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DC-area schools consider copyright policy that takes ownership of students’ work

151 points by newbie12 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago
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. http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-copyright-law-ownership-issues-underlying-the-work-made-for-hire-doctrine.html http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-copyright-law-ownershi... http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf 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.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > 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.
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    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.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      > 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. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/23/photos-children-school-ban http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/23/photos-ch...) (http://dpnow.com/7640.html http://dpnow.com/7640.html) > 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. (http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm)
noonespecial 14y ago
Wow, as a student in HS I literally wouldn't have been able to turn in certain homework due to an agreement I had signed as a contractor(1). There's an excuse for you. "No Ma'am, I don't have today's homework, I'm under nda." (1) It was a ridiculous contract, probably completely invalid because I was 17 at the time, but still... Homeschooling for business reasons?!
- hmsimha 14y ago
  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.
  - dalke 14y ago
    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.
binarymax 14y ago
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.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  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. Oh I think there might be a term for that.
  - MichaelApproved 14y ago
    "force you to complete the assignments." I understand that you're forced to go to school but how are you forced to complete assignments?
    - noonespecial 14y ago
      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.
      - tekromancr 14y ago
        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.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Why would you want to own the IP for a bunch of crappy school projects?
- DanBC 14y ago
  See, for example, the scam for poetry "competitions" and vanity publishing.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    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.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      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.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        I see, you mean sell the kids own work back to the parents?
        rmc 14y ago
        "Little Johnny was in a book! Look, see! He was so good they published it! Isn't that amazing? I'll order you a copy." Slightly sleazy, but clever business plan.
- Fire30 14y ago
  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.
russell 14y ago
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.
- grumps 14y ago
  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.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    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.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      "schools...have zero incentive to educate you" Hm...
- dmckeon 14y ago
  Not a Cal student, but Cal & the UC have a number of pages about copyright, including: http://ipira.berkeley.edu/uc-copyright-policy http://ipira.berkeley.edu/uc-copyright-policy IV C. Student Work 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. and a terser version at: http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/systemwide/ownershipguide.html http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/systemwide/owner... 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.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
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.
- jbester 14y ago
  This is already pretty common at the college-level.
  - krickle 14y ago
    That doesn't make it right.
tomx 14y ago
What would the ideal policy be? My ideas are: - 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.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "What would the ideal policy be?" 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.
tomx 14y ago
Are there any other countries where the education systems often reach this level of legal activity/deliberation/antagonism? Or do they just quietly get on with teaching students?
cs702 14y ago
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?" -- [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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
- pyre 14y ago
  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.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    But those "moral rights" are generally not transferable to others.
- jhuni 14y ago
  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.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    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.
Angostura 14y ago
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'.
- SEMW 14y ago
  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. (IANAL)
napierzaza 14y ago
This is a nice way to get kids used to the future of copyright and the future of society at large. You don't own your shelter, your media, your electronics devices. Even something that comes from you doesn't belong to you since you owe so much to the roof over your head and the guidance of your teachers. -A HN Ghost.
kunai 14y ago
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.
bane 14y ago
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.
SeanLuke 14y ago
Important note: By "DC-area", the Washington Post means the Maryland suburbs.
owenboswarva 14y ago
Here's a copy of the draft proposal: Use of Creation of Copyrighted Materials (Prince George's County Public Schools) http://www.boarddocs.com/MABE/pgcps/Board.nsf/files/943N845D5399/$file/Copyright%20Policy%20Revised[1]2[1].pdf http://www.boarddocs.com/MABE/pgcps/Board.nsf/files/943N845D...
aaron695 14y ago
What I find interesting is, it is totally the schools copyright when you think about it. There's no way the students would be thinking up what they were without the collaboration of their teachers. Sure schools should have special rules, they need to encourage not stifle, but in any logical sense it is their IP.
ams6110 14y ago
The board of ed has forgotten its mission. Its mission is to educate students, not to profit from the students' works.
easternmonk 14y ago
I think the copyright shit is hitting the ceiling now.

