film production copyright in the imd
several of the students in imd have taken issue with the copyright agreement in cinema and television's production classes. i understand, from scott's orientation seminar yesterday, that a discussion is underway between he and the dean regarding updating the copyright agreement to be more consistent with the divisions' blogging practices.
as i understand it from a quite close reading, cinema does not lay claim to ip but rather to the copyright of what we produce. as a matter of course research institutions claim ownership of the the ip that is generated in their departments and all the spin-off that might entail. so i guess, from a certain legalistic point of view then, it could be argued that cinema is even being generous in offering that students keep their underlying ip.
if that is the case, i'm not sure that i necessarily buy that argument, but... in any case... personally, my issue is less with the university claiming ownership of the content that we produce and more with their prohibition over our distributing our work over the internet (or at the very least an inter-departmental intranet). does cinema and television not, after all, offer a course entitled database cinema? (friday from 1-3pm for those interested).
as mr. hall and i discussed recently, having past student film projects digitized and entered into a database would be phenomenal resource (and a not a bad idea for a thesis project either). the bbc has led the way in this area by creating an archives of its tv libraries, and as far as i'm aware it hasn't led to any british tv pirate underground (although that sounds pretty cool)... other film institutes like the national film board are trying to emulate the bbc's model, shouldn't we be doing the same?
please forgive me if this is old hat, as a first year student i don't know where the state of this discussion currently lies, but it seemed to me like this was at least an appropriate subject for a blog post.
how about throwing that new draft content license up on the blog for students and faculty to comment on?
marc
Comments
Yea, the IP issue is fuzzy; Chris Swain, I believe drafted a new IP Policy for the division as of last spring, but I'm not quite sure where that is at.
Good news is the production courses are the only ones that ever made me sign anything; so everything else seems to be under no regulation policies.
The only case I've heard of w/ the school reprimanding someone was when our very own Justin Hall, started placing his "films" on his personal blog.
As I understand it, they didn't have a case against him because, like any smart person, modified the contract to his own specifications before signing and turning it in. No one looks at them; so when they dug Justin’s up they were a bit surprised.
Mind you this is all hearsay. Get the real deal from the horses’ mouth.
Posted by: SEDinehart | August 26, 2005 10:30 AM
You may want to ask Chris Swain about this issue; I believe he’s done quite a bit of work on the “new and improved IP policy” for the IMD.
Posted by: andrew![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/mtuters/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 27, 2005 10:24 AM
Thanks andrew, actually scot gave me a copy of what they've been working out, looking it over at the moment...
marc
Posted by: Anonymous | September 3, 2005 4:39 PM
Hey Erin... yah I went to speak with Joe Wallenstein the other day about this and he gave me tacit permission to post 507 homewoek to the blog, but afterwards one of the people from his office I think explained to him that a blog was not an intranet... so now i don't know where things stand
Posted by: Anonymous | September 3, 2005 4:40 PM
they're nubs when it comes to technology. I mean, they are pretty old after all, I'd be surprised if they change their policy on posting to the web anytime soon.
http://spartasoft.msu.edu/shailesh/m/shorts/
come and get me :p
Posted by: m. | September 3, 2005 6:19 PM