For math and engineering notes, the expression is often tied directly to the idea. In these cases, there is often only one *correct* expression of the idea; thus it is hard to argue that copyright law applies. Furthermore, most of these lecture notes contain proofs and statements of theorems which have come right out of a text book anyway.
If these students are taking verbaim copies of the notes, then it is a violation of copyright. Traditionally, however, this falls under 'fair use' so no one has ever complained. Now, when a student publishes it to the world... this is no longer protected by 'fair use'.
However, the question becomes, who actually owns the copyright? It should be the university, since the faculty are their employers and it is most likely "work-for-hire". And I would assume that a public university should have no problems with students re-publishing them on their own... however, if a commercial organization gets involved; then I would expect royalty arrangments.
This one is pretty cut and dry... for verbadim copies. Now, for some of my courses, my notes look _nothing_ like what the professor drew; my mental image was different (and often wrong...). Now, copyright law only protects the "expression" of an idea, not the idea itself. So, as long as a notetaker doesn't copy things exactly, or more appropriately, asserts their own interpretation -- then they are changing the expression, hence, copyright law does not apply.
So, to prove a violation, the professor needs to have a video of each lecture and then compare the notes to the video. Only if there are exact, verbadim copies does copyright law matter.
It is debates like this -- where people claim that the distinction between an operating system and an application is subjective -- that have caused the greatest problem in our industry.
On pages 3-5 of his book Operating Systems, Andrew S. Tannenbaum states rather clearly that an operating system performs 'two basically unrelated functions, and depending who is doing the talking, you hear mostly about one function or the other'.:
The Operating System as an Extended Machine Just as the operating system shields the programmer from the disk hardware and presentes a simple file-oriented interface, it also conceals alot of unpleasant business concering interrupts, timers, memory management, and other low-level features. In each case, the abstraction offerred by the operating system is simpleer and easier to use than the underlying hardware... In this view, the function of the operating system is to present the user with the equivalent of an extended machine or virtual machine that is easier to program than the underlying hardware.
The Operating System as a Resource Manager In addition, the job of the operating system is to provide for an orderly and controlled allocation of the processors, memories, and I/O devices among the various programs competing for them... In short, this view of the operating system holds that its primary task is to keep track of who is using which resource, to grant resource request, to account for usage, and to mediate conflicting requests from different programs and users.
I struggled the same as you all seem to be struggling until I read this clear explanation in Andy's Operating Systems book. Following this lead here are some definitive conclusions:
The windowing system is an operating system role. This is true, beacuse it clearly meets both of Andy's criteria: The windowing system not only provides a hardware abstraction, but also acts as a screen realistate manager.
The print service, providing drivers and such, is an operating system role. Clearly there is a need for hardware abstraction, and there is also a need for resource management -- imagine if two applications were to use the printer at the same time..
Disk and network access are roles of the operating system. They both need abstraction and resource management.
A pop up "find file" dialog is *not* part of the operating system. First, no hardware abstraction is needed. Second, no resource management is required.
That being said, there are a few practical statements that can be made:
DOS is an incomplete operating system. Old DOs programs like Word Perfect, DBASE III, Lotus 123 all supplemented DOS by filling in the missing roles -- printer and windowing abstraction and resource management. This was the big big selling point for Windows 2.0 -- you didn't have to write your own windowing or printer support code.
XWindows is part of the operating system. Certainly you can boot without it... however, if you want to run multiple applications that use the screen realistate it is essential.
A web browser is not part of the operating system. First, it does not abstract hardware; and second, it does not manage resources. It is clearly an application -- much more of an application than WP 5.1 or Lotus 123 ever were.
The Java VM plays many operating system roles. First, it acts as a resouce manager and second, it provides a hardware abstraction. The existence of a JavaOS is in clear support of this assertion.
I hope this clears things up for people. Those who would claim it to be "subjective" are falling for Microsoft FUD.
Don't expect Jerry to be unbiased. I stopped subscribing to Byte in 1991, but from 1983 to 1990 I read almost all Jerry's articles. For any product to gain marketshare, it has to have a serious champion in the press. Jerry was that champion for Microsoft. And I was sold.
Jerry was the token nerd supporting the "underdog": Microsoft against the dominant companies: IBM, Lotus, Word Perfect and Apple. He was damn convincing and was largely responsible for motivating a hudge grass roots sales force for Microsofot products; myself included.
There is a great book on IBM, I think it is called "Big Blue". I don't have it on me, but from memory my memory the book was clear that IBM had a monopoly for well over 50 years before the government got around to acting! It started with the punch card company who did US census reporting, this technology was then bought by NCR; IBM was a NCR child who took over under Watson. Anyway, I might not have all my facts "perfect", but the 10 year assertion is just garbage. Without the anti-trust case in the US and other cases in europe, Microsoft would not have had a chance...
Today's NY Times article says that releasing the finding of fact ahead of the verdict is unusual and clever move by Judge Jackson. It also says that an appeals process will occur after the next election, when the new president can appoint a new head of the Justice Department's antitrust division. So, which canidate is in Microsoft's corner? Do you think soft money will make the findings of fact irrelevant?
