• Eponymous (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    AGould:
    Wow, times have changed - I would never have considered licensing my assignments. The thought wouldn't even have occurred to me. It's kind of depressing, in a way. (I'm told my high school teacher is *still* using some of my assignments as examples - wonder if I should charge him royalties? ;)
    No, I don't think you can charge him.

    Copying materials for the sake of TEACHING is listed under fair use clauses in copyright laws. That means, such activities do not constitute a copyright breach.

    I don't think it's quite that cut-and-dried. For instance, a college professor certainly couldn't (legally) photocopy a novel wholesale and hand out the photocopies to students. The doctrine of fair use certainly lowers the bar to classify copying as non-infringing when done for educational purposes, but doesn't make it fair game to copy indiscriminately. I suppose this is offtopic enough, though, as I 'm certain that displaying a homework problem as an example of a well-done assignment has a strong argument for falling within the bounds of fair use :)

  • (cs)

    I've never heard of a programming class where you could turn in the final assignment days after the semester ended and still get a passing grade, let alone an A+!

    Forgot to submit his source code? Twice? Kerin is lucky the prof was stealing his work.

  • mo (unregistered)

    A cs professor at my university lost tenure for far less, only teaching classes but skipping departmental functions (There were some major disagreements among faculty in the mid 90s that had everyone mad at each other). If department faculty police their own, tenure usually works. It's mostly mega-depts at mega-universities or those schools with lots of part time faculty where it all falls apart because faculty don't know what is going on. My department had 10-15 full time faculty plus a handful adjuncts brought in from industry to teach advanced lab classes.

  • Homer (unregistered)

    That jackass professor should be flogged. Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens all too often. If I had a nickel for each "chapter topic" a prof got from my work or my friends work, I would not have to work :-)

  • Eeve (unregistered) in reply to darin

    The CS program at many universities do not assume ANY computer knowledge at the start of the program. My degree came with essentially a computers 101 course that was mandatory. Did you know a mouse is an INPUT device? shock Skipped much of that waste of time.

    darin:
    Web Design 101?? Was this a trade school? If it was a distinguished university, I would hope it's merely an elective, and outside of the computer science department, and taught by a TA and not a professor. It could even be a side-project in a databases course, or a self-study project, etc. Sheesh, what's next, "Wordprocessing 101"?

    But then, CS departments have always been under immense pressure from the corporate world to conform to fashion. Ie, Megacorp complains "Why are you teaching algorithms and computability to these students? We don't need engineers or scientists who can think, we need IT grunts who can keep our e-commerce running. We're going to have to rethink that new building we promised to pay for."

  • Val K. (unregistered) in reply to Eric

    I'll take Real Genius for $1000 Alex...

  • Demaestro (unregistered)

    Once I realized what he was up too I would have submitted either an invoice to be paid for my services or I would have been vindictive and sent him an email telling him that I couldn't let go that search didn't work and I would go on to tell him I had a "working" version and he should replace the source code.

    Of course my "fixed" version would have fixed him.

  • (cs) in reply to ContractorInLivingHell
    ContractorInLivingHell:
    Good profs don't need tenure. Good but controversial profs generally don't get sacked since they are too popular, and if they do, they can find other work (since they are good). Bad profs however need tenure. They are the ones that carry on the loudest about it.

    What about the group you're missing? Good by not popular profs? Popularity is of course, completely unrelated to quality. A prof can be popular by giving out A's without requiring any work. Of course, no reputable university rates profs on how popular they ware with students...

    Popularity with other faculty and department does seem to matter though. And that's where tenure helps. It keeps the professors with differing views from being forced out. They no longer have to follow the fashions and trends, or suck up to senior professors.

  • (cs)

    This just astounds me.

    I've had some horrible professors (most with tenure), but even without the blatant plagiarism (and that's what this is!), I haven't had a professor that bad. The Computer and Engineering professors tend to keep their personal politics out of the course. (Can't say the same for anything related to Liberal Arts, unfortunately.)

  • TheRealBill (unregistered) in reply to dirtside
    dirtside:
    Yes, there are obviously problems with tenure -- when you have no one to answer to, you might also go off the deep end and pursue useless nonsense, but that's apparently an acceptable risk.

    It is certainly considered acceptable to those who benefit from it in ways they should not.

  • Luca Masters (unregistered) in reply to nwbrown
    nwbrown:
    Well, you can't anyways since the school generally keeps rights to the copyright of anything you produce for them.

    The school might be able to sue, though.

    I don't know about most universities, but at East Carolina University, the students retain the copyright to their work. I don't recall exactly what rights I granted them in submitting my assignments, but I doubt it included relicensing to a third party. (In one course, the professor had us sign something saying he use our projects for academic purposes, or somesuch thing.)

    There was a case at another university where students sued (successfully, I think) one of those 'check for cheating' companies because they add submitted works to their database, which violated his copyright. Or maybe he sued the professor/school. That seems more reasonable to me, but since when do we limit lawsuits to what's reasonable?

