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

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-ownershi...

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.

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?"

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[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

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.

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?!

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

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/943N845D...

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.

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'.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I think the copyright shit is hitting the ceiling now.

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.

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.