News conference replay: Domestic (U.S.) (800) 934-7969 International (402) 530-8099 Teleconference replay: Domestic (U.S.) (888) 437-4640 International (402) 998-1319 Got to love the keytyping in the background...
I just talked with Betty Harvy of the DC area SGML User's Group and she said that she will borrow the tape from the presenter and will post a MP3 version on the web site in the next few weeks. In the talk a government site was visited (it looks boring.. but sounded great) and a few commercial sites were visited (look great.. but sound awful). I hope this will help. Also, Harvey Binggam presented last year, his web site is: http://ww.tiac.net/users/bingham/access bl/ Best of luck!
What is funny, is that many of you will have sight problems that develop as you age. From my understanding a large percentage (60%) of blind people had a "normal" life until they were in their 40's 50's or 60's -- at which point they were struck blind due to a stroke...
What makes democracy work is when we stick up for the rights of other people. We do this becuse when people wait until their own rights have been taken it is very often too late. What makes capitalism work is an underlying democracy -- a system which keeps one person's rights from trampling on another's. Many of you are large advocates of freedom. However, when it is not your freedom... you turn a blind eye.
These blind people whom you wish to steal rights from have paid tax dollars which have helped to fund the public institutions which created the Internet. Shouldn't they be allowed to benefit from its existence as well as you?
Two weeks ago, I was at a DC SGML conference where a web accessibility talk was given. It changed my perspective on things. We sat in a room (all 40 of us) and listened to a "web reader" browse the web. It was amazing. When I'm 60 and blind from staring at a CRT my whole life I want to be able to sit back and enjoy the wealth of information on the Internet. The last thing I want to hear is "IMAGE, IMAGE, JAVASCRIPT, IMAGE, IMAGE, JAVASCRIPT, SUBMIT"
Come On! Certainly the minimum we can do is add a few ALT tags to our web site, test with Lynx, and ask Bobby to take a look at it just to make sure... Why you all line up and support a corporation's (a non living being) right to deny access to a class of people is beyond me. In fact, I'm surprised. Especially for slash dot people.
Another case of this happened during an OOPSLA keynote address by Christopher Alexander, an architecture researcher who is often quoted in the patterns community. His speech touched on the moral reasons for patterns and outlined emerging risks as the software community continues to ignore ethical issues.
The people in the audience were expecting a "practical" discourse and shrugged their shoulders as they were called "hired guns" lacking respect for history. I don't think he will be invited back.
Hello all. I've been struggling with licensing for 2 years now, especially with one for http://jos.org , I've written up a possible alternative. It is at http://distributedcopyright.org. It seems to have the best aspects of open-source, yet allowing a return on investment for a developer. I'd love to hear your feedback, please join the discussion list! Thank you! Clark Evans
Slashdot Mirror
For math and engineering notes, the expression is often tied directly to the idea. In these cases, there is often only one *correct* expression of the idea; thus it is hard to argue that copyright law applies. Furthermore, most of these lecture notes contain proofs and statements of theorems which have come right out of a text book anyway.
However, the question becomes, who actually owns the copyright? It should be the university, since the faculty are their employers and it is most likely "work-for-hire". And I would assume that a public university should have no problems with students re-publishing them on their own... however, if a commercial organization gets involved; then I would expect royalty arrangments.
This one is pretty cut and dry... for verbadim copies. Now, for some of my courses, my notes look _nothing_ like what the professor drew; my mental image was different (and often wrong...). Now, copyright law only protects the "expression" of an idea, not the idea itself. So, as long as a notetaker doesn't copy things exactly, or more appropriately, asserts their own interpretation -- then they are changing the expression, hence, copyright law does not apply.
So, to prove a violation, the professor needs to have a video of each lecture and then compare the notes to the video. Only if there are exact, verbadim copies does copyright law matter.
On pages 3-5 of his book Operating Systems, Andrew S. Tannenbaum states rather clearly that an operating system performs 'two basically unrelated functions, and depending who is doing the talking, you hear mostly about one function or the other'.:
The Operating System as an Extended Machine ... In this view, the function of the operating system is to present the user with the equivalent of an extended machine or virtual machine that is easier to program than the underlying hardware.
Just as the operating system shields the programmer from the disk hardware and presentes a simple file-oriented interface, it also conceals alot of unpleasant business concering interrupts, timers, memory management, and other low-level features. In each case, the abstraction offerred by the operating system is simpleer and easier to use than the underlying hardware
The Operating System as a Resource Manager ... In short, this view of the operating system holds that its primary task is to keep track of who is using which resource, to grant resource request, to account for usage, and to mediate conflicting requests from different programs and users.
