Every time I read something like this, I can't help but feel that society has lost sight that the primary purpose of copyright is to promote and encourage creative endeavors for everyone's benefit[1], not to safeguard individual ownership of 'intellectual property.'
Is anyone at this school system even wondering, "does society at large benefit from this?"
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[1] As pyre points out below, this is the case in the US, but not necessarily in Europe, where the history of copyright is much longer and more complex. (Thanks pyre!) The Copyright Clause of the US Constitution is: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
Depends. As I understand it, using copyright for the betterment of society is a British/American view of copyright. Elsewhere in Europe it's seen as an author's right to control one's work.
It was intended that copyright would exist for a limited amount of time to allow people to get some profit in return for their creative endeavors. With the Mickey Mouse Protection Act of 1998 corporations can hold onto copyright for 95 years since publication or 120 years since production.
I am pretty sure it is meant to encourage the progress of science and art, regardless of whether or not authors and inventors turn a profit. Scientists, for example, rarely see a profit from their research papers, which are nevertheless subject to copyrights.
When my son was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley he used to put a copyright notice on all his homework because the University has a similar policy. The policy was legal because students has to agree in order to gain admission.
The Prince Georges policy has no legal standing because first graders cant enter into contracts. Apparently nobody contacted a minimally competent lawyer.
A student work is a work produced by a registered student without the
use of University funds (other than Student Financial Aid), that is
produced outside any University employment, and is not a sponsored,
contracted facilities, or commissioned work.
Ownership of copyrights to student works shall reside with the originator.
Note also that schools using anti-plagiarism services like TurnItIn
might want at least an implied license to copy putative student
works so they could submit a copy of the work to the service.
I'm not sure that even if a 1st grader could sign a contract that it would be legal. I believe these are public schools, and I think they're legally required to accept students.
Contracts with minors (under 18, not just first graders) are unenforceable (technically: voidable) with very narrow exceptions.
The lesson here is that schools won't do your work for you. They have zero incentive to educate you about you rights. They can tell you the law is whatever sounds convenient for them--they're gambling that people will just go along and not check.
From what I read, it looks like the policy would apply to work produced 'for the school' or use by the school or part of the school, or with school equipment. So I suppose if you claimed all work you turned in had been produced by you prior to the assignment, for your own, or other, purposes, you (or the copyright owner) would retain your rights.
I believe that noonespecial's "ridiculous contract" was such that the other party claimed copyright ownership to all copyrightable material generated by noonespecial, including work which had no relation to the other party.
This would, therefore, include work done for school, if a transfer of copyright for schoolwork is required as part of the education.
Surely this can't be legal under existing copyright law. From the article, "The District holds common law copyright, at a minimum, to all relevant intellectual property its city and school employees create, a spokeswoman said." I take it that the school district's lawyer was not consulted before that statement was made, or else the lawyer was a doofus about copyright law. There isn't any "common law copyright," in the first place. (FIRST EDIT: a reply to this comment correctly points out that the story is primarily about a "proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education" and that the District of Columbia public schools are a distinct public school system. So I should make clear that I think that ANY school district that thinks it can assert a copyright interest in pupil or student assignments is mistaken about the law, and parents should challenge districts that make such statements.)
The work-for-hire exception to the general copyright law principle that the right of copyright belongs to the creator from fixation is narrowly construed, and school pupils attending a public school don't meet the rather narrow exceptions that trigger the work-for-hire doctrine.
School pupils are not employees of school districts. Works produced in the scope of employment by school district employees may indeed be works for hire (there is some scope for interpretation in applying this part of the work-for-hire doctrine) but, again, students and pupils are not employees of the school district. They have authorship rights in their works from the moment of fixation. (That students and pupils are usually minors, not adults, is an additional complication in asserting that right, but that doesn't pass the right to the school.)
