calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| This Has Happened Before....
It's not like this is a new problem.
There's a well documented case of a Princeton student who, as part of his thesis/dissertation, decided to develop the specifications for a nuclear warhead.
He only discovered his success when he found out that the university couldn't give him his paper back because it had been classified.
Under current educational privacy rules, any paper submitted as a mandatory part of your education can only be released with your consent. The student can easily get his grade, decline all publication or release options, and keep it quiet IF HE WANTS.
IF HE DOESN'T WANT TO KEEP IT QUIET, then it's probably in the public domain. In that case, it's more like knowledge of a tremendous security hole in software. Releasing the info forces the fix--it's just that in this case, the fix is probably neither easy or cheap.
Calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| Re: This Has Happened Before.....
As I recall from my own thesis – Advanced Cocktail Coaster Design and Its Impact on DWDM in Deploying Metropolitan Area Networks – the student/author’s rights are NOT protected under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (as amended 11/96).
Typically – and you see this in the fine print on your thesis/dissertation application form – receipt of an approval for either is tantamount to publication in the university’s eyes. Most verbiage (either the form itself or buried in the grad school's polices) states that copyright ownership of projects, theses and dissertations generated by research which is performed by a student with financial support in the form of wages, salaries, stipend, or grants shall be shall become the property of the university.
And they go further because – besides any stipend or grad assistantship or whatever - copyright ownership of projects, theses and dissertations generated by research performed utilizing equipment or facilities provided to or by the university belongs to the university. It’s as if you were a chemist in a $100 million lab – any patents belong to your employer because odds are you couldn’t have come up with it in your “basement lab,” and you signed-off on that as a condition of employment when hired. (No choice for either the student or scientist.)
Copyright for projects, theses and dissertations not generated as above – i.e. you’re an “adult” student and not using university “monies or tools” – remain your property. However - as a condition of a degree award – you typically signed-away somewhere in the fine print as a part of your acceptance into a degree program…royalty-free permission to the university to reproduce and publicly distribute copies of the project, thesis or dissertation!
So – whether or not you use your own or your school’s resources and money, by virtue of school policy and the degree program, itself, you’ve probably already signed-off on publication and/or ownership rights to your work product.
Quoting one is plagiarism; quoting many is research. |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| Nope, this has changed again, fairly recently.
Current dissertation authors are given the option to totally withold dissemination rights--even to the point of not giving the university library its own copy.
Calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| Okey, dokey: I stand corrected - - must be because I got my MS back when we chopped wood before class, the last Ice Age was still a thing of the future, a laptop was chalk on a slate board, we read by whale-oil lamps, and there were only 8 planets... 
All those who believe in telekinesis raise my hand. |
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