> Even more complicated -- what happens when a teacher designs a course
> activity in which students create collaborative or individual web documents
> as a component of that course, and they do so on school machines during class
> time, directed by the teacher? As far as I can tell, all three parties (NIU,
> the teacher, and the student) hold some claim to the copyright of those
> documents.
>
I think that it is very important when discussing copyright issues to
not get hung up on the fact that materials are produced/distributed
electronically. All of the complications you wrote of here actually
applied to the univeristy even 15 years ago, if not 100 years ago. For
example, a professor authors a textbook, writes it in his office, uses
the typewriter purchased by the university. He then sells the book to a
publisher. Who gets the royalties? - the author alone, no share to the
university. Who owns the copyright? - the publisher, having had it
transferred from the author, with no input from the university.
Another example, I write an article for a journal. The publisher that
has ME sign a copyright transfer, the univeristy is not a cosigner on
this.
The US givernement has taken a very proactive stance on this - all works
authored by any government employee automatically goes into the public
domain (actually I don't think this applies to congressmen, see Jim
Wright, Newt Gingrich, etc.)
The advent of the web and the potential for distance classes has awoken
the sleeping giant - many universities are now rethinking the ownership
of materials, since they view them as potential revenue streams. But
fundamentally, nothing is really new here - universities could certainly
put restrictions on the copyrights, as most do with patents.
I am part of a focus group, which has made a proposal that national
funding agencies require that authors or universities retain the
copyright of all materials produced under a grant that they fund. This
porposal has been submitted to Science - still waiting on its
publication status.
To get back to the intial question though - ownership of the copyright
is practically defined by whomever acts to protect it, i.e. who brings
the lawsuit agianst the accused violator.
Steve
-- Steven Bachrach Department of Chemistry Northern Illinois University DeKalb, Il 60115 Phone: (815)753-6863 smb@smb.chem.niu.edu Fax: (815)753-4802