More Intellectual Property Insanity, Scholastic Edition

By Isaac Butler

A county in Maryland wants to copyright all of its students' homework. 

Comments

[James]

I'm not expert in matters related to the laws and ethics of IP, but it seems to me that the purpose in claiming copyright for students' work is that if a school wanted to utilize schoolwork for things like scholarly journals or promotional materials, they consider it easier to issue a blanket policy that gives them ownership of something that likely has no monetary value otherwise, rather than be saddled with expenditures of time and money necessary to secure a license from the alumni later. Which doesn't seem, on the face of it, like a ridiculous position to take.

[cgeye]

That is bullshit.

What happens if a student lucks out on discovering a branch of research that proves fruitful in college, to the point of developing a new process, or at least a publishable paper?

The "prior works" part of copyright kicks in, and the high school must be notified, in perpetuity, for any development that has that original research as its base.

What if a kid writes a play in high school, as part of a homework assignment? Does the problem appear more clearly, then? Sheesh.

I betcha this has everything to do with feeding content to the plagiarism check sites -- once uploaded, there's no pesky permissions to get from the original authors, and those students now participate in the anti-plagiarism system, without recourse or compensation. Problem frakking solved, by making things so much worse.