Anecdote: I made a school art project in second grade, a picture of a Mongol horseman, that somehow was precociously good, probably because I had seen other such drawings at home when reading history books. The school's specialist art teacher was so impressed by the picture that she took it, and I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT AGAIN. Every time I tell this story, I encounter other adults who also remember producing an art project in school that was taken by a teacher, never to be returned. Thanks a lot.
My advice to parents, which I advise parents to memorize, whenever I speak at a public meeting about educational law: if a school official tells you that you must put up with some school rule, because the rule is the law, say, "What is your legal authority to ask me to do this?" Statutes and case holdings and administrative regulations have citations. If it's really the law, someone can look it up and see exactly what the law says. Schools can only make up policies under authority granted to the schools by other law-making bodies. And if a school district has a policy, it still needs to be written down somewhere. In my experience, most school district officials who say "It's the law" are nonlawyers and are often mistaken about what the law says. If a school tells you that you can't do what's right by your child because "it's the law," ask for the citation of the law. If it's really a law, there is a citation, and the law can be looked up. In the United States, under its Anglo-American system of law, the default assumption is individual liberty (and parents rather than schools acting in the interests of minor children), so make sure to check the specific law before believing your freedom is restricted by the law in the manner the school official claims.
SECOND EDIT: A different top-level comment in this thread mentions a policy of the University of California Berkeley. I have an inference about what that is about, and it would be enormously helpful to the discussion to link to the exact text of what students agree to as they enroll, which is surely a public document that very likely lives on the World Wide Web.
PG County is Maryland, not DC. It's the county that wraps around the eastern side of the District, and includes the University of Maryland. The rules of the District don't apply to what they're trying to do. I think the author mentioned them (and those of Montgomery County, PG's far wealthier and higher performing neighbor) to show that the idea wouldn't be possible in those school districts.
Notably, PG County has an awfully run government that presides over a relatively low-income population generally composed of Latino immigrants and African-Americans pushed out of the District itself by rising home prices. I've seen a picture before of the average income levels in the counties surrounding DC. Montgomery, Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties are all top 10 in the nation. PG sticks out like a sore thumb. Adding to that, they have by far the most racist police force you'll find. A friend of mine has been pulled over and searched multiple times there solely because he is a young black driving a car that doesn't look like it got pulled off the scrap heap. The last thing that county needs is something that stifles the abilities of its younger residents to try and create something new and interesting for their local community and at-large.
edit: okay, I suppose PG county is lower income than Montgomery, Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties, but the population is certainly not "low income" even for a high-cost-of-living region.
Compare that to other DC-area counties, though. Per the Washington Post [1], Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington all have median household incomes over $100,000. Montgomery sits at almost $93,000. So in comparison, $71,000 per year is low.
PG County has wide variance in income. Further out in the county there are fairly well-off people. But there is a dense population of urban poor near the DC border.
I used to live in Greenbelt, in the heart of PG County, and my 2-bedroom-and-den semi-crappy apartment cost $1750 nearly 7 years ago. And Greenbelt is a DUMP. An expensive, expensive dump.
Since the apartments were all full — and not 6 people to a unit, either… -- there's only one conclusion… PG County is a lot wealthier than you think. It's not all in Bowie and "the north."
> If a school tells you that you can't do what's right by your child because "it's the law," ask for the citation of the law. If it's really a law, there is a citation, and the law can be looked up. In the United States, under its Anglo-American system of law, the default assumption is individual liberty (and parents rather than schools acting in the interests of minor children), so make sure to check the specific law before believing your freedom is restricted by the law in the manner the school official claims.
Unfortunately they're likely to mumble some semi-related law and then call the police.
Dan, to the contrary, the parents I have advised in this manner for two decades report good results in getting school districts to back away from illegal restrictions on family decisions once the parents show that they know how to ask about the law. Simply asking for a citation when a government official tells you what to do is enormously helpful. (It may be especially helpful here in Minnesota, where for more than twenty years we have had public school open enrollment and a reasonably easy-going homeschooling statute, thus giving parents the power to shop for a school that fits each child in the family.)
