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

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: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: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?