Class 05: Intellectual Property

Held Tuesday, September 7, 1999

Summary

• Skills
  • Definitions of intellectual property
  • Proper use and citation
• Discussion
  • Ownership of links
  • Ownership of databases
• Assigned:
  • Citation exercise (Due Tuesday, September 14, 1999) (Only in printed form.)

Handouts

• Daily Handouts
  • Class outline
  • Assignment: The Garden of Forking Paths
  • On the grading of writing
  • Grading rubric for Is the talmud a hypertext?
• Judy Hunter, ``Exercise on Citation and Paraphrase''. (Only available in printed form.)
• Borges, Jorge L. ``The Garden of Forking Paths''. (Only available in printed form.)

Notes

• Our first football home game is Saturday, September 25. Come see Sean play (at least a little bit).
• Billy Bragg and Freedy Johnston are playing Friday, September 10. Get tickets in the forum today.
• Mr. Stone has added links to the front door pages for Kevin, Ellen, Yasir, Sean, Marti, Adam, and Matt at http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/user-front-doors.html. Please let him know if you object. Those of you who have not yet created your public_html directories in the MathLAN should do so soon.
• Sam will return comments on your papers at the end of class on Thursday. You'll receive your grades in your weekly individual meetings. (You should, of course, read your comments before those meetings.)
• I was sorry to see so few of you at convocation. I hope to see more of you there in the weeks to come.
• Not all of you emailed us questions in advance. Please make sure to do so on Wednesday.
• We're trying an experiment today: I'm only handout out the outline. You should look for the assignments and the guide to grading online.

About Citation

• As scholars, we care about ideas and those who create them.
• There are two key aspects
  • The ideas people have created
  • The words used to express those ideas
• When you use someone else's idea, you have a responsibility to cite that person.
  • Your readers need to be able to know which ideas are yours and which you've taken from elsewhere.
  • You lend creedence to claims by citing them.
  • You show your own knowledge of the field by citing widely (or is that ``wildly''?).

Intellectual Property

• In America (and in many other nations), we assign legal ownership of creative works to people (and to companies, but that's another matter).
• There are three kinds of ownership, for three different kinds of works:
  • Copyright
  • Patent
  • Trademark
• Copyright protects the expression of ideas, but not the ideas themselves.
  • Nonetheless, good intellectual practice dictates that you cite such ideas.
• Patent protects ideas
• Trademark protects symbols and phrases
• Congress originally instituted these laws to enhance the public good. That is the members of congress believed that by giving ownership to creators, they encouraged the creation of new works.
  • The ultimate goal of these laws is serving society, not serving creators.
  • Limit to protection of creator's rights
  • Historically, each expires after a set number of years.
• What does someone own?
  • The right to make copies
  • The right to make derivative works
  • The right not to distribute (surprisingly)
  • ...
• As in most political situations, wealthy corporations have corrupted this intent.
  • Newer copyright law gives much too much control to authors.
• Fair use (which is gradually eroding) says that copyrighted materials can be used in ``appropriate'' settings for scholarship and teaching.
  • There are no firm guidelines.

Intellectual Property in the Hypertext Environment

After ``tossing around'' some initial ideas and comments, we'll try to follow our suggested discussion strategy of ``every comment must continue the previous comment''. Rebecca will lead discussion.

Student Questions (and some ringers)

• The law
  • Copyright Protection ends 70 years after the author's death. Does that mean the laws of ownership is applicable to the general people after that?
  • Copyright law is under constant revision, particularly in regard to the Internet. What, if anything, can be done to make sure you are within the law and not infringing upon the author's ownership?
  • Should our actions be dictated by the law or by what we think is right?
  • How can authors find out about all of the illegal uses of their works?
  • When I write a paper for a class, who owns it? Is it the author, the instructor, or the College? Does handing in a paper imply the handing over of ownership? (Added after class.)
  • Why don't more people take advantage of copyright law? To cite an example, I never saw any kind of copyright notification on the Starr Report. For that matter, did Starr actually own the report, or was it owned by the government? He was working and writing for the purposes of the government, so does that change the ownership of the Report? (Added after class.)
• Fair use
  • The reading stated that "as the difficulties and costs of obtaining permission diminish, fair use should diminish too." As increasingly more information is becoming available on the Internet, how will this affect what is considered fair use in the educational environment?
  • What uses of MP3 are and are not fair use?
• The Internet and copyright If the Internet is so vast and the users so numerous, can copyright really have a valid place in it?
• Miscellaneous
  • What will MP3 do to the music industry?
  • How can security stop hackers from stealing credit-card numbers?
  • How can companies who distribute trial software convince users to pay for that software?

Question from Sam and Rebecca

• General questions:
  • Suppose Jane associates two nodes in a hypertext. Should she own that association? What rights should she and others have?
  • Is it ever invalid to link to another page?
  • How about including another page as part of your page? (E.g., using frames or with image tags?)
  • Can annotation systems violate copyright?
• Some more concrete examples
  • Lo's Diary
  • ``The Garden of Forking Paths'' as hypertext
  • Nelson's example of the revised Shakespeare (p. 2/45).