Tuesday, November 17, 2009

If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?

"Some Harvard professors are taking very seriously their "intellectual property rights" and have claimed copyright to the ideas that they spread in their classrooms. What prompted this was a website in which students posted their notes to help other students.

The professors have cracked down. It might have been enough to legislate against this behavior in particular. Instead, they wrapped their objection in the great fallacy of our age: the professor owns his ideas and they may not be spread without his permission."

in reference to:

"This action has opened up a can of worms, and now other universities have taken up the puzzling question: how do you at once enforce intellectual property and uphold the ideal of a university, which is, after all, about teaching and spreading ideas to others? The problem is a serious one that highlights the absurdity of the notion that an idea — infinitely reproducible and thereby not scarce, and also taught with the overt purpose of gaining adherents among students — can be somehow contained and restrained once it is unleashed."
- If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others? - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute (view on Google Sidewiki)

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