes much less sense to obtain notes that are written by somebody else. The most sense in taking notes is that you adding information that is important for you personally in addition to tons of other material related to the subject of the lecture: recommended textbooks, slide notes that professor gives you, etc...

It might, for example, reflect your own mnemonics to memorize theorem proof or outline the moments you tend to always forget (right-hand rule or left-hand rule, L- or D-aminoacids?).

In my experience, lecturers who make a great fuss about attending their lectures and taking their notes are more obsessed with popularity and resulting job security ("you absolutely must to attend because I give you material than no one else gives and I WILL ASK YOU THAT ON EXAM!!!").

The best lecturers are known for their presentation style: they grab your attention, they explain complicated things in a simple way that reaches you, they use perfectly their oratory skills: pauses, raising and lowering the voice, accents. That will not pass to any notes. They plan their lectures better than David Mamet and act them better than Kevin Spacey.

Good lecturer gives you information that stays in your head right away during the lecture and you can refresh it by reading textbooks, not by reviewing the notes that somebody else took.

We're All Infringing

[JrOldPhart]

Interpreting IP laws as this is, We are all infringing in IP by using anything we have learned in school or by any method other than making mistakes ourselves.

Our parents could sue us for millions for speaking without paying them royalties.

Perhaps one of these ridiculous suits will finally make it obvious enough that the system will die.

Now I will read and see how many others said the same. :)

A defense of the prof

[supercrisp]

I want to offer some reasons that this suit might be reasonable.

First, the students were copying verbatim the professors material to sell for a profit. That's not fair use, and this isn't about duplicating facts or creating original notes or interpretations--it's about repackaging someone else's work for sale.

Second, it's easy to be idealistic and fight against any notion of intellectual property, but the reality is that professor's livelihoods depend on it. It's reasonable for someone to try to protect their livelihood.

Third, some people are saying he shouldn't post his work; others are saying he's going against the core ideas of teaching by trying to restrict his work at all. I'd say that the prof and many like him, including myself, are trying to find a balance between not getting paid for our work and disseminating it as widely as is possible.

Fourth, many here seem to be writing under the assumption that profs are rich. Well. A new associate prof at the University of Iowa in the English department got paid $39-42k/yr in the years 99-01. That's after 5-8 years in a PhD program at up to $18k/yr tuition. A lecturer in English currently gets paid $30-34k/yr at the University of Tennessee, LSU, or U. of Georgia, given what I saw on the job listings yesterday; anyway that's a 50+ hour work week. Tenured faculty in English get paid $55-75k/yr, and endowed chairs in English get $125k/yr and up. Of course, that's just English, which is my field. The engineering and medical profs I knew of in Iowa got paid somewhat more, around 10-25% more.

My agenda:

I work about 52 hours a week, and I bring home 2 grand a month, which leaves me with about $50 at the end of the month after I make my payment on $40k of student loans, rent, utilities, medical insurance, retirement. Mock my decision to be an English prof; I do. But someone has to do this work, so it's lucky for the students that some of us are financially foolish enough to take it on.

The other oar I have in the water on this is that my former university is trying to post all theses and dissertations online for free access. This includes the work of creative writers. So, any of us graduating won't be able to get our work published. Hiring and tenure is based on publication, and creative writers' income is based on royalties. So I've been seeing the really ugly side of the "information wants to be free" argument, the side that might prevent me from moving up out of this $30k/yr morass I'm in with my little MFA/PhD. To me, it's sort of like what Atlantic did to Stax records.

Re:A defense of the prof

[yar]

I empathize because I'm in a similar situation, but I disagree with your assessment of the issues.

Say that the students weren't slavishly copying the notes- would you still consider that infringement? Assuming that what the professor teaches is fact-based, that would be a pretty weak argument, and would have some disturbing repercussions for student research in general.

This professor couldn't be further from the constitutional basis of copyright than he is.

Protecting your livelihood isn't an excuse to attempt to quash the dissemination of knowledge in an educational institution. Copyright isn't supposed to do that. Copyright doesn't exist to let creators make money- copyright exists to further the dissemination of knowledge through the exclusive economic rights granted by the law. That's one of the reasons that we have such generous exemptions for educators, particularly in the nonprofit sector.

If cases like this continue, then why in the world would Congress continue to allow the explicit educational copyright exemptions that allow us to use others' works in our teaching, and why would they allow fair use to have a strong educational component in its evaluation?