A local friend of mine has a piece of advice that shows her understanding of the world from being a programmer for a large insurance company rather than a lawyer. As she asked for school accommodations for her four children (now all grown up and in higher education or private employment), when told she couldn't get what her children needed, she would say, "Who do I talk to to get an exception?" She understood very well that schools are bureaucratic organizations, and that all bureaucratic organizations have some higher bureaucrat who can make exceptions to rules. (I think she learned that at the insurance company where she does her programming.) I now add her phrase to my parent talks to supplement the more lawyer-like phrase that I mentioned in my first comment in this thread.
> when told she couldn't get what her children needed, she would say, "Who do I talk to to get an exception?" She understood very well that schools are bureaucratic organizations, and that all bureaucratic organizations have some higher bureaucrat who can make exceptions to rules.
That's excellent advice, and it's something I quite often. "I don't know your system, and so I don't know who to ask or what questions to ask. What do you suggest?" turns unhelpful conversations into productive discussion.
In the UK there has been some problem with photographing your children at school events. Schools claim compliance with a variety of laws, but the reality is they just don't want people taking photographs.
> But only recently news emerged of a parent who, in 2007, was threatened with arrest by police as he arrived at his daughter's school if he proceeded to break the school's ban on photography at a nativity play. The same school in Leicestershire still has the ban in place, although photographs can be taken after the performance is completed.
This follows a weird restriction on photography in public in general in the UK. Youtube has many videos of people being told by police to stop taking photographs in public. This has been such a problem that one police service had to issue updated guidance.
Harassment. Making a scene, also known as disturbing the peace. Refusing to leave, which amounts to criminal trespass. Maybe even assault, if they're really feeling their oats and are willing to claim you made them fear for their safety.
If it gets to the point where a school official asks a parent to leave, my advice would be to walk away and call your favorite education lawyer. Do you really think refusing to leave is going to change their mind?
> Anecdote: I made a school art project in second grade, a picture of a Mongol horseman, that somehow was precociously good, probably because I had seen other such drawings at home when reading history books. The school's specialist art teacher was so impressed by the picture that she took it, and I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT AGAIN. Every time I tell this story, I encounter other adults who also remember producing an art project in school that was taken by a teacher, never to be returned. Thanks a lot.
That isn't actually a copyright issue unless the teacher copies it and/or distributes it. It may still be some form of theft though that assumes it wasn't lost while in the teacher's care for valid reasons.
Further schools are Already legally required to teach students so any contract signed to trade copywrite in exchange for attendance fails to give the parent or student anything thus failing to become a contract. (Contracts require both sides to gain something of value aka consideration.)
PS: Schools often run into this issue when trying to set up contracts with students / parents.
Even with consideration, any contract signed by a student under threat of loss of education (which is a civil right), is signed under duress and therefore invalid.
Incidentally, there is such a thing as common law copyright[1], but it's pretty obscure and I'm not really sure how it could apply here given that none of the works at issue were created before it got preempted in the 1970s. This policy is, quite simply, insane and I can't see what they intend to accomplish here.
While I can at least imagine them being able to get teachers to sign some sort of copyright transfer agreement, I have a really hard time seeing how they're going to be able to get the copyrights of students. Copyright law requires a written memorandum of transfer so what could they do? Tell them to sign a copyright transfer or be expelled?
Some universities have plagiarism detection systems and to tell if you're copying from your buddy who took the course last year they store all submitted work. Often these systems are outsourced to companies like 'turnitin' [1] which can also compare work between universities. Work is stored forever, and if anyone submits something similar to your work, professors get to see both side by side for comparison.
In order to store students work in the plagiarism detection system, the student has to grant the university/turnitin an appropriate copyright license.
There's a big difference between granting the school a non-exclusive copyright licence (including one that allows them to sublicense to anti-plagiarism companies), and assigning them your copyright. I'd be happy to do the first, but not the second.
