10/12   OK, regarding my stupid idea of a motd book to make money for the
        CSUA below and the resultant copyright argument, I have a more
        fundamental question for the CSUA armchair lawyers (and for Bud Day):
        I was always under the impression that everything you do or say while
        a student/employee of UC, or while using UC property, or while
        thinking erotic thoughts about Ward Connerly automagically becomes
        100% property of UC, enforceable by the club-wielding UC copyright
        brigades?  -John
        \_ http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/8-19-92att.html.
           Professors can publish independent academic papers and own the
           copyrights.  Students own what they produce unless they're
           working on a sponsored project.  UC owns what staff members produce
           unless it's done outside of the scope of their work and no
           university resources are used.  Except as otherwise provided for
           in the policy, UC owns copyright to works made with university
           resources.  -tom
        \_ I heard Fred von Lohmann, EFF senior staff attorney, discuss what's
           at the core of the copyright argument below.  This was informal
           discussion about two years ago, not paid legal advice, but it's
           certainly more accurate than the chicken little ``the sky is
           falling'' bullshit in the thread below.  Someone posed the
           question, ``Since (in the US) copyright springs into existence as
           soon as an original(*) work is fixed(+), aren't people who maintain
           public mailing list archives potentially exposing themselves to
           massive risks of litigation?''  His response was that it's never
           been tested in court so you can't completely discount the
           possibility, but in all likelihood, the act of posting to a public
           mailing list [or, for the purposes of the thread below, forum, e.g.
           soda's motd.public] also means you implicitly consent to the
           archival and reproduction of the post by the forum maintainers.
           As far as I know, it still hasn't been tested in court.

           As to the question of ``all your base are belong to the UC'' that's
           not really a question of copyrights, it's a question of contracts.
           This breaks down to a) What does the intellectual property
           assignment/ownership contract claim the UC (or any employer) owns?
           and b) Which of those claims are actually enforceable under
           California law?  I suspect that the set of enforceable claims for
           employees may differ from those for students, but don't actually
           know.

           So what's enforceable?  If you're using UC property, they
           definitely can claim ownership.  If it's done on your own time (not
           really an issue for students since the UC doesn't own any of their
           time) with your own resources, they can't.  Private companies can
           claim and sometimes enforce ownership of ip made on your own time
           with your own resources if the ip is directly related to their
           primary business interest(s), but I don't see how this could apply
           to the UC since it's a public institution and, cynical jokes aside,
           not really a business.

           In the specific case of the CSUA, it may be tricky to establish use
           of UC resources.  Since the ASUC is independent of the UC, it can
           be argued that the ASUC owns the CSUA's physical equipment, not the
           UC.  Furthermore, I'm doubtful that the UC could support ownership
           claim based soley on the use of network resources.  There's a
           peering exchange in the basement of Evans, and it would obviously
           be ridiculous if the UC claimed ownership of all data that travels
           through that exchange.  I'd be curious to see if there's any
           caselaw specifically addressing ip ownership claims and use of
           network resources.
           -dans

           (*) The bar for original work is really low.  Oft-cited example,
           The white pages are merely a directory listing, and do not qualify
           as original work for the purposes of copyright.  The yellow pages,
           on the other hand, do qualify because they are organized by an
           original scheme.
           (+) Fixed means recorded, written down, or otherwise fixed in some
           medium.  Established caselaw states that data in RAM is considered
           fixed for the purposes of copyright.
           \_ So one upshot of all this is that being a student is better than
              being an employee as far as the legal status of IP you generate.
              Does that mean graduate students at the UC's are considered
              employees, since they're in a union, or are they students?
              This sounds like a great arguement against graduate student
              unionization.  As a graduate student at a private school, I am
              not considered an employee (in spite of the fact that I get paid
              and work fulltime), but the status of my IP, at least in terms
              of patents is identical to that of employees.
              \_ Graduate students are students, but work they do as employees
                 (for example, creating an exam for a course they're working
                 as a GSI for) is owned by UC.  A paper they create or publish
                 is still theirs.  -tom
                 \_ Is UC different from other institutions? At Caltech,
                    for instance, the university has the first rights to
                    any patents, software, etc. and only if they decline
                    those rights can the researchers own them. This is
                    true for papers just as well as any other research.
                    \_ Different institutions have different intellectual
                       property clauses in their contracts so, yes, the UC
                       will likely differ from other institutions. -dans
                       \_ Doesn't UC own the BSD work done by grad
                          students here?
                          \_ Yes, BSD is (C) the Regents.  It was largely
                             written on UC machines and in conjunction with
                             academic work.