Who Owns College Students' Notes?

hotfries writes "The Business Journal serving San Jose has an article about Study 24-7, a company that pays students to post their college notes to a national web site. This has raised concerns at UCLA, who argue that the practice violates the intellectual property rights of their professors. "

Comments

Re:Nice Try, Fellas, But Not Quite

[Thorsett]

Nice try, but still not right.

It is true that copyright law requires fixation, but I seriously doubt that many college lecturers would have any trouble meeting the (low) hurdle that the law requires. Even temporary storage in computer RAM has been sufficient to meet the fixation requirement. In almost any lecture situation, the lecturer has a prepared syllabus, lecture notes, possibly slides, and blackboards. (In intro physics courses at Princeton, we even photographed all of the blackboards.) All of these enjoy copyright protection. The analogy to MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech is flawed on two levels: the specific federal court ruling said that despite the fact that copyright was originally granted on the speech, copyright was lost only when MLK actively promoted wide use of the speech without restrictions -- and in any case the federal appeals court ruled last week that the district court had erred and returned the case for further consideration (ap story).

Fair use laws, it would seem, give a student a right to make even verbatim copies of a lecture for their own educational use. But though IANAL, I would be very surprised if the courts don't find the commercial distribution of such a clearly derivative work as detailed lecture notes to be a violation of copyright.

Nice Try, Fellas, But Not Quite

[John Murdoch]

Professors, and the institutions, are asserting an intellectual property right to a student's notes on the content of lectures. They're dreaming. No such right exists.

Intellectual property rights only apply to ideas that have been reduced to fixed form. Fixed form means "written down" or "recorded"--only the fixed form of an idea is protected by copyright, the idea itself is not. Until the idea is reduced to fixed form it is just so much hot air.

For example, suppose I get up on stage and present a hilarious, moving expression--in rap--of the tribal customs of my ancestors (Scots) entitled "Getting Naked and Painting My Body Blue". If I have written those rap lyrics down beforehand, I can assert an intellectual property right. If you copy them down and repeat them, I can sue. But if I just start shouting extemporaneously, I have no rights--the words have not been reduced to fixed form.

An excellent example of this was Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. Consider how many times you have heard that speech. Now ask yourself--why don't Dr. King's children collect royalties on that speech? They can't--King spoke extemporaneously. The written copies of the speech were made from film footage of the event.

In the case of classroom notes the situation is made even easier--the written notes reflect the creative work of the note-taker. Suppose that you and I attend a lecture by Prof. Chris Berman at the University of Bristol. My notes might include lots of information about what Berman wore, what the lecture hall looked like, whether he looked smaller or larger than he appears on TV, and what the general reaction of the audience was. Your notes might indicate what Berman actually said. The difference between my notes and yours is the creative content that you and I add. And what each of us reduces to fixed form is our intellectual property.

But wait, there's more...
The university isn't just wrong in asserting that it owns the rights to the notes--it is wrong to assert in its code of conduct that students do not. Unless a student surrenders his intellectual property rights to all creative work when he enrolls, the university is infringing upon his rights to dispense with his property (his creative work) for however much he can make.

The university is blowing smoke.

Money as always is the key...

[Jerenk]

I think most professors do not care if or when students share notes. What they do care about is when corporations come in and try to make money off the notes. This is the important factor to most professors. If someone wants to give the notes away, fine. If they want to make money, at the very least have the courtesy to inform the professor about it. If he says fine, you make money. If not, well, you find another professor to leech.

Here at UCI, one of the local note-taking places is in trouble because they were selling verbatim notes without professor's permission. The professor of this class saw a student with the verbatim notes and he asked him where he got the notes. The student said he bought the notes from this company. The professor went down there and asked the clerks whether or not they had the professors permission to replicate these notes. They, of course, said that they did (and only used notes that have been authorized by the professor). Well, of course, they had no such permission. The company is in a bit of trouble now.... =)

Because this company is not under the auspices of the UC system (there is a student-govt. run notetaking place here on campus), they are currently trying to figure out what to do with them. Apparently, the professor can sue for IP violations (and is debating whether or not to do so). For people who keep an eye on the news, this is the same company that was involved in the cadaver scandal a few weeks back...great ethics at this company!

I also believe as part of conduct, it DOES indeed forbid us from taking notes and selling them without permission. IIRC, it also says that all notes and lectures are the IP of the professor (unless otherwise stated).

Later,
Justin