The issue is that educators should be paid more, not that they should be allowed to profit in this manner.

Now, I'm more sympathetic about the thesis and dissertation dissemination.

Student-owned

[Anonymous Coward]

All students at all colleges should start having universities sign contracts. After all, the students are the ones paying. They should be considered to have purchased the material when they paid their tuition. All class materials belong to the students, not the professors nor the colleges.

You clearly don't know how universities work

[Dire Bonobo]

I'm paying $30k+ a year you bet your ass that I'm gonna get the service I pay for. Research grants only show up if you have students to provide free labor

• Undergrads pay, but produce little or no research.
  
• PhD students produce research, but don't pay - they get a salary.
  
• Masters students usually fall into one of those two categories, although some few produce research and pay.
  

Unless your whole rant is about those few masters students - maybe 3-5% of the student body - you simply have no idea what you're talking about.

Research grants only show up if you have students to provide free labor

I've known plenty of professors who got plenty of research grants based on work they did themselves. Indeed, fewer students = more time to do research personally. Since most professors are talented researchers (otherwise they wouldn't have been hired), it can actually be more efficient for them to spend their time researching directly rather than advising students who research for them, depending on the quality and seniority of the students.

Besides, if you think it's "free labour", you've never seen the budget part of a grant. Each grad student will typically cost $40-80k for their advisor, even though the student only sees $20k of that.

it's much easier for students to transfer schools than for professors or campus presidents to find new jobs

And it's easier yet for professors to find new students who won't throw a hissy fit and quit halfway through.

There is no one with a more flexible mobile life than an average student: no mortgage, no spouse, no years invested in a company

At least years "invested" in a company will usually get you a better job if you move to a new company; years invested in a thesis don't transfer as well to a new advisor at a new university. For any grad student past their first couple years, moving to a new advisor at a new university is very rare.

The same understanding holds true later on in the work force: if you are truly good at what you do a small to medium sized business needs your labor more than you need their job.

Solutions that work only for people who are better than average won't work for most people, by definition.

Maybe you're a l33t uber-hacker who can order companies around, in which case that's very handy for you. Most people aren't, and can't. That doesn't mean they should take whatever they're given, but it does mean that their situations may be a little more complex than the simplistic answers you're pushing.

Mutual respect makes for a very pleasant environment for work or school

Indeed true, but what does that have to do with TFA?

The prof isn't being an ogre or beating his students; he's just saying "you aren't allowed to sell my lectures". How is that so different from selling bootlegs of a concert?

(It's all a little silly in my opinion anyway; the trend I've seen in the universities I've been at has been for the lectures to be made more and more available, to the extent that a number of places are videotaping them and putting them online. Given the general attitudes of the profs I've known, this trend is likely to spread fairly rapidly, at least among tech faculties.)

Re:Redistribution of COPYRIGHTED material

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been involved in putting together packets of excerpts from various copyrighted books for classroom use (chapter from a book here another chapter from a book there kind of thing). This was definitely for the student's benefit. We had problems getting the materials copied at Kinko's et al., since they could not make any profit from the sale of the materials, so we had to pony up the costs of reproducing the materials and could sell them to the students only at cost. If anybody makes a dime in the chain, you are in deep copyright kimshee, which is as it should be. There is a very broad educational use exemption, and a personal use exemption too (I have copies, nicely bound, of a lot of books I couldn't begin to have bought).

I recall in grad school taking a class where the professor (a Nobel laureate) was writing his magnum opus and he handed out a note asking that we not circulate notes, and he had lecture notes he handed out marked not for distribution (these were sent around to other academics around the country for review and comment, and pretty freely exchanged). If these had been freely distributed, the book would have had no commercial value and could never have been written. Incidently, he wrote a standard graduate text, in publication over 30 years, for which his net rewards were $850, while he had written a semi-popular book for which he made millions. Despite the outrageous price of textbooks, the author is probably not doing that well from it (there are famous exceptions for widely adopted freshman texts).

Copyright

[Dire Bonobo]

disseminate knowledge (i.e. educating). TFA refers to the latter. The knowledge a university disseminates is not (should not be) intellectual property.

You appear to be confused.

TFA is not suggesting the knowledge is IP; TFA is suggesting the method of teaching that knowledge is IP. Much like basic calculus is not IP but a textbook teaching basic calculus is IP (in particular, copyrighted).

