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 w

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? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_copyright