Ask Slashdot: Best Copyright Terms For a Thesis?

plopez gets in his first Slashdot submission with this question, writing: "I am wrapping up an MS. In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation. I don't want that happen to me. I know the joke is 'No one will ever read your thesis,' but in the slim chance it is useful to others I don't want them to be required to hunt me down for a release. Basically I want to say: 'Copyright is released as long as this work or excerpts is properly attributed. Also, any published excerpts cannot be copyrighted by other parties, nor can the original work in its entirety.' Is this good enough? I don't want to encumber legitimate uses of the work but I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain. Is public domain good enough? Or does it allow the work to be restricted by commercial interests? I know of copyleft, but copyleft is a family of copyright notices and I am unsure which one is right for my intent. Please help."

Comments

Creative commons!

[NalosLayor]

Creative commons has a tool to help, and human readable licenses. I'd guess you can find what you need there. http://creativecommons.org/

Re:Creative commons!

[NeutronCowboy]

And what he's probably looking for is CC BY-ND. "This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you."

You did check with your department first, right?

[damn_registrars]

Because no matter what your intentions are, I would highly advise against jeopardizing the progress of your MS just because you want to use copyright terms that your department doesn't agree with. If you haven't already, I would very highly recommend you check with them first to see how they manage the copyright of theses that are written there. Depending on the institution you may even need to go higher than that to find the official policy and find out if it has any flexibility.

Re:You don't own it

[PopeRatzo]

It doesn't matter what you want to put on your thesis, you university owns the copyrights to it.

I don't think that's even true for half the universities. I'd be surprised if it was true for 1/3 or 1/4.

I've seen thesis manuscripts with and without copyright language and none of them has ever been held up or given any trouble from the institution. And I've been on PhD panels for several universities, public and private. Had scores of grad students get their degree without this ever becoming an issue.

I remember a university head librarian who wanted to make an issue out of this and he was practically laughed out of the meeting. And this at a top-five US school.

All of this changes with faculty research and other publications, of course. Then it matters, big time.

Science is based on open information sharing

[presidenteloco]

(with proper attribution)

Any restriction on this is a despicable attack on the advancement of science.

Current journal paywalls ought to be against the law. They ensure that only academia
at the richest institutions have full access to other scientists' work.

Academics at poorer institutions, here and around the world, and amateur researchers
who may be just as intelligent as the established, are shut out. It is an outrageous
and unjustifiable situation.

We need a different economic model to pay for the service of editing and coordinating
peer review. Maybe that cost ought to be covered by a journal submission fee.
Hardcopy publication is now officially not needed, nor should we be paying hardcopy publishing
companies just for the right to view the online published information. That's rubbish, and
it's harmful to the progress of knowledge.

Best copyright notice

[phantomfive]

Best copyright notice I know of came from Woody Guthrie:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”