By arguing that no knowledge a university disseminates should be IP, you're arguing that no prof should ever write a non-free textbook.

Given how much work it takes to write a textbook, and how little money from them authors actually see as compared to the time they spend writing it, you're arguing that there should be a lot more use of out-dated or hastily-written textbooks. Thanks, but no thanks - I've used a few of those, and preferred the over-priced but up-to-date-and-proofread ones.

Unless you're willing to argue that a textbook and a lecture are qualitatively different? What about a textbook that's just lecture notes? The situation here is not as simple as you suggest.

I don't think so

[whitroth]

Let's try this: the instructor is an *EMPLOYEE* of the college. All work he does in relation to his classroom duties are "work for hire", and so owned by the college. The students have paid for this work, and so have paid for the content. Since the students buying the notes have *also* paid for the same content, there seems to be no conflict: the work has already been paid for, and I should think would fall under the same laws as copying to VCR or DVD from a cable tv show.

              mark

Let's get to the point here, can we?

[cashman73]

This article isn't really about copyright infringement, because if it was, the case would've been closed long ago. Seriously, the only copyright infringement here is at the very end of TFA: "A less exotic copyright claim in the lawsuit alleges that Einstein's Notes also copied and reprinted hundreds of test prep questions included in the professor's text book and in his course software."

What the article really points out is how students have gotten increasingly lazy these days, and they primarily care about getting their A instead of going to class and actually learning something. the pre-med/pre-law/pre-whatever students are too engrossed in the whole rat race admissions process to really have time to sit down and actually learn something (not to mention that most of them are about as arrogant as some professors). Most students also get a bit confused and think that the more money you throw at something, the more successful the project and outcome will be. So going by this logic, it makes perfect sense to pay for things like Einstein's Notes. But seriously, the thought of these precious little snowflakes paying a "note-taking" service so they can skip class on thursday night and head to the bar is just ludicrous. Most classes that I can think of in the past several years actually put notes online, put there by the professor (or his grad student). Some professors will also put old exams up there, too. This shouldn't be seen as a substitute for going to class, because there's still a benefit you get from lectures, but it's good supplemental learning material, and good students that actually give more than a rat's behind about learning, will take advantage of this. There should be no reason to pay a "note-taking" service for copies of notes that you should've gotten in class in the first place,...

Verbatim copying

[Dire Bonobo]

The professor does not own any sort of copyright to Gauss's law, so the students' notes are *their* understanding of what the professor explains to them about Gauss's law. In other words, the students' notes are *their* distillation of the knowledge presented to them through lecture, reading, et cetera, and are thus the students' copyrights.

Unless the students are copying down the professor's words verbatim, which is what TFA was about.

You appear to be confused about what copyright is for. There's no way to get a "copyright to Gauss's law", since "[c]opyright does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed." You can, however, get a copyright to a particular set of words and images used to teach Gauss's law, such as a section of a physics textbook.

The question at hand is whether the particular set of words and images used in a lecture can be copyrighted, and whether selling a verbatim copy of those words and images constitutes copyright infringement.

Personally, I don't see why not. I also don't see what the issue with that is, other than perhaps a certain amount of knee-jerk reactionism on the part of Slashdot to anything with the words "copyright" or "intellectual property" in it. It's not like he's preventing students from taking notes; he's just preventing a company from profiting off verbatim copies of his lectures.

There a limits to a company's right to copy and sell other people's work; I'm surprised to find Slashdot arguing against that idea.

RTFA

[Dire Bonobo]

My second argument still wins though.

"Professor Moulton used an overhead projector in class and would write out the high points of the lecture and that's what Einstein's Notes' note-taker would write down"

Conveniently two lines above the part that demolishes your first argument.

So, if you think your argument "wins", please demonstrate that "the high points of the lecture" are (a) nothing but facts, and (b) that a selected ordering and presentation of facts is not copyrightable.

I'll give you a couple hints:
(a) Only if he's a terrible lecturer.
(b) "Compilations of facts or data may also be copyrighted"

RTFContract

[Dire Bonobo]

By accepting his salary, the professor already has given up his rights to his lessons, since the institution has effectively "bought" his lessons/teaching by employing him and paying him for his work.

Only if his contract states that. Guess what? It states the opposite.

If you'd RTFA, you'd have seen that "Moulton has registered his copyrights, cleared them with the university and recorded his lectures."

