You're missing the entire point. For you to take advantage of this "opportunity" was a fine thing.
For the company to have created the situation where there are no paying jobs available for you, by refusing to pay you for the work which you did for them, was both immoral and illegal.
b) 2% is quite a lot. that means you instantly beat out 1 in every 50 applicants.
BFD. How much did you pay for that in lost wages?
Just because you sucked at your internship...
Bad guess, try again. I have never in my life been asked to work for free.
It's the opportunity to impress people. It's not any guarantee that you will. It's just a long and dragged out interview that lasts for months. That's all it is. And that's all it needs to be.
Well, good for you that you're so happy to give away your labor. But that's not "all it needs to be" under the laws of this country, nor probably any other 1st-world nation.
It's customary to pay interns for business, in particular IT, finance, accounting, engineering, product development, etc. For blue collar work it may be more common for a student to be in an apprenticeship program. The school usually ends up getting paid, and the work done is graded and part of the program. Teaching is similar as well, but it's part of the grade used for the degree.
Yes, if you get course credit, then I think the Labor Dept and judges will pretty much accept that as proof of the educational value. It's generally up to the schools to set standards for these programs, and enforce them--including making the students aware of the standards and providing effective ways for them to report abuse. (Now there could abuse involving the school's collusion--free unskilled labor for the Dean's cousin or whatever, but that would be the rare exception, as opposed to the widespread abuse that's finally getting some attention.)
Entertainment is off in it's own little world.
As are publishing and fashion. Those 3 are the big offenders.
the one and only purpose of interning is to have the opportunity to shine. It's difficult to get hired as an employee -- there's a lot to prove and a lot of competition. It's way easier as an intern. And it's the foot in the door. You do have the opportunity to do really well, get noticed, and eventually get hired. And all you need to do is to work for free until that happens. That's pretty swell.
That's the lie they tell you, but don't believe it. They're really just using you. Statistically, in the fields that abuse unpaid internships, those with internships on their resumes get hired after graduation at a rate about 2% higher than those without.
You used to be free to decide for yourself whether to take an unpaid internship.
Well, yes, sort of. But the employer is not free to hire employees without paying them. This particular form of employee abuse has been illegal in the US since 1938;-)
The judge seems to say something similar. He says it's not OK to have them as unpaid interns and then have them do coffee fetching jobs, that implies it would be OK if they were actually doing things that would gain them experience and had educational value.
Yes, that's what he says, because that's what the law says;-)
All this means is that there will be fewer internships, thus fewer opportunities for unskilled students (or otherwise) to gain experience. Keep in mind that these students are working of their own free will.
So what?
No, really, think about your answer.
Eliminate this unethical source of free entry-level labor, and young people looking for first jobs will be competing against what level of experience?
I hope you get modded up, as your comment gets to the core of the issue very nicely. I just wanted to expand on this:
Nowadays every imbecile thinks that an "intern" is a source of free labor.
Yeah, I run a very small software dev business, and on a couple of occasions I have hired interns for the summer. Of course, as I hope everybody here knows, in our industry interns get paid, and pretty well...
A couple of times, in conversations with friends outside the industry, when this subject came up, there was a total disconnect. They wondered how the heck somebody like me could find interns, and it turned out that their bafflement was because they assumed that by "intern" I meant "unpaid". I was so shocked by this ridiculous assumption that the first time I was literally speechless for a few seconds while I processed the concept: "this person thinks that there are young people who will develop software for a for-profit entity without being paid, wtf...". Then I slowly explained: "no, in this industry employers consider it customary to pay our employees..."
There are jobs that people really, really, really want to do for zero pay. Why wouldn't you allow them to make that decision for themselves?
Why don't we allow people to sell themselves into slavery? Because as a society we long ago decided that slavery was immoral. Why don't we allow people to contract themselves into a period of indentured servitude? Because as a society we long ago decided that indentured servitude was immoral. Why don't we allow people to work for profit-making corporations without being paid for their labor? Because as a society we long ago decided...
Note that unpaid internships are legal in 2 broad circumstances: first, of course, working for a non-profit entity, second where the intern is being trained and not performing immediately useful work for the company.
