Campaign Launched To Stop School From Claiming Copyright On Student Work

from the speak-out-now dept

Thu, Feb 7th 2013 2:44pm — Mike Masnick

We recently wrote about how the school board for Prince George County, Maryland, was considering a policy that would claim the copyright of everything produced by both students and faculty at the various schools in the district. That seemed extreme in so many ways. Some folks have set up a site called Don't Copyright Me, in which they're asking people to sign a petition to be sent to the school board, telling them not to take the copyrights from students and teachers.

While this may seem like a small deal because it involves a single school district, the larger concern is that it actually becomes a bigger deal in the long term, as other school districts may follow suit:

Copyright is getting out of control. Prince George's County is one of the top 25 school systems in the country. If this policy goes into effect, it could set a terrible precedent at a time when quality education is needed more than ever. Students and teachers deserve the same rights as everyone else. With this policy, a high school student could get a takedown notice from their own school for posting a video they made for class on YouTube.

Hopefully the school board realizes this would be a mistake.

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Filed Under: copyright, education, prince george county, schoolwork

34 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 2:45pm

This would be a taking of property! It is sure to fall constitutionally.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:09pm
  
  Re:
  I dont agree with it personally, but I believe an argument can be made that the grade a student receives in the class could be considered payment which would mean that work the student turns in was created on a for hire basis.
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  - Poop Kamekasi, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:14pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Except that even though this is a public education system, the parents are still paying for the school's services.
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  - cpt kangarooski, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:16pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Works made for hire are generally based on federal employment law. I'm going to bet that grades don't quite qualify.
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  - mockingbird (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:17pm
    
    Re: Re:
    in which case the irs should get involved and figure out how to charge the school that is trying to avoid paying for health care, and the students for avoiding income tax.
    that's about the same logic, I think.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:29pm
    
    Re: Re:
    No. A student is not an employee.
    
    If you really want to go down that road and say the student is working, there are lots of laws the school district would be automatically violating by "hiring" their students in this manner. Minimum wage laws, child labor laws, age discrimination laws. Did they file all the proper tax forms? Did they pay unemployment insurance?
    
    But all that's moot, since students are NOT employees. The school is not hiring the student. If anything, the student is hiring the school. Also, the student has not signed a contract with the school. Copyright law explicitly states that any government agency (and a public school counts as one) cannot involuntarily take someone's copyright.
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    - Bergman (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 5:27pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      This. Demanding an employee work without pay is illegal. If the schoolwork is a work-for-hire creative effort, then the school district owes back wages at the very least.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 5:57pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Wow - lol, your argument has been totally destroyed.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 8 Feb 2013 @ 7:47am
    
    Re: Re:
    I dont agree with it personally, but I believe an argument can be made that the skirt a women wears could be considered justification for rape which would mean that the woman deserved what she got.
    
    That's how stupid your comment is.
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  - slick8086, 8 Feb 2013 @ 9:59am
    
    Re: Re:
    >the grade a student receives in the class could be considered payment
    
    You have that completely backwards. The grade is the product that the student is paying for.
    
    The educators are paid to teach AND EVALUATE the students. The grade is the evaluation.
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  - btr1701 (profile), 8 Feb 2013 @ 1:12pm
    
    Re: Re:
    > I believe an argument can be made
    
    That argument could be made, but legally it would certainly fail
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Jay (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 2:57pm

How to destroy universities
How to destroy public schools

Something that concerns me is that there is an administrative bureaucracy that is impeding on progress here. The teachers have no say in the education of the kids and the kids aren't learning as well as they could. The copyright claims are not the problem here. Find out what type of incentive structure is causing a tone deaf response to such a thick headed idea.

Obviously, if there are people that have to make money for the school through copyright claims, there's a problem. Copyright being used to censor artists and teachers is going to create a very strong backlash similar to the French revolution if this keeps going long enough.

You would think someone had paid attention in history when people are pushed in the wrong direction for too long.
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- The Real Michael, 8 Feb 2013 @ 5:34am
  
  Re: How to destroy universities
  This isn't just about censorship, although that's probably part of the reason for this push. It's just as much about finding ways to monetize the teachers' and students' work as it is about control.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 2:57pm

Academic Copyrights
A college professor once tried to claim copyright (on behalf of the university) on my final CS project. I ended up dropping the class after we almost got into a fist fight over it, although I did manage, through the student council, to get the university to change its copyright policy for the better.

As far as I'm concerned, unless you're paying me as your employee you have no right to claim copyright over my work.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 8 Feb 2013 @ 2:51pm
  
  Re: Academic Copyrights
  unless you're paying me as your employee you have no right to claim copyright over my work
  
  And even then, you have no right to claim copyright over work that you weren't paying me to do and that I wasn't using company resources for. (Lots of employers try to claim they own everything the employee produces, work-related or not).
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Paul L (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:09pm

Copyright used to stifle student criticism?
If the school district were to claim copyright on all content created by the students as part of their curriculum, and the student had ANY classes that had to do with computers, the Internet, video production, acting, etc, would the district also be able to file DMCA takedowns on YouTube videos, Facebook content, or anything else that they disagreed with?

