Intellectual property and the faculty member: IHE article

[polly_mer]

https://insidehighered.com/news/2020/08/17/ip-grab-youngstown-state

[Aster]

We just recently found out that any teaching materials that we submit through the university's ZOOM account are no longer our intellectual property, but now the intellectual property of whoever purchased the operating license. Which in this case would be our university.

Someone asked a ZOOM company representative this directly, and that was the response.

Now a ton of professors are panicking and making snap-purchases of their own personal ZOOM accounts.

[Parasaurolophus]

Wow.

Copyright law is already pretty incoherent, and characterized by dramatic over-reaches. This is consistent with that, but is itself a huge overreach. You can't own an abstract object. You can own tokens of it, and dispose of those tokens as you will (that's the basis of the first-sale doctrine, after all). So: you can own a physical book, but not "the work". You can own a birthday candle shaped like a two, too, but you can't own "Two".

Besides which, holding copyright doesn't give you ownership of a work. It gives you a monopoly over the creation and distribution of copies and tokens of the work.

I have to laugh at some of these claims, though:

universities may lose out on collecting royalties from the books their professors write

Many faculty members also view their ability to write and own books as a form of compensation, or a potential supplement to their salaries.

Similarly, professors who write books for the broader public, acting as bridge between academe and society, may cease doing so when the royalty incentive is removed from equation, he said.

The evidence, where artworks are concerned, indicates that artists by and large don't create their works for the "financial incentive". Indeed, most receive little or no remuneration for their work. I would be surprised if academics were any different. I can tell you that I publish primarily for the glory and the sheer fun of exploring a problem.

Given the low sales figures for most academic books, I doubt most universities would reap significant rewards from taking over "ownership". Certainly not enough to balance out the ill-will generated. The real money in copyright is in licensing, and that requires serious policing. But again, I doubt that's worth the university's time and investment.

More importantly, I think that if universities want to start playing this game, even with course content, they're going to run into some serious problems as soon as anyone gets serious about policing for their licensing fees (which they'll have to, since that's where the money is). The costs of generating new content will increase dramatically, we'll see a proliferation of orphaned works, and the net result will be that everyone is worse off. Just like with artworks today, where the result has been the enclosure of the public domain, and significant reductions in overall creativity.

[marshwiggle]

More importantly, I think that if universities want to start playing this game, even with course content, they're going to run into some serious problems as soon as anyone gets serious about policing for their licensing fees (which they'll have to, since that's where the money is). .

Clearly that's where the obvious potential value is for universities; when the institution can "own" a course and then hire minions to grade (if required; if quizzes, etc. are entirely automated then the course could potentially run without any human intervention at all). However, the problem is likely to be that these will stagnate, as there will probably be little incentive for experts to be hired on contract to "spruce up" a course without any long term payback for delivering it multiple times. (On the other hand, the potential fee for upgrading a course could be very high, which might be worthwhile for some.)

[Parasaurolophus]

Clearly that's where the obvious potential value is for universities; when the institution can "own" a course and then hire minions to grade (if required; if quizzes, etc. are entirely automated then the course could potentially run without any human intervention at all). However, the problem is likely to be that these will stagnate, as there will probably be little incentive for experts to be hired on contract to "spruce up" a course without any long term payback for delivering it multiple times. (On the other hand, the potential fee for upgrading a course could be very high, which might be worthwhile for some.)

I don't disagree (for once!), but I was thinking more about the kinds of licensing problems they'll run into when the course involves readings (especially those "owned" by other universities--and let's be real, loads of the readings we assign now aren't available through our institution's library), or instructor-generated materials (including syllabi!) that the instructor would like to use elsewhere, or which the instructor has adapted from others, pictures or diagrams that are used in slideshows, etc. You could really make a killing policing all that the way corporations aggressively police copyright on artworks. But the net effect will be just as bad as it has been for art-making.

[Golazo]

We just recently found out that any teaching materials that we submit through the university's ZOOM account are no longer our intellectual property, but now the intellectual property of whoever purchased the operating license. Which in this case would be our university.

Someone asked a ZOOM company representative this directly, and that was the response.

Now a ton of professors are panicking and making snap-purchases of their own personal ZOOM accounts.

This is confusing. Zoom is primary a video conferencing service. Is the Zoom rep saying that if you share slides on Zoom the university will claim ownership? That seems extraordinarily dubious both from a legal and practical perspective.

[Aster]

We just recently found out that any teaching materials that we submit through the university's ZOOM account are no longer our intellectual property, but now the intellectual property of whoever purchased the operating license. Which in this case would be our university.

Someone asked a ZOOM company representative this directly, and that was the response.

Now a ton of professors are panicking and making snap-purchases of their own personal ZOOM accounts.

This is confusing. Zoom is primary a video conferencing service. Is the Zoom rep saying that if you share slides on Zoom the university will claim ownership? That seems extraordinarily dubious both from a legal and practical perspective.

I received a bit more clarification last night. You won't lose your intellectual property rights if you use ZOOM on a university-owned ZOOM account, *unless* you save any of your ZOOM recordings to the ZOOM cloud. If you do that, whoever owns that ZOOM account owns the rights to those recordings.

Faculty are now advising one another to not save to the ZOOM cloud, unless that cloud is from a personally owned ZOOM account. If faculty don't have their own ZOOM account and are only using the one provided by the university, faculty are strongly advising one another to save any recordings to their personal computers and not to the cloud.

Cloud = bad

Personal Computer = good

[Caracal]

More importantly, I think that if universities want to start playing this game, even with course content, they're going to run into some serious problems as soon as anyone gets serious about policing for their licensing fees (which they'll have to, since that's where the money is). .

Clearly that's where the obvious potential value is for universities; when the institution can "own" a course and then hire minions to grade (if required; if quizzes, etc. are entirely automated then the course could potentially run without any human intervention at all). However, the problem is likely to be that these will stagnate, as there will probably be little incentive for experts to be hired on contract to "spruce up" a course without any long term payback for delivering it multiple times. (On the other hand, the potential fee for upgrading a course could be very high, which might be worthwhile for some.)

I can't say any of this concerns me, but it might just be a disciplinary difference. I can imagine a course in my discipline operating like this, but nobody would use the classes I teach as a template. They aren't geared to work that way, and they are tailored heavily towards my teaching style. Maybe in the dystopian future I'll be replaced by a robot, but the robot would be using someone else's class.

[Hibush]

We just recently found out that any teaching materials that we submit through the university's ZOOM account are no longer our intellectual property, but now the intellectual property of whoever purchased the operating license. Which in this case would be our university.

Someone asked a ZOOM company representative this directly, and that was the response.

Now a ton of professors are panicking and making snap-purchases of their own personal ZOOM accounts.

This is confusing. Zoom is primary a video conferencing service. Is the Zoom rep saying that if you share slides on Zoom the university will claim ownership? That seems extraordinarily dubious both from a legal and practical perspective.

I received a bit more clarification last night. You won't lose your intellectual property rights if you use ZOOM on a university-owned ZOOM account, *unless* you save any of your ZOOM recordings to the ZOOM cloud. If you do that, whoever owns that ZOOM account owns the rights to those recordings.

Faculty are now advising one another to not save to the ZOOM cloud, unless that cloud is from a personally owned ZOOM account. If faculty don't have their own ZOOM account and are only using the one provided by the university, faculty are strongly advising one another to save any recordings to their personal computers and not to the cloud.

Cloud = bad

Personal Computer = good

I bet that is also incorrect. If you save your book manuscript to the university cloud account, that doesn't change the copyright owner.
Chances are good you are dealing with an uninformed person.  If they are in a decision-making position, it is important to push back and make sure that they get the relevant legal advice. AAUPs lawyers may be prepared with guidance already.

