A Teacher Asking Students To Destroy Notes?

zwei2stein writes "I found this question with far-reaching implications in the off-topic section of a forum I frequent: 'My economics teacher is forcing us to give up all of our work for the semester. Every page of notes and paper must be turned over to her to be destroyed to prevent future students from copying it. My binder was in my backpack, and she went into my backpack to take it. Is that legal?' Besides the issue with private property invasion, which was the trigger of that post, there is much more important question: Can a teacher ask a student not to retain knowledge? How does IP law relate to teaching and sharing knowledge? Whose property are those notes?"

Comments

Arguably, the notes are hers

[Anonymous Coward]

Under U.S. copyright law, she's the creator and you are acting under her direction so your writing is her work, fixed in a tangible form.

Of course, there's an exception to copyright law for facts and odds are that the school has a clause in her agreement ceding the rights to her work product to them, so only non-factual portions of the notes are copyrightable and the school probably owns the rights.

Then again, we're not talking about copying yet. Just the disposition of the medium. It's your paper and ink, so you own it.

OTOH, those drug-search and metal-detector cases demonstrate that students surrender many of their civil liberties when they walk through the door of a school, so the search is probably legal and the seizure may be perfectly legitimate.

Then again, in the Tinker case, the Supreme Court determined that schools "may not be enclaves of totalitarianism" and in subsequent cases it was established that while schools may limit civil liberties to maintain order and discipline their special legal status ends there so your teacher may well have gone beyond her authority and subjected herself and the school to an ACLU lawsuit.

OTOH, you could just T-P her house and be done with it.

Re:I would.

[BlueCollarCamel]

No you wouldn't, now sit down and shut up.

Re:The school owns it.

[warGod3]

Yes, it is a contractual obligation that you will abide by a school's rules and regulations while in attendance. However, a teacher/professor/etc. still has no right to request or order you to surrender your notes. Your notes are your own, you took them. How do you know that by surrendering those notes that professor isn't going to use them for a book? Maybe she's looking for a student's view on economics and is hoping to find it in someone's notes? A teacher wanting to go into your personal effects without either school security present or the police is asking for trouble. Tell her you are going through her purse looking for stuff.