151 points by newbie12 14y ago

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. http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-copyright-law-ownership-issues-underlying-the-work-made-for-hire-doctrine.html http://www.theiplawblog.com/archives/-copyright-law-ownershi... http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf 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.

DanBC 14y ago
> 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.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  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.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > 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. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/23/photos-children-school-ban http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/23/photos-ch...) (http://dpnow.com/7640.html http://dpnow.com/7640.html) > 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. (http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm)

noonespecial 14y ago

Wow, as a student in HS I literally wouldn't have been able to turn in certain homework due to an agreement I had signed as a contractor(1). There's an excuse for you. "No Ma'am, I don't have today's homework, I'm under nda." (1) It was a ridiculous contract, probably completely invalid because I was 17 at the time, but still... Homeschooling for business reasons?!

hmsimha 14y ago
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.
- dalke 14y ago
  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.

binarymax 14y ago

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.

noonespecial 14y ago
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. Oh I think there might be a term for that.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  "force you to complete the assignments." I understand that you're forced to go to school but how are you forced to complete assignments?
  - noonespecial 14y ago
    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.
    - tekromancr 14y ago
      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.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Why would you want to own the IP for a bunch of crappy school projects?

DanBC 14y ago
See, for example, the scam for poetry "competitions" and vanity publishing.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  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.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    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.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I see, you mean sell the kids own work back to the parents?
      - rmc 14y ago
        "Little Johnny was in a book! Look, see! He was so good they published it! Isn't that amazing? I'll order you a copy." Slightly sleazy, but clever business plan.
Fire30 14y ago
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.

russell 14y ago

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.

grumps 14y ago
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.
- rayiner 14y ago
  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.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "schools...have zero incentive to educate you" Hm...
dmckeon 14y ago
Not a Cal student, but Cal & the UC have a number of pages about copyright, including: http://ipira.berkeley.edu/uc-copyright-policy http://ipira.berkeley.edu/uc-copyright-policy IV C. Student Work 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. and a terser version at: http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/systemwide/ownershipguide.html http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/systemwide/owner... 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.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

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.

jbester 14y ago
This is already pretty common at the college-level.
- krickle 14y ago
  That doesn't make it right.

tomx 14y ago

What would the ideal policy be? My ideas are: - 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.

betterunix 14y ago
"What would the ideal policy be?" 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.

tomx 14y ago

Are there any other countries where the education systems often reach this level of legal activity/deliberation/antagonism? Or do they just quietly get on with teaching students?

cs702 14y ago

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?" -- [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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

pyre 14y ago
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.
- Evbn 14y ago
  But those "moral rights" are generally not transferable to others.
jhuni 14y ago
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.
- betterunix 14y ago
  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.

Angostura 14y ago

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'.

SEMW 14y ago
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. (IANAL)

napierzaza 14y ago

This is a nice way to get kids used to the future of copyright and the future of society at large. You don't own your shelter, your media, your electronics devices. Even something that comes from you doesn't belong to you since you owe so much to the roof over your head and the guidance of your teachers. -A HN Ghost.

kunai 14y ago

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.

bane 14y ago

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.

SeanLuke 14y ago

Important note: By "DC-area", the Washington Post means the Maryland suburbs.

owenboswarva 14y ago

Here's a copy of the draft proposal: Use of Creation of Copyrighted Materials (Prince George's County Public Schools) http://www.boarddocs.com/MABE/pgcps/Board.nsf/files/943N845D5399/$file/Copyright%20Policy%20Revised[1]2[1].pdf http://www.boarddocs.com/MABE/pgcps/Board.nsf/files/943N845D...

aaron695 14y ago

What I find interesting is, it is totally the schools copyright when you think about it. There's no way the students would be thinking up what they were without the collaboration of their teachers. Sure schools should have special rules, they need to encourage not stifle, but in any logical sense it is their IP.

ams6110 14y ago

The board of ed has forgotten its mission. Its mission is to educate students, not to profit from the students' works.

easternmonk 14y ago