Unpaid internships have always been very restricted according to labor laws. It has always been the case that many companies in the entertainment and publishing and fashion industries were breaking the law. What is new is simply that a few former interns got fed up enough with their treatment that they are ratting out their unethical non-employers;-)
You have no idea what entrapment is, do you? Entrapment by nature cannot be performed by undercover police pretending to be something else.
That is simply not true. Current definition of entrapment is greatly influenced by John DeLorean's case (where he agreed to deal drugs because undercover FBI officers threatened his life and his family).
I had mentioned three circumstances, which I think is where my confusion set in - I'm guessing you were treating "explicit transfer of copyright" and "explicitly stating a work for hire" as a single one.
No, I was disagreeing with "explicitly stating a work for hire", but I was wrong anyway, so its kind of mute for all intensive purpose's and I'll just admit to loosing the point;-)
(bonus points if you noticed all 5 "slashdot'ish" errors in the above)
had interpreted what you had written to mean that whatever was being written was being combined with other code the company owned (and thus would be under their copyright), whether it had actually existed at the time or not. Regardless, it sounds like we're on the same page at the end of the day.
Right. I interpreted what you wrote to cover only the case of pre-existing code, and was pointing out the other possibility for combining code from contractors.
it is a work for hire if and only if it meets the legal definition, which software development only does under the two circumstances you mentioned, plus the one where you're hired to write new code that is a module to be combined with others and cannot function on its own.
I did also say "or is a contribution to an existing project that the company already holds the copyright on".:-)
Yes, exactly--one of the 2 circumstances you mentioned. I think you skimmed my post too quickly--I was pointing out the 3rd situation, where there is no existing project on which the company holds copyright, and they farm out modules of an entirely new work.
Anyway, my main point was wrong. I hadn't reviewed the statute in a while, and it seems that (long ago, actually) the option to call it a work for hire in the contract and have it legally be such was added.
Bingo! Go back and read your contract. No contract or there's no language in it about who owns what, then it's theirs (If you're in the US) and they can do any damn thing they want with it.
This exactly, precisely, the opposite of what the law in the U.S. says.
Even if you put your own copyright notice on there, unless the contract specifically says otherwise, you've handed copyright over to them in doing work for hire. (IANAL, but I've been a contractor for 24 years.)
24 years, and you don't know the single most fundamental fact about copyright??? ***WOW***
If he was an independent contractor, however, he would retain the copyright unless the contract explicitly transfers copyright to his client, explicitly states that it's a work for hire, or is a contribution to an existing project that the company already holds the copyright on. See 17 USC 101 [cornell.edu] for details.
Actually, that's not quite correct. Explicitly stating it is a work for hire does not affect whether or not it's a work for hire--it is a work for hire if and only if it meets the legal definition, which software development only does under the two circumstances you mentioned, plus the one where you're hired to write new code that is a module to be combined with others and cannot function on its own.
Now, although calling it a work for hire technically leaves the copyright with the developer, it's solid enough evidence of the *intent* of the contract that if that employer comes around later and asks for a written transfer of copyright, you'd best comply, because if they sue you'll lose.
I sited the rules so you can look there. My anonymity doesn't change ABA rules. Further, I stated that if he had access to Apple legal docs it would be a conflict. So, you're just agreeing with what I said. LOL all you want but what I wrote is correct.
The fact that you don't know the difference between "cite" and "site" suggests to me that you are not an attorney;-)
And AFAIK, it's been accepted for years that neurogenesis applies to grey cells.
Exactly. You'd have to be totally ignorant of at least the last decade of research in neuroscience to deny they regenerate. So I expect that the so-called "debate" was not among neuroscientists, but between people outside the field who insisted on clinging to outdated unfounded dogma, and those who had at least a single fucking clue.
Every single function you have ever written, or will write, is an inductive proof. To be good, you must understand induction. Some people come by this through their own intuition, and can be good without the formal training. The rest need to have it hammered in with math problem sets.
And, btw, differential equations does not qualify as "higher match" in the university context:-(
In other words, the Calc and Diff EQ are not directly relevant to writing code. But there's more math coming which will be...
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the entire point. For you to take advantage of this "opportunity" was a fine thing.
For the company to have created the situation where there are no paying jobs available for you, by refusing to pay you for the work which you did for them, was both immoral and illegal.
b) 2% is quite a lot. that means you instantly beat out 1 in every 50 applicants.
BFD. How much did you pay for that in lost wages?
