Copyright Question

A

AcidBurn

Veteran X
Alright, so I am about to receive my Masters degree. I just completed my thesis defense, and now I am required to submit my thesis to a company called ProQuest. Now, I am required by my college to do this if I want my diploma. However, I must pay this company to submit it to them. Not only that but in doing so they make you agree to a TOS that basically says "you are giving us the right to copy, distribute, and sell as we see fit, and we only have to pay you a 10% royalty if the amount exceeds $10 a year."

So my question is, is there something I can do about this? I absolutely do not want to agree to these terms. I do not think it is right that this third party company charges me, and then turns around and profits off of my work. This wouldn't be a problem if I was not required to do this, but if I want my degree I must.
 
Shinski


shin_skis.GIF
 
bit hazzy on details there.

the content IP, i.e the method you developed or whatever stays with you, but they get rights to distribute the thesis as much as they want? i.e send copies to other uni's if requested by the uni?

if that is what it is, then that's fine. they send your thesis all over. And with that you get more chance of people reading it, citing your work. I very much doubt that your uni would want you (or them) to lose the actual IP for the method or whatever it is you researched.
 
welcome to your first dry-fuck in corporate america/wherever. I see this all the time.
 
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AcidBurn said:
Alright, so I am about to receive my Masters degree. I just completed my thesis defense, and now I am required to submit my thesis to a company called ProQuest. Now, I am required by my college to do this if I want my diploma. However, I must pay this company to submit it to them. Not only that but in doing so they make you agree to a TOS that basically says "you are giving us the right to copy, distribute, and sell as we see fit, and we only have to pay you a 10% royalty if the amount exceeds $10 a year."

So my question is, is there something I can do about this? I absolutely do not want to agree to these terms. I do not think it is right that this third party company charges me, and then turns around and profits off of my work. This wouldn't be a problem if I was not required to do this, but if I want my degree I must.
Click to expand...

You could probably fight the school's decision to force the submittal but once it's in that company's hands it's theirs, if you say okay.

But, it's like a teacher once said to me, "you should be so lucky as to have your work resold or copied..."

Basically, unless you wrote something amazing and profound and entirely new (which in all likelihood you didn't) then you have nothing to worry about. There are bigger issues to worry about in this world, whether someone profits off your hard work or not isn't a big issue. As you will find, that's pretty much par for the academic course.

edit: I work as a journalist and have written hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of work that a giant media conglomerate has profited off of. Welcome to the world... I get paid jack shit to make my employer thousands of dollars.

I'd say just take your degree and forget about it.
 
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if you are interested in academia, one of the epenis things involved there is your citation rate.

this is why your uni is doing this. if this company pimps all their stuff around the place, more people read it, and thus more people are likely to cite it. So on an individual level its good for the academics. They get more citations. The institution also likes to as they get more citations as a whole.

they money that the company makes keeps them happy.

But really at the end of the day, similar to what silas said, unless you wrote something totally land mark its not really gonna make much difference. I have had a few hundred people read my thesis. 1 citation. I have had 4 papers published. Hundreds of people got proceedings, hundreds more read the papers online, 2 citations.

its really not all that exciting or money spinning really.
 
Seriously, is the work THAT good? Do you think they're going to bankroll a wad from your thesis? If not, then who cares?
 
There is actually a group of kids suing this company on the exact issue you are describing.

Techdirt: Plagiarism Checker Sued For Copyright Infringement

Plagiarism Checker Sued For Copyright Infringement
from the irony-or-accuracy dept

Back in 2002 there was some discussion over whether or not, Turnitin, a popular plagiarism checker that many schools and universities use, was violating students' copyrights. The program worked by comparing any uploaded works to a large database of previous works. However, it would then add those new works to the larger database. Many students began to question not just why they were being treated as criminals first, but also why Turnitin was allowed to use their content in its database without first licensing the works from the students.
...

(wow.. clearly I didn't read your post carefully.. but this is interesting nonetheless)
 
turnitin is bloody great.

i love it.

as a person who has to mark assignments its great being able to use it any fine stuff that they have ripped from elsewhere.
 
I don't know if my work was "profound" or not, however no one has ever done the research I have done. The results were quite interesting, and I am planning on turning it into a dissertation next year. The only reason I asked the question was because I didn't want a company profiting off of the work I did because I was FORCED to submit it to them. If they gave me a choice or whether or not to submit it would be fine, but when they say "do this or you get no degree" it kind of turns things around.

And yes, I am planning on publishing my research as well.
 
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