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Student Wins Against Professor's Threats Over Posting Code Online
from the code-is-speech dept
Reader Kyle Brady writes in to tell us his own story about how he fought back against one of his Computer Science professors, who threatened to fail him because he posted the code he wrote online. Kyle is a CS student, and only posted the code after the assignments were due (so it wasn't helping other students). He did so because he figured it might help him find a job to show examples of his coding skills and also because he believes in the value of sharing code. But his professor claimed that it was a violation of school policies, potentially "cheating" and that he could fail Kyle. Kyle responded by going through the school's Academic Integrity Policy, and not finding anything that he violated. When the professor did not agree with Kyle's response (to put it mildly), Kyle contacted the CS department head and explained his position. The department head researched the situation and finally agreed with Kyle that there was no violation of academic policy -- and, more importantly, that professors could not bar students from posting their code online or penalize students from doing so.
I have to admit that I'm rather surprised that a separate issue did not come up. That is, many schools make students sign something saying that any code they create as a student has the copyright automatically assigned to the school. This has resulted in conflicts, as students are surprised to learn that they can't do anything with the code they created as students. I don't know if SJSU does this or not, but you could see a school claiming that since it holds the copyright on such code, that it could prevent students from posting the content. Luckily, that does not appear to be the case in this situation.
I have to admit that I'm rather surprised that a separate issue did not come up. That is, many schools make students sign something saying that any code they create as a student has the copyright automatically assigned to the school. This has resulted in conflicts, as students are surprised to learn that they can't do anything with the code they created as students. I don't know if SJSU does this or not, but you could see a school claiming that since it holds the copyright on such code, that it could prevent students from posting the content. Luckily, that does not appear to be the case in this situation.
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Even undergrads? I know grad students typically have to sign such contracts, esp. when working in research, but I never heard of it being applied to undergrads. (Thought I am not in the CS department)
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Even English prof's know how to google, man, c'mon.
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Copyright in Schools
Just another reason to go to Waterloo if you are a student in Canada; the school aggressively protects student created content and lays no claim to anything created.
The fine print is that the code/object will be available to Waterloo for educational purposes.
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Re: Copyright in Schools
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It's a state college. Can a state-sponsored college claim copyright on anything?
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If not, it was my idea first - suck it trolls.
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I love PONYs.
The Prof is probably coasting and not witting new assignments. Good thing computer science doesn't change and he does not have to modify his material. Plus, there are only a limited number of things you could ask a computer to do so his options for testing material is limited.
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Re: I love PONYs.
On the matter, I'm glad I haven't had to sign any such thing because I do just what Kyle did as well, post my code online. Sometimes the projects are so time consuming it's the only code I'd write sometimes for months. Who has time for personal projects?
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Contracts
I just wanted to point out that I never signed anything, as an Undergrad at SJSU, that would waive my rights of ownership to the school. There may be a hidden clause in some legal document that we're required to read and agree to implicitly, but not as far as I'm aware.
--Kyle
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Copyright
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Turn over copyright?
I'm an undergrad in CS at Penn State University and have never heard of such a thing. Seems pretty strange that they claim copyright over something you are paying them to have you do in the first place.
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State School copyright
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so you pay the school to learn some shit
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Open Source - Untapped Potential
The role of universities should be fostering our educational knowledge, not accumulating copyright/patent privileges. Contributing to the development of open source software promotes both learning and society's knowledge base.
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bit bucket
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What schools make such demands?
Is there a list of such schools somewhere?
another mike: Clearly you had access to the code you wrote in school. If at some future point you wrote other code with substantial similarity to that code, it would infringe the copyright of your homework assignments. If the school owns copyright in those assignments, they could sue you or your employer for infringing that copyright. It might be better to avoid such a situation.
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