If you ask me, allowing professors to force students to shell out more cash so they can complete the course by buying materiels produced by the professor

RTFA. Students can go to class and take notes all they like, with no obligation to buy anything.

But, if I sit in a class that I have already PAID for, then each student has the legal right to be in the class, the rights to the lecture, and the rights to copy the content for their own uses.

RTFA. None of that is being challenged.

5) Since students have paid for the lesson, they have the right to now do as they please with the lesson's content.

Of course; copyright doesn't cover the informational content of the lecture, just its particular expression.

2) Professor sells rights to University.

He doesn't. Most professor's contracts are quite clear in leaving IP with him/her.

take money from students just so they can PASS the class

Nothing's stopping a student from going to class and taking notes. Nothing's even stopping that student from copying the notes from a friend.

You're fantasizing all kinds of things to rail against that aren't true and haven't happened. RTFA.

RTFA

[Dire Bonobo]

Now I will read and see how many others said the same.

Nobody who RTFA.

So about 95%...

Students are paying the Prof

[flyingfsck]

therefore the Prof is in the employ of the students, therefore the Prof's lecture notes belong to the students.

Re:"Teaching the Students" != Students Selling Not

[Anonymous Coward]

I AM AGREE with you but I am not sure I want to read YOU'RE lecture notes.

I attended the University of Florida

[SaxIndustries]

...and I have had experience with both Einstein's Notes and classes with "text" from Faulkner press.

Firstly, I believe Faulkner is one of the seediest text companies in existence. They're very cheaply produced, and usually not text at all, but a CD with the class information on it.

I've had two classes like that: a basic computer skills course (taught by the business college), and another course titled Age of the Dinosaurs - which I took to complete Florida's General Education requirement for Science.

Professors at the University of Florida are supposed to publish their required and recommended textbooks on UF's ISIS, to allow all the area bookstores the ability to order and stock the book (nearly all college book stores orders materials on the shelf by the course number). None of the Faulkner Press-related professors ever do this, they'll directly inform one bookstore of the requirement, and inform students they can only purchase the text at said store.

Faulkner Press materials are rarely, if ever, re-usable. Any Faulkner Press text includes a CD with some kind of online component to it, with a one-time-use code, which you need to complete in order to participate in the class (Age of the Dinosaurs used online tests). While it's common for most textbooks to include some kind of online component with a one-time use code, most publishers will also sell you just the code, so students can purchase the textbooks used (if they so wish).

The software on the disc is absolutely horrible. It'll run on Mac or Windows, with an interface that doesn't fit in either environment. It's amazingly difficult to navigate, I went through a whole month in the Age of the Dinosaurs class without knowing the "Notes" component was actually the class text! The documentation is next-to-none, covering only how to install it. On install, it copies nearly all the contents of the CD to the hard drive, and requires you have the CD in the drive to run the software.

The only professors that use any materials from Faulkner are the professors published by Faulkner.

The Age of the Dinosaurs professor stated he wanted to write a textbook, and wanted to include lots of pictures and sounds. He loved the idea of distributing it on CD, since the costs for that are significantly lower that a book with all those colors from the pictures.

I'm not even going to delve into how the text materials were horribly written, contained glaring typos (both spelling and graphical errors), etc. It's a poor-quality product.

I would have accepted that in 1995. All UF students either have, or have free access to high-speed internet, and UF provides all professors with access to WebCT, which provides hosting, discussion, tests/quizzes, etc. All of the contents and features of a Faulkner Press text could be easily implemented in an online system, which lowers the costs (I imagine UF could provide the bandwidth and storage for the professor) of publishing, and includes the added benefit of things like, encrypted sessions, students being able to use the OS/Browser of their choice, etc.

The immediate benefit for all parties is cost. It could be, I dunno, free, as opposed to 90 bucks.

The only professors that use Faulkner are either a) idiots or b) sleazeballs, and I say fuck any class that requires a Faulkner text, and fuck any professor that uses them.

Re:"Teaching the Students" != Students Selling Not

[BenoitRen]

Fine, but make sure they're YOU'RE lecture notes

Your English class notes must not have sold a lot of copies...

So the note-takers should lend their notes ..

[pbhj]

The link is to an imagined future where a man won't let someone read his copy of something for fear of reprise by a monitoring authority.

So it seems you're saying that the students attending should let the others read *their copy*.

The article is about someone taking that copy and making further copies and selling it. This is not addressed in the article you link.