> is it even possible to grant a non-exclusive, non-revocable license?
...Yes?
IAN(Y)AL. But licences aren't revocable by default. If I grant you a licence by contract, then you have a licence. If I want to revoke it, I have two options.
- One, I can ask you if you'd be willing to waive/vary the contract, in return for some good consideration. But you don't have to accept.
- Two, I can send you a letter saying "I revoke your licence", sue you, and crucially, try to convince a judge to imply a term into the contract that allows me to revoke the license. Which is pretty hard. Terms aren't implied lightly. Especially if I put the word "irrevocable" in the contract, no-one's going to imply a clause saying the exact opposite.
Important thing: "by contract". If I grant you a licence gratuitously, outside of a contract or deed, that's different.
> Questioned about the policy after it was introduced, Jacobs said it was never the board’s “intention to declare ownership” of students’ work. “Counsel needs to restructure the language,” Jacobs said. “We want the district to get the recognition . . . not take their work.” Jacobs said last week that it was possible amendments could be made to the policy at the board’s next meeting. The board approved the policy for consideration by a vote of 8 to 1 last month but has removed the item from its agenda Thursday.
I don't see the connection. Vanity publishers make money from the author by basically selling books with a big markup.
Here they are just taking IP (of which 99.999% is going to be basically valueless). The only part that might make money would be selling lesson plans, but that would become a saturated market pretty quick.
A vanity publisher runs a poetry "competition"; they award a first, second, and third prize. They then publish all entries in a book, and people buy the book too see their poem in "print".
Schools now do something similar, but without the competition.
To give plagiarism more teeth? To deter students from copying each-others notes? To reinforce a policy of students accessing knowledge from only legitimate sources (ie: textbooks)? The applications are numerous and potentially lucrative.
* Sue students that are plagiarizing (copying answers)
* Sue students are assisting plagiarism (allowing others to copy answers)
* Regulate libraries as intermediaries for transmitting and publishing unlicensed content (eg: counterfeit books, unlicensed books), inadequately securing the photocopying machines, borrowed material, and other potentially infringing assets
* Sue libraries for encouraging, enabling, or facilitating infringement (ie: studying)
I foresee a future where libraries are regulated and managed in the same manner that ISPs are, perhaps even more-so due to the physical limitations and monetization of the unlicensed content available.
I made an app for my county's online grade book and would definitely hate it if my app was considered the county's work now. This is somewhat scary because my county(Loudoun) is close to Prince Georges.
- Students own their own work; even if they don't really care for it. I don't see any value in a 10 year pile of homework, but if you create a great piece of art, you should be able to take it home. Realistically, most work is valueless and binned.
- Any created teaching materials may optionally be released as open source, under some license that prevents anyone profiting from them. There's often a gap between good work, and good releasable work (final polish, consistency and so on). Anyone (e.g. some school district) wanting a particular set of work released should be prepared to fund this final polishing. So, a teacher could make a great course, subsequently receive funding to make it brilliant for others, and share it with the world. Thus any good teaching materials created benefit the most amount of people.
Not applying copyrights to education and knowledge, because copyrights make no sense in an age of widespread fast Internet access. Further, as public schools are government entities, they should not have copyrights at all; all unclassified government work should be in the public domain, and schools should not even think about classifying their teachers' or students' work.
Are there any amusing ways of hacking this policy?
What are the implications, for example of a student preparing a piece of work that breaches the law in some way and then immediately informing the authorities since the school board now owns said work.
I can imagine the Board finding themselves owning all kinds of work that 'accidentally' breach copyright. It might be interesting to try and engineer such a 'poison pill' piece of course work and watch the board squirm as they argue that 'this really doesn't belong to us'.
Happily (or unhappily), the law is applied by humans rather than computers, and isn't very susceptible to that sort of thing.
