Lecture Copyright
Here’s a gem from Techdirt about a professor that is suing someone for selling notes of his lecture. He is claiming he has a copyright on what he says in class and someone else can’t take his ideas, write them down in outline form and sell them for profit.
Apparently this is an actual business in large campus communities. Einstein Notes seems to be all over Florida. They show up in lectures, take notes and then sell those notes to students who cannot make it to class.
The lecturer claims what he says is protected by copyright. I don’t know if that is factual. Nothing is protected by copyright law unless it is fixed. Unless the professor is reading his lecture word for word from a piece of paper, I doubt his lecture meets the minimal requirement of what it takes to protect a work.
Let’s suppose he has written down his lecture and is reading it word for word during class. Facts, ideas, systems and methods of operation are not protected by copyright. I have to believe most of the lecture will contain elements of this type and not the instructor’s personal poetry or musical works.
How many times have you witnessed someone using a personal recording device to record a lecture? If writing notes constitutes copyright infringement, recording that same lecture is certainly against the law.
Maybe we should all transfer to MIT.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/
April 11th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I read on Wired that he’s claiming that, since he writes out notes on an overhead transparency, those notes are fixed in a tangible form.
Evidently, the students copy the stuff he writes on the overhead word-for-word and that’s what’s being sold. Since he’s running his own little side business selling his notes (including two books he’s written and their accompanying study guides), the Einstein effort is cutting into his profits.
Publish or perish. Then make the students buy the books after paying $30 grand a year to hear the you tell them what’s in it. Where’s that MIT link?