Indeed you are quite right the students should lend their copy (whose creation is authorised by implicit contract as that student has attended the lecture) just as in the citation you give.

[slightly sarcastically]Incidentally I noticed you didn't rewrite the article including all the salient points, put it on a website with ads, then link to it as your own work ... why was that??
[/]

End Game

[koick]

The gist of your post is one of the things I point out to my friends/family; every law that is passed takes away some of your rights. As you point out, I don't know of any which "give back" rights, and it's rare to hear of laws being overturned, found obsolete, etc.

So, what's the end game? One can envision a future with so many laws in place that almost everything could be interpreted as illegal. Then, we'd have to wipe the slate clean and start over again.

I'd hope that this "re-do" would include restrictions on passing laws (making them much more difficult to do), since each one essentially takes away some of your rights. Also, the multilayered approach to laws (federal, state, local) to things which should be considered "universal" confuse me (but I'm a programmer not a lawyer) -- for example, I'd think ideally there'd be a national consensus that if you are found guilty of first degree murder you'd get life imprisonment and there would not be allowed any state or local laws for this crime since it has a "universal" agreement on the punishment. My $0.02

Tell that to my 23k in student loans

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have to pay for college, then I think we are rightful owners of the lecture notes as its fair use and our tuition covers the professor expenses and the cost of classes. Until college education is completely free, then do as you will. -nael

Notes a plenty...

[tigerbody1]

Back in the day when I was first in University, the campus copy center had notes that we could purchase for most of the classes we took. Some were already printed out, and others they would print it right then - or take orders. Usually these notes were taken but a student or a grad student - and then gone over by the professor. Sometimes there was a premium, but I dont think it was much.... as I dont remember asking anyone to "copy" their notes. These notes were valuable to me as a student.

copyright 101?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it would be a good idea this day and age to require college freshmen to take a copyright 101 course which is overview of what can and cannot be copyrighted. By empowering students with this knowledge, it could really level the playing field between students, teachers and perhaps even music downloading. Also, the students know their rights and can say, "hey, you can't claim that as your own?"

Just as student must site their sources in papers they write, professors must site their sources in what they teach.

The professor should provide his notes

[msevior]

If the professor worked at my uni and tried to sell his notes to the students, his "quality of teaching" assessment from his students would be so low he'd have to be removed from classroom.

Which is how it should be. He should provide the best education he can for his students which clearly includes his lecture notes.

I think you misunderstand

[volpe]

No,I think you misunderstand the notion of Fair Use being a defense, not a right. You made an analogy comparing Fair Use with the First Ammendment, and showed how the First Ammendment is similar in that you only invoke it when accused of breaking the law, but that's where the similarity ends. The difference between the notion of a "right" and a "defense", as I understand it (obDisclaimer: IANAL), is that rights can be violated if you are prevented from exercising them. DRM on a copyrighted work doesn't "violate your rights" precisely because Fair Use is a defense, not a right.

Anything for PUBLICITY

[Rockin'Robert]

Did I mention that I have a book for sale,
and do not have the funds to advertise or promote it
for the exposure and $$$ that I desperatey crave?
RR

Frickin Luddites

[BubbaJonBoy]

If the guy had half a brain he'd dictate his lecture or record it and run it through one of the voice packages, hire an intern to spiff it up and it's done. What kind of prehistoric shit is compiling cribbed notes? As far as this being unethical - it was going on in the 80's - at least when I was in college - whereby profs would sell compilations of their lectures in the campus bookstore. Of course the price was cheap enough to discourage copying.

No they didn't

[hassanchop]

They had him thrown in jail for grand theft.

From YOUR link

A jury convicted Mr. Taborsky of grand theft of trade secrets in 1990.

Why must you lie?

Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that if a person sells an exact duplicate of the professor's lecture, then the professor's intellectual properity has been violated. However, if a student has taken the time to listen to what was said in class and create their own interpretation of what they learned, then i feel that student has created their own work and can do with it what they wish. Let's face it, the professors did that exact same thing. They read other works, added some of the knowledge they have come across, and presented the material to you in a way they felt would be the easiest way to learn.

http://www.sharenotes.com/ is one of those websites where students are encouraged to Share (or sell) their own lecture notes. It's student driven (company doesn't profit/charge/directly sell any notes). In the words of the Sharenotes.com website, "collaborate to graduate."