Also -- 'being the copyright holder of a work that infringes copyright' isn't a thing. If I copy Harry Potter, by the act of copying I'm infringing JKR's copyright. That I assigned copyright of any original works I make to X doesn't make X liable to JKR for that instead of me! (I can't assign JKR's copyright to X - I never had it in the first place).
(Even if I make a derivative work of Harry Potter without permission - so there will be new copyright which can be assigned to X - that doesn't change anything. It just means that you'd need both JKR's and X's permission to copy it. It wouldn't make X liable to JKR).
Not to mention, works doesn't necessarily "belong" to the copyright holder. I may own a painting, but the artist still hold the copyright on it. Wrong's generally aren't about 'belonging', anyway. Most restricted things are acts (e.g. making a copy of a copyrighted work, or communicating it to the public). Possession of an infringing work is usually only a wrong when coupled with e.g. intent to sell.
So I suppose they're also considering paying the students for their work? Otherwise this will probably last about 5 seconds on a 13th Amendment challenge.
Whenever I see something like this, I used to furiously bang away at the keyboard and type a lengthy, long rant, but now I don't even bother.
It's become all too commonplace that I just hang my head in shame and grow depressed to see my fellow human brothers and sisters become captives of selfishness and corruption.
What possible reason could there be for this, that, in any way, serves the public? Don't these schools have bigger problems than stealing people's work? It seems even having this as a discussion is a waste of public funds.
Legality aside, I could go either way on this. Schools are in dire straights financially. While I understand the gut reaction of how nonsensical the proposal sounds - if it raises money for the schools to provide better education, then it may be the lesser of two evils.
Maybe a better solution is some kind of joint copyright (if that's even possible)? Where one must get permission from the other if they plan on using it for publication or otherwise.
So they force you(especially if you're poor or underprivileged) to go to the school, lirerally at the point of a gun with truancy laws, force you to complete the assignments, and then appropriate the work for themselves alone and possibly profit from it.
Id agree so long as students have a choice. Otherwise, it's just the plantation owner talking about how good the slaves have it because he feeds them so well.
How much profit is being derived from the work of children though? It seems a stretch to make a comparison with plantations/slaves. Any profit that is generated from children in school is a side-effect, not a primary goal. Though I can see this setting up a situation of perverse incentives.
I doubt this is about profit. It's more likely that they wanted the copyright so they can use services that detect plagiarism without having to get consent from the students every time.
Now they're saying it's all a big mistake. Not sure I believe it.
If that was the purpose, then I think it was a mistake, since they could get the same results with a permanent, non-revocable license, instead of demanding full copyright assignment.
Once they get kids into the system, they have a suprising array of coercive methods to get students to perform. Vague threats about future actions, social shaming through posted grades and holding students back as their class moves on, etc.
I grant you that hard-core slackers laugh at this until they can get away with dropping out, but a large majority of students will conform to the physiological pressure to comply.
I literally did no (assigned) work in High School, failed every class, and still graduated a year early. It was about 50% moral outrage at the state of our education system, %40 I could teach myself things better, %10 I was a lazy arsehole.
I came within one point (on my last math final) of not graduating; teacher made a mistake grading the exam, a 69 turned into a 70, a 70 got my GPA just to the point where I got a diploma. Otherwise, I guess, summer school.
I graduated from the school. They wanted to get me out of there so at the end of my Sophomore year, they gave me a test, I aced it, and I got to not attend my senior year. (Strangely, they still let me compete in the Science Olympiad because I was the only one who knew how to use the GPS)
There are other ways to finance schools than insane copyright madness. Just because it's a suggestion doesn't mean it's the only option or that we should settle for it as a lesser of evils.
Is anyone at this school system even wondering, "does society at large benefit from this?"
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[1] As pyre points out below, this is the case in the US, but not necessarily in Europe, where the history of copyright is much longer and more complex. (Thanks pyre!) The Copyright Clause of the US Constitution is: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause