Canadian University Students Taught To Protect IP 174
innocent_white_lamb writes "Graduate students at Carleton University (Ottawa) are taking steps to protect their intellectual property, at the same time are insuring that they are being properly recognized for their work. This is in response to the increased commercialization of research done at universities, and high-profile cases of copyright infringement by professors at the University of Toronto and Indiana University. 'The initiative will include workshops and a handbook outlining what would constitute an infraction of students' intellectual property rights, Howlett said. Examples include a student not receiving authorship on written work, or having a professor take credit for their work. "This isn't an indictment of profs at all," said Howlett. "It's just to ensure that students' rights are protected in the case that it does happen."'"
This is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:5, Informative)
Carleton University has had close industrial ties for years. Michael Cowpland, of Mitel and Corel fame, earned his masters and doctorate from Carleton. This close relationship with industry is a good thing, as many of these companies have in turn provided financial support to Carleton for a variety of initiatives. According to relatives of mine who study there, companies like Nortel and March Networks have funded various engineering laboratories. The university likely would not have had such labs were it not for the financial support from industry.
From what I hear from my relatives, Carleton does need to be more careful about their commercial collaborations. But it's not in the area of engineering or design. It's when it comes to their food services. An exclusivity contract with Coca Cola apparently results in there being only Coke available on that campus. Similarly, the company they contract out their food services to, Aramark, provides terrible service and terrible food, but is willing to charge students an arm and a leg.
So Carleton probably has the right idea collaborating with industry when it comes to their research. But their collaboration with companies for various services on-campus should probably be reconsidered.
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I'm ashamed of my countrymen.
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Georgia Tech has the same deal. We had the only Pizza Hut in the world that served Coke products (Pizza Hut was owned by Pepsi). It may still be the only one. Doesn't make it any cheaper, though. It's up to $1.40 for a bottle now. The difference all goes to the school.
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I am so tired of this canard. I worked at Mitel in Kanata in the 1980's, and people were saying the same BS back then. Markham, a suburb of Toronto, had more high tech employees then, and has more high tech employees now. Sure BNR had big labs there, but they also had a bunch of labs scattered across Toronto. IBM has huge plants, although some of them were turned over to Celestica. Just drive up the 404, and yo
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We used to be an exclusively Pepsi school, but I do think this has changed now.
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I went to the University of Ottawa for four years and avoided using the cafeterias and meal plan as much as possible. The workers from Aramark were unfriendly, didn't care a thing about customer satisfaction and were at many times rude. The food choices have gotten better since I had the meal plan, but that I believe the attitude and
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:This is ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Carleton is very, very different from most universities. Last time I saw statistics, around 3/4 of the students were part-time students
Carleton is generally geared more towards continuing and part-time education, rather than simply being a "standard" undergraduate university. You'll have people taking their 2nd & 3rd degrees, upgrading their qualifications, or just taking interest courses.
Many of it's services are (were?) geared towards these students. And I suspect that the nature of the students - people with real-world experience, and thus more awareness of these issues - may have something to do with this.
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Re:This is ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:4, Interesting)
Although I do agree that any obstruction of the free flow of information is detrimental to science and academia, I don't think that's the point of this initiative.
If your research is quoted/copied by another scientist (especially, one who is more reputable than you are) without proper citation, it can completely destroy your credibility, and severely hurt when applying for grants or being considered for tenure.
I really don't see anything wrong with this. Like TFA said, there have been several high-profile copyright infringement cases lately, and you'd be a fool not to protect yourself.
This famously happened with some of the original AIDS research in the 80s (that first identified HIV as a retrovirus), where the group of CDC epidemiologists who spearheaded the research received little to no credit for their work once conclusive evidence was found.
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Not just ancient Sumeria, but also ancient Babylon. In fact, universities are one of the institutions founded by the Lizards who control our world. I have all the rock-solid irrefutable proof right here [amazon.com] ! In fact, that is why we really went to Iraq. To free t
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Hey, all that I want to do is do my research and create novel things. I do want to get the credit for it too though, and I don't want someone else to steal my work and profit from it -- that way, I can continue doing it.
I've had a course project used by a prof to get a grant. Did I see any of that grant money? Nope. In fact, my funding was being threatened a couple of months later. What did I learn? If I inve
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Since you're a student, if you're not being paid to do research and don't use university equipment, you keep whatever you discover.
2. If you are being paid, you're treated like an employee. Employees must sign all patents to the University. The University then decides if it wants to market the patent. If the patent is successfully licensed to someone and a profit is made, the profit is split between the inventor and the university (either 50-50 or 25-75 depending on the circumstances). Otherwise, the patent is returned to you.
I actually like this idea. I want to do research. If I discover something along the way, I don't have to deal with any bureaucracy and still get a nice bonus if my invention is successful.
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And then find out quite how equitable the deal your signing really is.
You're going to get roasted. Grow up little boy.
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2. If you are being paid, you're treated like an employee. Employees must sign all patents to the University. The University then decides if it wants to market the patent. If the patent is successfully licensed to someone and a profit is made, the profit is split between the inventor and the university (either 50-50 or 25-75 depending on the circumstances). Otherwise, the pa
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My first response was: "And....why? Commercialization has done so much to foster communication and intellectual synergy in the U.S., hasn't it?" And the products, whose research we've paid for, are so affordable when the patent is licensed to a monopoly.
Oh, right. I forgot. It would be communism to promote affordable public higher education so universities _have_ to become business enterprises.
Geez, sometimes I feel so sorry for kids today. I think a state college credit was about $12 in my
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How are ya doin', Bob?
Gimme a dollar, and I'll tell ya, eh?
Think it'll rain tomorrow?
Wouldn't want to say. You might take that info and parlay it on raincoat futures, make a fortune, and not give me what's rightfully mine.
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Obligatory.. (Score:5, Funny)
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However, the students should also be taught to respect IP. Respecting IP means to not steal another person's IP.
Oh, I don't know about that. Maybe before we teach them to "not steal another person's IP", we should teach them the fundamental reason stealing is wrong: when you steal something, you deprive the rightful owner of that thing.
You can teach this with a simple thought experiment, simply by asking, "If someone stole your car, would you be upset because he got a car without paying for it, or because you didn't have it anymore? If he could make a copy of your car, leaving the original intact and untouched, woul
Stealing attribution, however... (Score:2)
What if someone took the pink slip, your proof of ownership, from your car and replaced your name with his? Even if all he has is an exact copy of your car and your car itself is intact and untouched, if the pink slip is in his name then everyone will think that he has the original.
Suppose then that your car is a vintage model. Your original 1933 Duesenberg is worth millions. Exact copies of that car, since they are now easy to make and consider
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(See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pirate [etymonline.com])
If he could make a copy of your car... (Score:2)
I've been running a similar argument for a while now. Let's put it this way..
If my car was a copy itself - naw, I wouldn't care. If the person I copied it from allowed me to do so and gave me the right to let others make copies - naw, I wouldn't care.
Chances are, however, I paid money for my car. So do I care if somebody comes along and makes a copy of my car without going through the same effort of payi
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Chances are, however, I paid money for my car. So do I care if somebody comes along and makes a copy of my car without going through the same effort of paying for it? I just might.
What if it gets a little bit more intrigueing. I paid for the car in blood, sweat and tears - as I built it pretty much from the ground up. It's a one-of-a-kind car. I have no intention of selling it or giving it away, etc. Then somebody comes along and makes a copy of it. Would I care? Yes.
In those examples, what you're experiencing is nothing more than jealousy. You're in essentially the same situation as if your girlfriend had left you for someone else, and now you're mad at the other guy for "stealing" her away from you - but in both cases, you don't really "own" what you've lost, so the problem is entirely in your head. You aren't entitled to be the only guy who dates her, depriving everyone else (and her), just like you aren't entitled to have the only copy of that car, depriving everyo
bad analogies (Score:2)
Though I'd hate to tell any developer of a GPL piece of software to just "get over it" when a commercial entity takes their code, sells a binary version for profit and never releases the source code again.
Nor would I want to tell a photographer "sorry mate, but you're in the wrong business" if he wants to sell prints, if everybody would just print / buy copies for next-to-free when he wants to make a living sell them at $10/print. ( In your exa
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Though I'd hate to tell any developer of a GPL piece of software to just "get over it" when a commercial entity takes their code, sells a binary version for profit and never releases the source code again.
Well, I think the lack of source code would be offset by the fact that anyone would be able to share that binary version for free, disassemble it, reverse-engineer any new features, and add them back into the open source version. It'd be a hassle, but not impossible... and I'm saying that as a GPL developer myself. (Yes, I have gone after people for GPL violations, but I'd happily give that up in exchange for an end to copyright.)
Nor would I want to tell a photographer "sorry mate, but you're in the wrong business" if he wants to sell prints, if everybody would just print / buy copies for next-to-free when he wants to make a living sell them at $10/print.
No one wants to deliver the bad news, but it has to be done. If I want to ma
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It is possible, but it's a lot harder than e.g. copyright infringement. Stealing somebody's copyright or patentable work or trademark involves convincing everyone that said "IP" actually belongs to the thief. This is hard to do, but not impossible, especially when one party is a poor student and the other is a rich university.
I'm curious about how this works in oth
Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Interesting)
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You're really a sharp fellow, you know.
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i personally think that killing copyright entirely would be a very bad idea. things such as the GPL and creative commons licencing (not 100% sure on the latter) rely on copyright law, so killing copyright would kill those too.
that said, the copyright term needs to be cutdown significantly, such as back to the original term (7 years and the option for a one-time 7 year extension, for a maximum of 14 years), which i feel is a comple
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turnitin.com (Score:1, Offtopic)
Do the students need to use it as part of there classes?
Re:turnitin.com (Score:5, Informative)
turnitin clamming rights to student publications (Score:3, Interesting)
not IP (Score:5, Insightful)
These are not "intellectual property" rights, they are "moral rights" [wikipedia.org] of authors.
The distinction is important because one can be opposed to copyright as an artifical right created by the state but still be in favor of natural moral rights.
I don't think it's just to use force to prevent you from making a copy of one of my poems; but represent yourself as its author and I'll kick your ass.
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The distinction is important because one can be opposed to copyright as an artifical right created by the state but still be in favor of natural moral rights.
I think you'll find that they are both artificial rights created by the state.
But I agree, the distinction is important: copyrights of any kind exist solely to benefit the public, which has equal interests in 1) having works created and published, and 2) being absolutely f
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It's important to academics. Almost no one of them would disclosure their findings without a reward system (recognition is a substitute for patents here, works even where the latter can't be applied and does a much lower colateral damage). Otherwise most would clearly work on more mundane things and keep their findings to themselves (or patent them) or either simply stop studing earlier and never go to academia.
And there was almost no serious science done before the system was stablished. Some people even
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The distinction is important because one can be opposed to copyright as an artifical right created by the state but still be in favor of natural moral rights.
I agree with the goal but not this justification. I don't think there's any "natural", "moral" right to have your name associated with anything.
Associating your name with someone else's work, or vice versa, is still wrong - not because the real author owns the work in any sense, but because misrepresenting the authorship is fraud. If I take your comment and repost it as my own work, then I'm lying to everyone who reads it.
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This wouldn't protect you in the way I think you were hoping it too. Fraud has a loose definition but when we are talking of legalities, we need to seek the narrow legal definition. I just looked and there is nothing in
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Legally, the definition of fraud usually involves some intent to harm or profit in some way.
If you're putting your name on a paper in order to get funding or credibility, I'd consider that profit. In any case, I'm not opposed to broadening the legal definition of fraud to cover serious plagiarism.
And in at least one case, It would look as if the government tried to use fraud for copyright violations but couldn't.
At a brief glance, that case looks like plain old copyright infringement, not plagiarism, so I don't see the problem.
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That is fine then. I was just attempting to point out that Fraud laws would need to be changed to include the acts. I do question how much changing could be done without just making the fraud provisions in law a new copyright act though.
Outside it being an exorcise in common sense and name changing, I'
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Very different. Lying about or concealing the authorship of a work is an incidence of fraud; making a copy of a work is not.
Stealing something deprives you of it's use; someone who copies our works does not do this, any more than someone who lights a torch off
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Ah, there's some confusion here.
"Moral rights" is in this case a legal term, a translation of the French term "droit moral," refering to legal rights of creators regarding personal and reputational value of a work. [harvard.edu]
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Setting aside that moral rights also cover the integrity of works (i.e. whether and how much people can alter the works of another) and whether artists can remove the attribution of a work to them (i.e. if they don't like what you've done to their work, they can take their name off of it, as if they were never involved in any capacity), it is bad to require people to correctly attribute works.
Provided that the re-attributor is not engaging in actual fraud, why does it matter to the law what they
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I don't think so.
Some of the aims of moral rights are accomplished by copyright so the lack of a separate moral rights regime in the US isn't much of a convincing argument that authors aren't motived by them.
This is untrue, primarily because moral rights are non-transferable, but copyrights are. Also because there are numerous exceptions to copyright, which given the right circumstances, would indeed allow someone to make copies of s
A good or bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not against students recieving credit, but as with patents, I'm against people ardently claiming credit for the most insignificant things.
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Useful information (Score:4, Informative)
Bad examples. (Score:5, Interesting)
Employment contracts often stipulate that the employee has relinquished intellectual property rights in the field of business of the employer.
This same idea often applied to graduate students that are paid to help out a professor.
If an employer paid you to write a chapter for a book or to invent a widget, you may not have any intellectual property rights over that work.
If you helped a professor in a lab - and if he's paying you under terms of an employment agreement, that agreement could very well stipulate that you have relinquished all IP rights. Read that agreement before you start to work. If you have a problem with it, negotiate the contractual terms.
This is how a company can "award" employee a $200 "bonus" for an invention that's worth millions of dollars.
Here is an example of why this is important (Score:3, Interesting)
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That seems odd. Normally, when a paper is reviewed all references to the authors are removed to prevent any prejudices/favouritism from creeping in (At least for UK journals).
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There's an agreement within Biology that the first listed author is the "primary" author of the work; that is, the person who championed the project, did the bulk of the research, and basically was in charge. The last name was for the person who provided the mentor role; that is the guidance to avoid pitfalls, the initial peer review, and typically the laboratory. In papers with more than two names, the intermediate names are list
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Extreme danger (Score:4, Insightful)
If any sort of this nonsensical "Intellectual Property" will become the standard way of producing research results (as opposed to old-fashioned attribution, to which the students have full rights and the University a moral obligation to protect) then this will mean the death of acedemic science. Period.
If every piece of every half-baked paper will cost $50 to read it, a typical researcher will end up with no viable access to any sort of external research.
But of course the further escalation of "Intellectual Property"-related stupidities is only bound to increase in pace, given how hell bent the "opinion makers" are on introducing greed "motivators" where they were never needed or wanted in order to divide and parcel out the body of human knowledge amongst the "worthy" mega-corporations and billionaires who will become the de-facto gate-keepers to that knowledge and subsequently, for all practical purposes, Lords and Masters of the rest of the humanity.
I foresee troubled waters ahead.
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(yes, this growing meme of IP and constant restriction troubles me too)
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The obvious citation here: Richard Stallman's "The [gnu.org]
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Makes it easier to ign^H^H^Hdiscuss related work in your papers: the author controls the amount reviewers had to spent to verify claims and check for omissions.
Colore me confused (Score:4, Interesting)
-Patents bad
-Steal the music
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I would be willing to make $5.00 less then the publisher and author per copy.
How does this play into the free thing? I will state right on the cover that I copied the work so they don't think it is an original book by their favorite author.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'll be brief (Score:3, Funny)
If the whole IP system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!
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Good example of it.... (Score:1)
Comments have more examples...
Ethics (Score:2)
At least someone is teaching ethics. Nice to see the pedulum might be swinging back away from the selfish "I want it so I have a right to copy it" crowd.
Re:Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Most graduate students would be more than happy to have thousands of people read their thesis. The problem arises when they don't get credited, or someone else claims ownership.
This is very different from students wanting $20 from you to read their paper.
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Your envy is showing.
If what they produced years ago is still selling, that only means it still has value, and people still want it. So, why not get paid for it? You should try producing something of value that will be around for awhile. Bet you could do it. You just have to get off your...well, your father was probably right.
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If what they produced years ago is still selling, that only means it still has value, and people still want it. So, why not get paid for it?
Hey, what brilliant logic. Let's apply it to something else! Say you're a tailor, and Mr. Jones comes in for a suit, for which he pays you $1200. The suit is so impressive-looking that it seals the deal at Mr. Jones's job interview that afternoon, and he ends up landing a $500,000/yr position. Clearly that suit had a lot more value than you thought at first, right? So tell me, how much of that $500,000 does Mr. Jones owe you each year? He might not have gotten the position at all if he hadn't worn it, so d
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A better comparison is the taylor designs the suit pattern and licenses it. It becomes popular, for every suit sold with that pattern, he gets a cut. Later, the suit comes back in style, if the license is still valid, he still gets a cut of each suit sold that used the same pattern.
Sure, why not! Why should he ever have to work again? He designed one suit, he should be able to retire and live like a king!
Good luck, in life, with your economic model. It doesn't work in the real world, but if it makes you happy, more power to you.
Actually, it does work quite well, and it's in use in nearly every industry except the few that are based on copyright.
You see, "my economic model" is one where people who aren't selling a physical product get paid for the work they do, not the work they did 70 years ago. If you want to write a book, find someone (or a big group of someones) who wants a book written and get him to p
Lol Carleton (Score:1)
How many Carleton undergrads does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Just one, but he gets 3 credits for it.
LOL
(Seriously, it's like Canada's DeVry, except with lower standards)
What about public funded schools and scholarships. (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely if my tax dollars pay part of the tuition for the student copy writing everything he does as part of his education, then we deserve a portion of anything made from it.
I don't think it will come to this, it doesn't with the patent the schools own because public money funded the research. I just don't think it is right, it should be public domain if public money was spent to develop it.
Re:What about public funded schools and scholarshi (Score:2)
As a grad student at a Canadian university, let me tell you: pay us more if you ("the public") want to take a stake in our work. We're paid at essentially a subsistence level, not at a "work for hire" level.
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And If you or your university didn't receive public funding, then do whatever you want. It doesn't concern us. I'm willing to bet that it would cost a lot more if public finds didn't go into it. You tell me.
U of T and IU don't seem to be plagiarism (Score:2)
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I'm an undergrad at Carleton... (Score:2)
Hypocrisy? (Score:2)
ensuring (Score:2)
== Grammar peeve alert. Skip it if you don't care about using the right word at the right time. ==
They are not "insuring that they are being properly recognized" as the summary says. If they were insuring something, they would talk to an agent, get a policy, and pay premiums. Instead, they are ensuring recognition for their work.
Tag Story: oxymoron (Score:2)
I expect to be modded as Overrated. But this is a sentiment I can't help but express strongly.
MRI's (Score:2)
The professor brought along this guy who said he came up with the concept of exciting the hydrogen atoms for imaging which is used in MRI's.
The whole concept was the basis of his grad paper. While searching for a supervisor, his supervisor was reluctant to accept him based on the concept, but eventually did. After he finished his grad paper, his supervisor took credit for it. He said he let it go
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Information wants to be free...but information workers want to get paid.
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Attribution != copyright