If this goes through I'm sure the above will be tested VERY quickly.
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mockingbird (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:20pm

is it possible to...
could a student then stamp a (c) on their paper and claim personal copyright and also effectively grant a limited license to the school, which would then have to pay to re-use the material?
"by accepting the submission of this term paper, the teacher and the organization they represent agree to the following..."

?
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- Bergman (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 5:28pm
  
  Re: is it possible to...
  If shrinkwrap licenses are legal, then yes this would work too.
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crashsuit (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:29pm

Don't Copyright Me, Bro
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Chris Brand, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:32pm

Sounds unenforceable anyway
I can see how a private school could make this a condition of attendance, but aren't public schools required to accept all students that live in the right area ? If they can't say "please pay us $200/year to attend the school" and they can't say "please provide lunch for a staff member every Friday", then how can they ask for the students' copyrights as a condition of attending the school ?
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:41pm
  
  Re: Sounds unenforceable anyway
  "If they can't say "please pay us $200/year to attend the school" and they can't say "please provide lunch for a staff member every Friday", then how can they ask for the students' copyrights as a condition of attending the school?"
  
  They can absolutely say "please pay us $200/year to attend the school." The key is the word "please". That's called a "fundraiser". But they can't require the payment any more than they can require the copyrights.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 8 Feb 2013 @ 8:15am
    
    Re: Re: Sounds unenforceable anyway
    Try again. It's called school taxes.
    
    Please pay us thousands a years so some other kids can attend the school.
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BentFranklin (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:48pm

Homework is not a work for hire. End of story. Lesson plans may be, though. But they shouldn't be.
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stephen pray, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:49pm

All the world has its hand out.
I followed the link because I'm a concerned citizen. The fug ugly bastards who put up the page are asking for donations (I guess it costs money to email a petition to someone.) but I was not allowed to sign until I gave them my email... and they tired to made me agree that they can spam me every time they think of a new cause. God fucking damn. The whole world is populated by assholes.
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Fentex, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:49pm

Is it legal?
How can a school claim a students copyright?

In the U.S copyright is automatic and belongs to the creator of the fixed worked, correct?

Then the school would require it's students to sign their copyright over - but children can't sign such contracts.

So their parents and/or guardians would have to, so the school must be meaning to make parents signing away their children's copyrights a condition of attendance.

So this must be a private school, right? Because no way a public school could demand such a distinctive condition for attendance.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 4:15pm
  
  Re: Is it legal?
  No, it isn't legal to simply declare that you own students' copyrights. Yes, it IS a public school system.
  
  The policy is only proposed at this point. Hopefully there's enough opposition that they don't actually pass it.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 3:54pm

Now that copycrap is actually showing how it affects normal people, maybe people start to realize how stupid copycrap really is and why granting monopolies for extended periods of times was never a good thing in the first place.
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Bergman (profile), 7 Feb 2013 @ 5:30pm

So what happens if students/parents refuse to sign over copyright ownership to the school?

Does the school refuse to accept any coursework or homework, instead assigning straight F's to every such student? Does the school initiate truancy proceedings because the student is not attending classes (and here's the documentation proving the student isn't turning in assignments)?

Suspension/expulsion for not obeying school rules?

The mind boggles...
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Dave, 7 Feb 2013 @ 6:27pm

The only way to fix this
Is for all the students to sign a non-copyright waiver forfeiting their right to copyright over any material produced for the school thus forcing all of their work to be public domain. This should hopefully stop all of the stupid claims that students have made that their work is copyright and cant be sent of to third parties, or used in a magazine without their permission. It would be good if all public schools had to do this for their teaching material as well. Would give teachers better access to other teaching materials and hopefully refine classes at a much faster rate.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 10:18pm
  
  Re: The only way to fix this
  Why should the students sign this waiver?
  
  Why should their work be published in a magazine without their permission?
  
  What if they already signed something giving their work to some OTHER party?
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2013 @ 8:09pm

Lesson Plans for sale
This is probably mostly about claiming ownership of lesson plans and other teacher output -- which might actually be worth some money, unlike Missy Snowflake's homework.

US Universities have explicit policies about the circumstances in which the Uni has IP rights in employee work -- but that doesn't mean people at the Uni always know and/or follow those policies.
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sporkie (profile), 8 Feb 2013 @ 8:53am

An interesting subject
The work for hire angle has some ugly implications - The public pays for the schools so work generated by the school is in effect property of the public.

This should follow through for any public funded work; IE the public funds the court system through taxes, so all of the PACER documents are effectively works for hire, funded by the public.
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VMax, 8 Feb 2013 @ 10:07am

Last night's board meeting
The agenda item to discuss this was pulled. There are no more meetings until the 29th.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Feb 2013 @ 10:44am

Sign the petiton at wh.gov/pekw
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