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School Board Considers Copyright Ownership of Student and Teacher Works
schwit1 writes "A proposal by the Prince George's County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual. It's not unusual for a company to hold the rights to an employee's work, copyright policy experts said. But the Prince George's policy goes a step further by saying that work created for the school by employees during their own time and using their own materials is the school system's property."
Most tech companies claim ownership of anything created by employees, whether created at work or on their own time.
But, the students are not employees, and signed no waiver when they enrolled. Claiming ownership of the student's creations is rediculous.
Profane, but seriously, fuck off.
On what grounds do they thing they possibly own student work?
I can vaguely see an exceptionally unethical argument for teachers work, but student work? It's not like they have a choice as to whether they attend and it sure as hell is not work for hire.
What is wrong with these people?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well, they can, but it won't be legally binding until they get the employees and students to agree to assign their copyrights.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If, therefore, they do claim ownership, the parents should bring a case against the school system for violation of child labor laws.
It's the results of his creative efforts.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
> could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual
So, my daughter went to an art magnet school. During that time she created many works of art, some of which she entered into contests and won awards. She has commercial plans for a series of cartoon characters she invented while in school. If the school claimed ownership, she would not hesitate to sue, and she'd have a lot of company. Content creators can get really sticky about their own content, even as teenagers.
Therefore, I don't think the part about the school copyrighting content created by the students is going to fly. All they'd need is a couple of high profile losses, and we'd skip immediately to step 4, punishment of the innocent.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Some MBA heard that x% of employees are earning a few dollars on the side and they realized that this could plug some budget holes (holes created by administration taking trips to Hawaii to learn the latest in ed-tech).
But in classic MBA style they forget about incentive where if they take that money then the work won't be done. I suspect that again in classic MBA style that they need to "centralize" and "quality control" information leaving the system.
This probably all stems from a requirement from some way overpriced anti-plagiarism software; even worse the pitch from said salesman might have documented (with great pie charts) that by doing this money grab the anti-plagiarism software would effectively be free.
Lastly by claiming copyright they get better control over information that makes them look bad. So if some student makes a video of a drunk teacher and puts it on youtube then the school system will demand that youtube take it down on the grounds that they have copyright. I would love to see them trying to apply this to teachers with blogs, twitter accounts, and writing op-ed pieces for the local newspaper. These fools forget that there are a zillion places to put a drunk teacher video that will oddly enough defend the students' first amendment rights.
To me this is just another great lesson for the kids that they learn that the educational system exists not one spec for them but entirely for the administration. In Ontario, Canada the school board got completely screwed by the government (before they screwed the government) so now like petulant children they are trying to keep the teachers from extra-curricular activities. They are now arguing that holding back these services won't harm the children. Whoa, wait a sec. Losers.
If there's no union contract and no law to protect teachers' jobs, then the employer can simply say "by showing up for work after __REASONABLY_FAR_IN_THE_FUTURE_DATE__ you agree to __NEW_CONDITIONS_OF_EMPLOYMENT__.
For most jobs, "reasonably far in the future date" for a change that hurts employees would be anywhere from 2 weeks to a few months for items that can wait, or immediately for health and safety issues, emergencies, and issues where the deadline is imposed from outside (e.g. a change in law), etc.
For teachers, "reasonably far in the future" date is either the start of the next school year or, if it's late in this school year or late in the "job search season" for teachers who are planning to change employers, the following school year.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
1. Form an LLC
2. Acting as your child's agent, put them under contract with the LLC for their creative works until their 18th birthday, with an option for the child to retrieve all their rights from the LLC at that time.
3. ???
4. Screw the school district!
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
This seems to be only about "work produced for the school", meaning papers for class, lesson plans and the like. It doesn't seem as though they plan to lay claim to your Great American Novel (TM) if you plan on writing one while enrolled or employed there.
For the pupils at least, that claim also likely has no standing, notwithstanding any delusional beliefs to the contrary of the board.
As per analysis of the contract in the Hobbit
All contracts require some consideration from all parties to the contract. Consideration, in the contract sense, means a bargained-for performance or promise. Restatement (Second) of Contracts 71(1). Basically, this is something of value given or promised as part of the agreement. This can be anything that the parties agree is valuable; the classic example is a single peppercorn. Whitney v. Stearns, 16 Me. 394, 397 (1839).
That means, the school has to explicitly give the pupils something in exchange for their copyright. 'Teaching' can't be it, since they are obliged to do that anyway.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
It sounds like it does, on the surface, but lesson plans are something teachers currently trade, sell, and use as a basic resource. The difference between a just-graduated teacher and a teacher with ten years of experience is that the teacher with experience has a stack of lesson plans, and can swap out which ones they use on any given day based on the progress, skill, and mood of their students. And, let's not forget, all of this is being created in the teacher's own time, outside of school hours.
Oh, and I doubt the school district will be making these available for free to their own teachers. (Unlike the teachers themselves, who might share with a co-worker.)