Just because you sucked at your internship...
Bad guess, try again. I have never in my life been asked to work for free.
It's the opportunity to impress people. It's not any guarantee that you will. It's just a long and dragged out interview that lasts for months. That's all it is. And that's all it needs to be.
Well, good for you that you're so happy to give away your labor. But that's not "all it needs to be" under the laws of this country, nor probably any other 1st-world nation.
It's customary to pay interns for business, in particular IT, finance, accounting, engineering, product development, etc. For blue collar work it may be more common for a student to be in an apprenticeship program. The school usually ends up getting paid, and the work done is graded and part of the program. Teaching is similar as well, but it's part of the grade used for the degree.
Yes, if you get course credit, then I think the Labor Dept and judges will pretty much accept that as proof of the educational value. It's generally up to the schools to set standards for these programs, and enforce them--including making the students aware of the standards and providing effective ways for them to report abuse. (Now there could abuse involving the school's collusion--free unskilled labor for the Dean's cousin or whatever, but that would be the rare exception, as opposed to the widespread abuse that's finally getting some attention.)
Entertainment is off in it's own little world.
As are publishing and fashion. Those 3 are the big offenders.
the one and only purpose of interning is to have the opportunity to shine. It's difficult to get hired as an employee -- there's a lot to prove and a lot of competition. It's way easier as an intern. And it's the foot in the door. You do have the opportunity to do really well, get noticed, and eventually get hired. And all you need to do is to work for free until that happens. That's pretty swell.
That's the lie they tell you, but don't believe it. They're really just using you. Statistically, in the fields that abuse unpaid internships, those with internships on their resumes get hired after graduation at a rate about 2% higher than those without.
You used to be free to decide for yourself whether to take an unpaid internship.
Well, yes, sort of. But the employer is not free to hire employees without paying them. This particular form of employee abuse has been illegal in the US since 1938 ;-)
The judge seems to say something similar. He says it's not OK to have them as unpaid interns and then have them do coffee fetching jobs, that implies it would be OK if they were actually doing things that would gain them experience and had educational value.
Yes, that's what he says, because that's what the law says ;-)
All this means is that there will be fewer internships, thus fewer opportunities for unskilled students (or otherwise) to gain experience. Keep in mind that these students are working of their own free will.
So what?
No, really, think about your answer.
Eliminate this unethical source of free entry-level labor, and young people looking for first jobs will be competing against what level of experience?
I hope you get modded up, as your comment gets to the core of the issue very nicely. I just wanted to expand on this:
Nowadays every imbecile thinks that an "intern" is a source of free labor.
Yeah, I run a very small software dev business, and on a couple of occasions I have hired interns for the summer. Of course, as I hope everybody here knows, in our industry interns get paid, and pretty well...
A couple of times, in conversations with friends outside the industry, when this subject came up, there was a total disconnect. They wondered how the heck somebody like me could find interns, and it turned out that their bafflement was because they assumed that by "intern" I meant "unpaid". I was so shocked by this ridiculous assumption that the first time I was literally speechless for a few seconds while I processed the concept: "this person thinks that there are young people who will develop software for a for-profit entity without being paid, wtf...". Then I slowly explained: "no, in this industry employers consider it customary to pay our employees..."
There are jobs that people really, really, really want to do for zero pay. Why wouldn't you allow them to make that decision for themselves?
Why don't we allow people to sell themselves into slavery? Because as a society we long ago decided that slavery was immoral. Why don't we allow people to contract themselves into a period of indentured servitude? Because as a society we long ago decided that indentured servitude was immoral. Why don't we allow people to work for profit-making corporations without being paid for their labor? Because as a society we long ago decided...
Note that unpaid internships are legal in 2 broad circumstances: first, of course, working for a non-profit entity, second where the intern is being trained and not performing immediately useful work for the company.
Unpaid internships have always been very restricted according to labor laws. It has always been the case that many companies in the entertainment and publishing and fashion industries were breaking the law. What is new is simply that a few former interns got fed up enough with their treatment that they are ratting out their unethical non-employers ;-)
You have no idea what entrapment is, do you? Entrapment by nature cannot be performed by undercover police pretending to be something else.
That is simply not true. Current definition of entrapment is greatly influenced by John DeLorean's case (where he agreed to deal drugs because undercover FBI officers threatened his life and his family).
What exactly did you invent? I am not asking what general idea you described. I am asking what did you invent?
I had mentioned three circumstances, which I think is where my confusion set in - I'm guessing you were treating "explicit transfer of copyright" and "explicitly stating a work for hire" as a single one.
No, I was disagreeing with "explicitly stating a work for hire", but I was wrong anyway, so its kind of mute for all intensive purpose's and I'll just admit to loosing the point ;-)
(bonus points if you noticed all 5 "slashdot'ish" errors in the above)
had interpreted what you had written to mean that whatever was being written was being combined with other code the company owned (and thus would be under their copyright), whether it had actually existed at the time or not. Regardless, it sounds like we're on the same page at the end of the day.
Right. I interpreted what you wrote to cover only the case of pre-existing code, and was pointing out the other possibility for combining code from contractors.
it is a work for hire if and only if it meets the legal definition, which software development only does under the two circumstances you mentioned, plus the one where you're hired to write new code that is a module to be combined with others and cannot function on its own.
I did also say "or is a contribution to an existing project that the company already holds the copyright on". :-)
Yes, exactly--one of the 2 circumstances you mentioned. I think you skimmed my post too quickly--I was pointing out the 3rd situation, where there is no existing project on which the company holds copyright, and they farm out modules of an entirely new work.
Anyway, my main point was wrong. I hadn't reviewed the statute in a while, and it seems that (long ago, actually) the option to call it a work for hire in the contract and have it legally be such was added.
...work for hire is owned by the entity that hired you.
This is true. What is not true is the notion that contract software development fits the legal definition of work made for hire ;-)
Bingo! Go back and read your contract. No contract or there's no language in it about who owns what, then it's theirs (If you're in the US) and they can do any damn thing they want with it.
This exactly, precisely, the opposite of what the law in the U.S. says.
Even if you put your own copyright notice on there, unless the contract specifically says otherwise, you've handed copyright over to them in doing work for hire. (IANAL, but I've been a contractor for 24 years.)
24 years, and you don't know the single most fundamental fact about copyright??? ***WOW***
IANAL either, but the link you provided seems to say the opposite of what you said.
Then you read it wrong ;-)
If he was an independent contractor, however, he would retain the copyright unless the contract explicitly transfers copyright to his client, explicitly states that it's a work for hire, or is a contribution to an existing project that the company already holds the copyright on. See 17 USC 101 [cornell.edu] for details.
Actually, that's not quite correct. Explicitly stating it is a work for hire does not affect whether or not it's a work for hire--it is a work for hire if and only if it meets the legal definition, which software development only does under the two circumstances you mentioned, plus the one where you're hired to write new code that is a module to be combined with others and cannot function on its own.
Now, although calling it a work for hire technically leaves the copyright with the developer, it's solid enough evidence of the *intent* of the contract that if that employer comes around later and asks for a written transfer of copyright, you'd best comply, because if they sue you'll lose.
I sited the rules so you can look there. My anonymity doesn't change ABA rules. Further, I stated that if he had access to Apple legal docs it would be a conflict. So, you're just agreeing with what I said. LOL all you want but what I wrote is correct.
The fact that you don't know the difference between "cite" and "site" suggests to me that you are not an attorney ;-)
On another note, I wonder if this book might be the untold story of the teenagers and outlaws who hacked Ma Bell???
The PowerPoint may be real, but how do we know whether it describes a program that was ever actually implemented, or some manager's wet dream?
And AFAIK, it's been accepted for years that neurogenesis applies to grey cells.
Exactly. You'd have to be totally ignorant of at least the last decade of research in neuroscience to deny they regenerate. So I expect that the so-called "debate" was not among neuroscientists, but between people outside the field who insisted on clinging to outdated unfounded dogma, and those who had at least a single fucking clue.
You know only 3% of Americans own firearms, right?
Uhm, no. You dropped a 0 there.
The pathetic pansies won this round...
Every single function you have ever written, or will write, is an inductive proof. To be good, you must understand induction. Some people come by this through their own intuition, and can be good without the formal training. The rest need to have it hammered in with math problem sets.
And, btw, differential equations does not qualify as "higher match" in the university context :-(
In other words, the Calc and Diff EQ are not directly relevant to writing code. But there's more math coming which will be...