WaPo
New idea for school districts: Copyrighting students’ work
“There is something inherently wrong with that,” David Cahn, an education activist who regularly attends county school board meetings, said before the board’s vote to consider the policy. “There are better ways to do this than to take away a person’s rights.”
If the policy is approved, the county would become the only jurisdiction in the Washington region where the school board assumes ownership of work done by the school system’s staff and students…
“The way this policy is written, it essentially says if a student writes a paper, goes home and polishes it up and expands it, the school district can knock on the door and say, ‘We want a piece of that,’ ” Rein said. “I can’t imagine that.”
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Screw that. No frikkin way. Take the school board to court.
Gubmint schools running wild.
petefrt on February 4, 2013 at 8:56 AM
Obama: “You didn’t write that!”
wildcat72 on February 4, 2013 at 9:06 AM
And here I thought they were going to help get copyrights for the students, as a way of preventing plagiarism while helping their students.
I guess I should have known better from the public sector.
Mr. Prodigy on February 4, 2013 at 9:14 AM
A branch of the government owns you and what you produce.
Gotta start somewhere..start with the kids.
Mimzey on February 4, 2013 at 9:17 AM
The person who writes something owns it, unless it is a work for hire. They may have a claim to teacher produced work, but not the students, especially if students are legally required to attend school.
rbj on February 4, 2013 at 9:52 AM
I can see this as a grab for money. Just take a kid that not only wins the science fair but produces something that may make him or her rich. The school wants to have claim over what that student produced under the “you didn’t do that. We made it possible so we own it.” I would like to dig this whole a lot deeper for them. “You are a public school financed by the tax payers. You don’t own a darn thing. We the tax paying people own it all.”
Dr. Frank Enstine on February 4, 2013 at 10:13 AM
Public schools are owned by the taxpayer and the taxpayer employs both the faculty and the students. Therefore all works created by teacher and student, even new teaching methods, in public schools are, by that very nature, in the public domain.
I suppose certain students may be able to opt out of that if they can show their parents pay an amount equal to the average cost of their education.
Dusty on February 4, 2013 at 10:13 AM
Vouchers!
Oil Can on February 4, 2013 at 10:16 AM
Works by the faculty, certainly.
Works by the students? Absolutely not. Students don’t attend VOLUNTARILY after all, they are required to attend up to a certain age.
The employees of the school are government employees, and as such, yes, their works are paid for by taxpayers and should be public domain. Students are there because they are required to be, and their parents are paying taxes for them to be there.
Some public colleges and universities have tried the same thing, claiming ownership of student work. This is particularly a problem for students there to learn programming, some schools have tried to claim ownership of software they wrote.
While at the same time these same schools allow professors to publish and retain ownership of what they write… A HUGE double standard. Of course, in the intellectual slum that is the modern education system, there is a far greater likelihood a student is going to come up with a brilliant idea than any member of the faculty.
wildcat72 on February 4, 2013 at 10:24 AM
copyright law in the country is a mess.
bannor on February 4, 2013 at 10:27 AM
Absolutely. Copyright is in the Constitution. And it’s supposed to be a monopoly of LIMITED duration. But that has been so perverted by the Hollywood special interest that it’s now de facto perpetual.
IE: every time the copyrights for Mickey Mouse threaten to expire Congress extends them.
wildcat72 on February 4, 2013 at 10:32 AM
No. The students are not employees, they are customers. They do not provide benefit to the school in return for compensation.
If you read the whole article, there is a lot of speculation that
1) this is a money issue related to curriculum development, and
2) the people who wrote it didn’t think it through.
One of the sticking points is the idea of a student using government-provided resources (and school time) for a project that they then turn around and use to make a profit. This is a problem, as it means they are using public resources for private gain. They’re not allowed to do that unless they are a politician or in receipt of a commercial subsidy.
Seriously, this is a result of our government providing for us. When the school provides the computers and the pencils and the paper and … everything else, a student can’t claim to have done the work using their own resources. And, the law does recognize that using someone else’s resources (without compensation) diminishes your absolute claim to your own work.
Agree. And software should never be a copyright, but a patent.
GWB on February 4, 2013 at 10:52 AM
The school system does not have the right to do this. A student is not an employee or contractor and their output is not work for hire. The student owns the copyright as soon the work is reduced to some tangible medium. Nor could the school force the student to assign the right as such a forced contract would be unenforcible.
tommyboy on February 4, 2013 at 11:06 AM
I understand your point on students being required to attend school. The system as it now stand is so complexly intertwined it is difficult to establish it lines clearly or easily.
At its base, however, children are not required to attend public schools. Neither are they required to attend any school in many cases. What is required is that a child be educated and that can be done either personally at home, privately at a school, or publicly at a school. If the last option is chosen, which most of the time it is, it is because the cost is less to the parents, in part because they are forced to partly subsidize the process themselves.
Your argument did force me to think about it more closely. It is possible you are right that over the long haul a lot more children might have their copyright retained, if it is considered that the parent over a much longer time period, say 40, 50 or 60 years of paying school taxes, might be paying fully for child’s education.
Dusty on February 4, 2013 at 11:17 AM
Seriously, this is a result of our government providing for us. When the school provides the computers and the pencils and the paper and … everything else, a student can’t claim to have done the work using their own resources. And, the law does recognize that using someone else’s resources (without compensation) diminishes your absolute claim to your own work.
[GWB on February 4, 2013 at 10:52 AM]
I was incorrect in the classification of student as employee. The correct classification is as you note above. The result, however is the same, ie, the students lose their claims to their own work as their work was subsidized by taxpayers without compensation.
All the same, you are correct in identifying the core problem, that of government interference via collectivization. It muddies the water of the rights issues of everyone involved and when muddied for a long enough period of time, people wind up rationalizing their rights haven’t been compromised when, in fact, they have.
Dusty on February 4, 2013 at 11:35 AM
So what? That’s never been held to create an work for hire relationship, nor could it.
tommyboy on February 4, 2013 at 11:51 AM
Really?
They can’t get a copyright on what they plagiarize.
Most students think that copy/paste from Wikipedia is fine to hand in, without attribution.
Over the past 35 years in teaching it has only gotten worse as students are given a “gold star” for trying.
And yeah, this is B.S.
ProfShadow on February 4, 2013 at 11:57 AM
So what? That’s never been held to create an work for hire relationship, nor could it.
[tommyboy on February 4, 2013 at 11:51 AM]
So what? Work for hire is not the only avenue by which your absolute claim to copyright or patent is compromised.
As for the argument that the student is customer not a worker, that’s about as true as me giving the grocery clerk $30 for $100 worth of groceries and telling him to get the rest from the next three person behind me, which, under the same circumstances, the law allows, and you are one of the three behind me.
This is the whole problem with government collectivization. You get to vote to make me help pay for your kid’s education but you demand that you get to keep all your and your childrens’ rights.
You want to maintain your child’s rights to profit from works made while I subsidized it? Pay the full price.
Dusty on February 4, 2013 at 12:20 PM