  • Reality (unregistered)

    I am amazed at the number of students who believe that they actually own the copyright to their academic assignments. Remember that admission form you signed when you started school? One clause states that you agree to the schools IP policy. Did you read the policy? I didn't think so.

    Well, if you read it, you would see that you assign all IP rights (not just copyright) to everything you create for a class to the university. Many take it one step further and declare that everything you create while attending the school is assigned to the university.

    If anybody should be upset at the professor in the OP, it should be the school being ripped off.

  • TheGraduate (unregistered)

    Did this in high school on the one computer the school owned (had 8" floppies if you're interested in the date).

    Two assistant principals had to take a programming class to qualify for promotion. They came to me and sheepishly asked for help. That ended up meaning writing all their programs for them. They got A's. They offered to take me out to dinner as a reward, but they were both pretty slimy. I asked just to have the cash they would've spent on dinner. My first paid programming gig!

  • Mostly Evil Frank (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    darin:
    Web Design 101?? Was this a trade school? If it was a distinguished university, I would hope it's merely an elective, and outside of the computer science department, and taught by a TA and not a professor. It could even be a side-project in a databases course, or a self-study project, etc. Sheesh, what's next, "Wordprocessing 101"?
    I also find the "A+" grade dubious. What college or university has an A+ grade?

    A current midwestern state univiversity does this. It shows up on the transcript as A+. It was a management class and doing the extra credit work I ended up with 105% of the total. What sucks is that an A+ doesn't give you any extra towards your GPA, but an A- pulls it down. I was running a 4.0 for the first 2-1/2 years until a history professor gave me an A- for my course grade.

  • (cs) in reply to jtwine

    Well, before you start riffing off, look up your school's policy on copyright ownership. UC ain't so bad:

    http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/copyright/systemwide/pcoiv.html

    To summerize, you retain the copyright unless:

    A) You're staff (rank & file worker as opposed to faculty) B) The university specifically sponsors/contracts/comissions the work

    This means that the academic works of all students and most faculty are solely their property. And I realize that this type of thing goes on even where there are contradictory policies, rules and laws, but it's up to people to take action against plagiarists and thieves.

  • yy2bggggs (unregistered) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    Therefore, a student could certainly attach the GPL or any other license to her assignments and have the right to pursue enforcement if the terms of that license were violated.
    Doesn't work that way. Licenses aren't contracts, they are permissions to use. Licenses don't restrict rights, they grant rights. You're not punished for violating terms of a license, you're punished for practicing certain acts without permission.

    The terms of the GPL are acceptance terms of the license (permission). The alternative is default copyright law, which doesn't let you do certain things to other people's copyrighted works.

  • (cs) in reply to Reality
    Reality:
    I am amazed at the number of students who believe that they actually own the copyright to their academic assignments. Remember that admission form you signed when you started school? One clause states that you agree to the schools IP policy. Did you read the policy? I didn't think so.

    Wow, how nice of a generalization. I did read the policies, and at my undergrad university, undergraduates who were not being paid by professors for research retained copyright on their work. At my current university, even graduate students retain copyright, though we do have to turn over patents.

  • (cs)

    Here, I'll support what I said:

    Undergraduate students, professional students (such as law and medical students), and others who are not [university] employees are not required to sign the Intellectual Property Agreement. They own any intellectual property that they create.

    However, situations may occur in certain courses or special projects where students are presented with the opportunity to participate in projects or activities in which the ownership of any resulting intellectual property must be assigned either to the University or to a sponsoring entity as a condition of the student's participation. Special Student Intellectual Property Agreement Forms are available to deal with all of the situations requiring assignment, or notification of the sponsors of the research. Faculty Guidance on Student Intellectual Property Rights are also available.

    From my graduate institution:

    Except as required by funding agreements or other University policies, the University does not claim ownership rights in the intellectual property generated during research by its faculty, staff, or students.

    Both are Big 10 universities.

  • Paul Phoenix (unregistered) in reply to Haxd

    Did his name happen to be Borat? ;D

    Why you laugh?

  • Bob2 (unregistered)

    For fun I took an class on Automotive technology. We Spent most of the semester refinishing the professor's classic Corvette. How many people can say they eraned their BS and learned how to bondo and wetsand?

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    this reminds me of a class i had the misfortune of attending, a "cutting edge" (brand new no-idea-what-they-are-doing) class called "systems analysis and design": "design a system to do such-and-such for a business called-such-and-such." that was the TOTAL input of the teacher! EVERYTHING else we had to do on our own, like learning to use the "design tool" programs, which DID NOT WORK AT ALL (they would crash on startup every single time), with only ONE copy of the instructions for the ENTIRE CLASS...what total crap! fortunately i was able to "withdraw" from that class and get a partial refund...

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