Online Notes
copyright or copy wrong?
They carry backpacks stuffed with books, go to class, find an empty seat and start writing. They look like typical students, except they get paid to attend classes and take notes.
Note taking has become big business at UT: a business that has some professors seeing red. Three prominent note-taking services near campus hire students as note takers for class. Paradigm and The NotePad sell the lecture notes, and Versity offers the notes free on its web site at www.versity.com.
Of the three, Paradigm is the only company that seeks the permission of the professor before printing and selling the lectures, leaving the other two fielding irate phone calls from professors.
Last spring, after noticing the unauthorized distribution of their lecture notes, a group of professors complained to The NotePad, accusing them of copyright infringement. "I think that the content of a course would be the property of the person teaching the course," says John Murphy, a professor of advertising.
However, managers of these services insist they do not infringe on copyright laws. Both the NotePad's Scott Kuren and Michael Krasman, one of the founders of Versity, say their notes are interpretations of the professors' lectures and not the lectures verbatim.
"For federal copyright infringement, the first thing they [professors] would have to prove is that they have a copyright on their lectures," says Anthony Reese, a specialist in copyright law at the UT School of Law.
"The second thing they would have to prove is that the note-taking service copied elements of the lectures that are protected by copyright law and that those copied elements are the same as, or substantially similar to, the professors' lectures."
Federal copyright laws protect original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression, so unless the lecture is typed and the professor reads it word for word, or if it is recorded, the lecture is not protected by federal law.
However, Texas law is vague regarding copyright protection on unfixed works. Associate Vice President of Administration and Legal Affairs Lee Smith encourages professors to include warnings in their syllabi stating that any use of the material presented in lectures, outside of personal educational use, is prohibited.
Reese also warns professors that if professors grant permission to the note-taking services, then they cannot accuse those services of any infringement. Note-taking services are not the only ones that could be in trouble. Student note- takers could also share the liability.
"I think a lot of the students right now assume they are anonymous in that classroom, and no one will know about what they are doing," says Smith. But the companies' internal payroll records show who worked for these companies.
In class, note-takers may be violating the license the University gave them to be there. When a student pays tuition, he or she is paying for the right to attend a certain class.
The student may take personal notes for educational use without violating any copyright laws. According to Smith, when a student decides to sell those notes they may be subject to disciplinary action. Which is something to take note of.