In addition, the job of the operating system is to provide for an orderly and controlled allocation of the processors, memories, and I/O devices among the various programs competing for them
I struggled the same as you all seem to be struggling until I read this clear explanation in Andy's Operating Systems book. Following this lead here are some definitive conclusions:
That being said, there are a few practical statements that can be made:
- DOS is an incomplete operating system. Old DOs programs like Word Perfect, DBASE III, Lotus 123 all supplemented DOS by filling in the missing roles -- printer and windowing abstraction and resource management. This was the big big selling point for Windows 2.0 -- you didn't have to write your own windowing or printer support code.
- XWindows is part of the operating system. Certainly you can boot without it... however, if you want to run multiple applications that use the screen realistate it is essential.
- A web browser is not part of the operating system. First, it does not abstract hardware; and second, it does not manage resources. It is clearly an application -- much more of an application than WP 5.1 or Lotus 123 ever were.
- The Java VM plays many operating system roles. First, it acts as a resouce manager and second, it provides a hardware abstraction. The existence of a JavaOS is in clear support of this assertion.
I hope this clears things up for people. Those who would claim it to be "subjective" are falling for Microsoft FUD.In a LinuxToday, Eric Raymond wrote an article titled Communist China adopts Linux? Not so, apparently....
This is essentially the settlement IBM came to with the European Union in the (early?) 80's.
Jerry was the token nerd supporting the "underdog": Microsoft against the dominant companies: IBM, Lotus, Word Perfect and Apple. He was damn convincing and was largely responsible for motivating a hudge grass roots sales force for Microsofot products; myself included.
There is a great book on IBM, I think it is called "Big Blue". I don't have it on me, but from memory my memory the book was clear that IBM had a monopoly for well over 50 years before the government got around to acting! It started with the punch card company who did US census reporting, this technology was then bought by NCR; IBM was a NCR child who took over under Watson. Anyway, I might not have all my facts "perfect", but the 10 year assertion is just garbage. Without the anti-trust case in the US and other cases in europe, Microsoft would not have had a chance...
Today's NY Times article says that releasing the finding of fact ahead of the verdict is unusual and clever move by Judge Jackson. It also says that an appeals process will occur after the next election, when the new president can appoint a new head of the Justice Department's antitrust division. So, which canidate is in Microsoft's corner? Do you think soft money will make the findings of fact irrelevant?
It's absurd. It's pretty supid. I'd love a slash dot comment on it. Let's get it saved, transcribed, and collect a response.
News conference replay: Domestic (U.S.) (800) 934-7969 International (402) 530-8099
Teleconference replay: Domestic (U.S.) (888) 437-4640 International (402) 998-1319
Got to love the keytyping in the background...
I just talked with Betty Harvy of the DC area SGML User's Group and she said that she will borrow the tape from the presenter and will post a MP3 version on the web site in the next few weeks. In the talk a government site was visited (it looks boring.. but sounded great) and a few commercial sites were visited (look great .. but sound awful). I hope this will help.
Also, Harvey Binggam presented last year, his web site is: http://ww.tiac.net/users/bingham/access bl/
Best of luck!
What is funny, is that many of you will have sight problems that develop as you age. From my understanding a large percentage (60%) of blind people had a "normal" life until they were in their 40's 50's or 60's -- at which point they were struck blind due to a stroke...
What makes democracy work is when we stick up for the rights of other people. We do this becuse when people wait until their own rights have been taken it is very often too late. What makes capitalism work is an underlying democracy -- a system which keeps one person's rights from trampling on another's. Many of you are large advocates of freedom. However, when it is not your freedom... you turn a blind eye.
These blind people whom you wish to steal rights from have paid tax dollars which have helped to fund the public institutions which created the Internet. Shouldn't they be allowed to benefit from its existence as well as you?
Two weeks ago, I was at a DC SGML conference where a web accessibility talk was given. It changed my perspective on things. We sat in a room (all 40 of us) and listened to a "web reader" browse the web. It was amazing. When I'm 60 and blind from staring at a CRT my whole life I want to be able to sit back and enjoy the wealth of information on the Internet. The last thing I want to hear is "IMAGE, IMAGE, JAVASCRIPT, IMAGE, IMAGE, JAVASCRIPT, SUBMIT"
Come On! Certainly the minimum we can do is add a few ALT tags to our web site, test with Lynx, and ask Bobby to take a look at it just to make sure... Why you all line up and support a corporation's (a non living being) right to deny access to a class of people is beyond me. In fact, I'm surprised. Especially for slash dot people.
Another case of this happened during an OOPSLA
keynote address by Christopher Alexander, an
architecture researcher who is often quoted
in the patterns community. His speech
touched on the moral reasons for patterns and
outlined emerging risks as the software
community continues to ignore ethical issues.
The people in the audience were expecting
a "practical" discourse and shrugged their
shoulders as they were called "hired guns"
lacking respect for history. I don't think
he will be invited back.
Hello all. I've been struggling with licensing for 2 years now, especially with one for http://jos.org , I've written up a possible alternative. It is at http://distributedcopyright.org. It seems to have the best aspects of open-source, yet allowing a return on investment for a developer. I'd love to hear your feedback, please join the discussion list! Thank you! Clark Evans