Any teacher who's spent any amount of time working on their own lesson plans would immediately start looking for a job outside the county. Any teacher who's any good wouldn't take a job in that county. You'll have beginner teachers who don't know any better, or teachers who've been there for ages and don't want to move, who'll just be hanging out until retirement. (And not updating any of their lesson plans.) Oh, and teachers who buy all of their lesson plans, because they can't be bothered to come up with them themselves. And the beginners will probably leave as quick as possible.
So you're trying for high-turnover, and chasing out any teacher who wants to invest their own time and effort into teaching the kids. Which means you'll get low-quality teaching, and low-quality schools.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
What do you mean by "becoming"? This country has been fascist to the hilt for a long time now. Bullshit like Citizens United was just the icing on the cake.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Salaried employees do have a clock to be off of, they have expected hours to work, yes occasionally they can be asked to work longer for no extra pay, but it does not give the employer the right to call on them 24/7, unless I was on call (and paid more because of it). If my employer rang me up at midnight and said I had to come in for free, because I was still on the clock, I would not so politely tell them where to go.
In a salary there is give and take and works fine if both employer and employee are reasonable. But the moment I leave work I consider I myself off the clock. Otherwise I could stay home all week, do nothing and then say I worked an 168 hour week, I was never off the clock, right.
Also I don't think I would be making minimum wage, I better go an complain.
Teaching is a collegial activity, so a good lesson plan would normally be shared within a staff room. Student's work is produced by minors where the school is 'in loco parentis' so their work would become school property to protect them from exploitation by adults, plagiarists and commercial interests.
That's how it works in Australia. Public school teachers are state employees so all their work is the property of the Crown. Good teaching material can be (and is) distibuted to other publis schools to give system-wide improvement. A teacher who gains a reputation for producing good stuff can negotiate this into promotion or a consultancy. State employees are not supposed to produce any paid work outside their job but in practice teachers who work as tutors, coaches or musicians etc are not imposed upon by the government as there is a tacit acknowledgement that teachers often need another income. Private school teachers' work is the property of their employee (diocesan office, school board) for much the same reason.
School administrators (puiblic or private) have a legal 'duty of care' to children. They won't stop parents from taking their kids to modeling agencies or auditions but if they produce something in school, say their major artwork for the matriculation exam, the school can arrange a professional exhibition and prevent students from beign ripped off.
American libertarians will doubt that government agencies can be benign (and if you want gold medal bastardry only a government can provide it) but not all countries have vast armies, huge spy agencies, heavily armed police or kill people with robot aircraft. The Department of Education will be staffed at policy and implementation level by people who believe in the value of education and teachers actually like children!
Schools provide opportunities to develop and hone social skills, to forge friendships and to discover new interests.
Right. The only way to make friends is to be locked inside a building with others your own age. No adults have friends that they met outside of work/school. Not to mention that for some people, this isn't even necessary or wanted.
But you know what else most schools seem to provide? An awful education.
I don't quite understand the problem of standardized tests.
Then chances are you don't understand the problem with the public school system. That is, it doesn't teach understanding. All it does is have kids memorize material without understanding any of it just so they can perhaps do better on a standardized test. However, again, these tests don't measure understanding, only rote memorization. You can memorize all the math equations and procedures that you want, but that doesn't mean you understand any of them.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I'm just thankful that we've made the news without any murders, theft, or corruption.
I thought that we had gotten rid of the idiotic school board when they disbanded it in 2002 and got Marilyn Bland and the others out of there. (although, we haven't gotten rid of her yet)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Among many others, including the fact that the teachers (not all, but many) are horrible, standardized testing, and well, the fact that PG county is a shitty area.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Yes teachers spend lots of time after hours working, but they do have lots of scheduled time to design tests and lesson plans as well.
I don't know what it was like when you went to school, but in the high school I went to the teachers didn't have much scheduled time to work on such things. You got a half day every couple of months. You got one "free" period most days, but not every day, which was pretty much your lunch break. What scheduled time do you speak of? Both of my parents were teachers. You know what those half days consisted of? Mostly meetings. Again, not much scheduled time to work on lesson plans and the such. Teachers worked on all that stuff at home. Scheduled time my pink behind...
I love the encoding issues I find on this site. Instead of \xE2\x80\x9C for UTF-8, you get \xE2\x6F\x65 for the left double quotation mark (U+201C), which can't be decoded as UTF-8 because it's not proper UTF-8 due to the values of the second and third bytes. How does that even happen? \x6F\x65 and \x80\x9C aren't even remotely related-looking in binary form, and converting to another encoding doesn't work either. WTF? Or maybe it's Windows' fault. Yeah. That's it. It's not Slashdot's fault. It's Windows' fault. Stupid Windows.
I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
That place is a shit hole, and I wouldn't worry about them producing anything fit for public consumption in the near future.
Speaking as a life long resident of the state and former spouse of a former employee of PGCPS, this comment is woefully underrated and 100% correct.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
If the kids you are referring to don't understand something, why not just ask "why" or "how"? Do they WANT to be ignorant?
