Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Close to Home

After rereading my last two posts I realized that I probably sound like I’m taking the whole matter much too lightly; as if I don’t consider the unauthorized use of copyrighted material to be a crime, or at least not a serious one. Let me assure my readers (assuming I have readers) that this is absolutely not the case. While I have never published any fiction, music or video, I have written several hundred of these short essays on a variety of topics, and I would be quite annoyed if anyone decided to steal my work – especially since I’m not charging to view it. But as I am one of 100,000,000 or so bloggers in the world, with only two followers and a few hundred visits a month, it has never really come up. It had never occurred to me that the issue might turn up in my day job instead…

A few weeks ago, one of my students emailed me requesting permission to post lecture materials and PowerPoint slides onto a website where other students would be able to download them. He mentioned that in return for these postings the owners of the site would offer him some small compensation, possibly in the form of gift cards, or at least chances in a drawing to win a gift card, although he did not seem to be clear on how that worked or why it would be worth his time, let alone worth the potential consequences of unauthorized use (theft, really) of intellectual property and the attendant possibilities of being arrested, sued, or thrown out of the University (any such action would be an Honor Code violation at MSU). Even more bizarre, at least from my perspective, was the argument he offered as to why I should give him my blessing to do this…

Somebody, my student argued, would steal my lecture materials eventually, since they are available to every member of every one of my classes each semester. If this was the case, wouldn’t I prefer that the credit (and theoretical compensation) go to someone who was at least polite enough to ask my permission first, as opposed to someone who would just steal it without any additional discussion?

This is the first time anyone has ever told me that the theft of my property (in this case, intellectual property) was inevitable, and suggested that I might as well just go along with it. In point of fact, I’m not at all certain this is the case, since my class materials are of no use to anyone who isn’t enrolled in one of my classes – all of whom can download them for free from our class homepage. There’s also the reality that most people are not that eager to be sued, charged with a crime, or thrown out of the University, or for that matter willing to risk all of those outcomes in return for – I really cannot stress this enough – vague promises of compensation later. The least unpleasant of these outcomes would effectively cost you thousands of dollars, and possibly your entire career – why would you risk that for one chance in a thousand at $20 worth of free merchandise?

Of course, none of this even addresses the truly eccentric aspects of the situation, such as why would you suggest to one of your instructors, who has the ability to give you a failing grade and prevent you from graduating (I teach a required class), that you are going to steal his work and there is nothing he can do about it? Or, for that matter, why would such a website exist in the first place? If there is no charge for using the site, how do the people running it make any money?

But that, alas, is a question for another day…

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