[Golazo]

+1. Unless you have signed something to the contrary (ie, something in your contract or handbook says that your employer claims your work, like if you are a professor at a defense college), you can't give up your copyright because of using a service that you have to use to do your job. If this persists, I would see if some tenured faculty could get a lawyer to write a short note explaining this and the university's potential liability. I'm sure that would end the problem.

[polly_mer]

More discussion on possibilities: https://www.theverge.com/21373669/recorded-lecture-capture-copyright-universities-coronavirus-fears

[clean]

here is why I(and others) are loath to use the Blackboard shells as repositories for our videos.

Once you have a shell on the university site, and then someone else is chosen (perhaps an adjunct) to teach the class, then what is to prevent some admincritter from directing the computer people to provide the new person with YOUR old course shell. Conceivably that new instructor could administer your work, which would include all of your lectures! The university would collect tuition, the new instructor would collect a wage, and you would collect nothing at all!

Even my department chair keeps everything on her computer (not a university one, mind you) and then emails the videos to her students. 

Reagan said, "trust, but verify".  When dealing with the university, dont trust!  Remember always, IF YOU are not looking out for YOU, then NO ONE is!!

[Wahoo Redux]

Zoom is inexpensive.  Our uni has a contract with Webex, which is terrible.  So my wife and I are a couple among a number of academics who simply spend our own money to work with our students.  The trouble, at least according to our colleague who also bought a Zoom account, is that Zoom will only store a limited amount on their cloud.  It kind of makes sense if you consider how many people are now using that app.

I also use Screencast-o-Matic for shorter MP4s, but this is limited and some students have trouble downloading them.

One of my students offered to record our classes and put them on hu's YouTube account.  I asked hu to make sure that the comments were turned off, but this seems like a good workaround, at least for now.  I have no idea who would own intellectual rights on something like YouTube.

YSU: shame.

[Vkw10]

In the USA, copyright belongs to the creator of the work except in specific circumstances. One of those circumstances is work-for-hire. Universities

Under US copyright law, as discussed at https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf, copyright I a work belongs to the author/creator with the exception of works-for-hire. Works produced by an employees as part of their job are works-for-hire with copyright belonging to the employer. Faculty lectures are probably works-for-hire, except that many universities have policies specifying which faculty works are and are not considered works-for-hire. Check your university policy.

[spork]

I don't understand this fixation on recorded video. Universities: "We need to own this content." Faculty: "We need to own this content." The reality: the content has no monetary value. It's worthless. Doesn't matter who owns it. Dr. X isn't revealing the secret of how to build a personal hovercraft out of nothing but a paper clips and banana peels during his lecture on August 22, 2020. People aren't interested in paying money to access a badly-lit video of someone standing in front of a whiteboard talking for fifty minutes about the differences between John Locke's Second Treatise and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. The same information is available for free, with much higher production value, from the local public library or on the internet.

We just recently found out that any teaching materials that we submit through the university's ZOOM account are no longer our intellectual property, but now the intellectual property of whoever purchased the operating license. Which in this case would be our university.

Someone asked a ZOOM company representative this directly, and that was the response.

Now a ton of professors are panicking and making snap-purchases of their own personal ZOOM accounts.

This is confusing. Zoom is primary a video conferencing service. Is the Zoom rep saying that if you share slides on Zoom the university will claim ownership? That seems extraordinarily dubious both from a legal and practical perspective.

I received a bit more clarification last night. You won't lose your intellectual property rights if you use ZOOM on a university-owned ZOOM account, *unless* you save any of your ZOOM recordings to the ZOOM cloud. If you do that, whoever owns that ZOOM account owns the rights to those recordings.

Faculty are now advising one another to not save to the ZOOM cloud, unless that cloud is from a personally owned ZOOM account. If faculty don't have their own ZOOM account and are only using the one provided by the university, faculty are strongly advising one another to save any recordings to their personal computers and not to the cloud.

Cloud = bad

Personal Computer = good