I went to public schools. I imagine my education would be about half as complete had I not bothered to question "why" or "how" to every new subject or piece of information. I had to PULL the information out of the teachers, because they were pretty unmotivated. Once I showed a teacher I was actively interested in something, they would begin to show me more and give seriously fun and interesting 'extra credit' work that the rest of the students didn't do(synchrotron experiments in Sophomore year anyone?)
All of this came from my parents. They ENCOURAGED me to ask why. They would tell me some neat fact, like how fast the earth was going. When I asked "Why doesn't it just fly into space?" my parents explained to me (or at least tried their best) how gravity works, and in kiddie terms, basically laid out several of Newton's principles. THAT is how you answer a kid's question.
For some reason I can't comprehend, parents are annoyed when their children ask "why" repeatedly. The kid is trying to naturally figure out how something works and why it ended up that way. Parents shut them up, or distract them with games or TV, and actively discourage them from truly understanding a topic. Louis C.K. even has a whole bit about this. THAT is the real problem with education today: parents are too lazy to help teach their kids, they don't give a shit, and just want the schools to 'do it for them'.
'Murica
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I'd rather quote Arkell v. Pressdram.
Sig ?
So, what would've happened if this was a policy at the University of Helsinki, in 1991?
If it was still released under the GPL, then it wouldn't matter who owned the copyright on it.
But if U. of H. owned the copyright, Linus releasing software under the GPL would be illegal (without the University's prior approval) because he would be releasing a work that he did not own, like a film editor releasing a version of a movie before the studios which produced it could.
You can understand something without memorizing it. There are hundreds of equations involved in various ways of doing heat transfers. You don't have to remember them all to understand how to use them correctly. If you know your situation is laminar fluid flow through a pipe you can look up the appropriate equations. The important part is learning and understanding hows and whys of heat transfer.
You can also measure the progress of students by giving them real problems to solve. Something that requires applying the knowledge they have gained. Most of my engineers classes have two hour exams with 4 problems and everything is open book, notes, calculator etc. You are given real problems to solve that are unlike problems you have done before. You have to figure out how to apply your knowledge to solve the problem. Memorization does not help you for squat on those exams. Understanding is the only thing that will help you on those exams.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
- How does one teach understanding?
Try teaching what the kid is interested in? Many children have demonstrated an interest in something, only to be hushed, because the class was busy with something else, something more important. Horticulture, animal husbandry, chemistry, even history. "Tommy, we don't have time to discuss the Battle of Waterloo, get your colored pencils out, and draw me another meaningless chart that no one really gives a damn about!)
- How does one measure the progress of students?
When the kid begins to stretch YOUR mind, when he asks CHALLENGING questions, when you discover that YOU ARE LEARNING, just to stay ahead of him, then there is no need to measure the kid's progress. And, I speak from experience, believe it or not. I'm not a teacher in any formal education setting. Uncle Sam did make me an "Educational Petty Officer" in the Navy. Teach, teach, tutor, teach. I've continued in civilian life, always teaching my subordinates. And, those students challenge me often enough. They force me to learn more, in an attempt to stay ahead of them.
If your students never challenge your own knowledge and education, then you've done it all wrong.
- How does one understand something without remebering it?
You teach CONCEPTS, not facts and figures. One who learns concepts can solve any problem to which the concept might relate. One who memorizes facts, figures, dates, and names may or may not ever actually solve a problem. He might run into a problem that he sees as similar to a problem solved by Professor Numty in England, way back in 1860, but he probably can't remember how Professor Numty solved the problem. He never understood the formula or how to apply it. Instead, he wasted time memorizing the professor's name, his biography, and all the awards the professor earned. All meaningless BULLSHIT.
The real irony in such a situation would be, that Professor Numty's theory and formula aren't even applicable, because or poor memorizing fool really doesn't understand ANYTHING about his current problem, OR Professor Numty's work!
When some cute little kid looks up at you, and asks, "Why is the sky blue?" what answer do you offer? The kid has a burning desire to learn, to understand - do you waste the opportunity, or do you help the munchkin to understand his/her world better?
Bottom line, for me, is "Fuck the beancounters. Education is to important to allow Washington to have a say in it!"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Same was true with my wife when she was teaching. In fact, any "free" period that wasn't filled with meetings was usually filled with giving extra help to kids who were encountering difficulties in the regular lessons.
Oh and those wonderful "summers off" that teachers have? They aren't lounging around doing nothing. They're coming up with lessons for the next year.
I agree with Daniel_Staal. This will lead to a) good, experienced teachers fleeing before they are forced to start from scratch and not take their lesson plans with them, b) inexperienced teachers being trapped into the job they have (and thus getting bitter, ceasing to care, and becoming bad teachers), and c) quality of education declining. Hey, but at least the school board can bring in some additional cash by suing over any lesson plan remotely similar to the ones they own RIAA-style, right?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.