Online notes raise questions at OSU

STILLWATER, Okla. (U-WIRE) - A Website that gives away class notes might be ripping off professors' intellectual property, an Oklahoma State University official says.

Students who are taking their notes and posting them on the Internet may be held responsible for the accuracy of the notes, said Guven Yalcintas, director for Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at OSU.

StudyFree is paying students at 62 U.S. universities to post their class notes on the company's Website, StudentU.com. Anyone can print the notes for free.

As of Sept. 19, students in 14 classes at OSU were paid $300 per course, per semester to post their notes. And it's all done anonymously, said Oran Wolf, StudyFree's president and Website creator.

Wolf, who founded his Houston-based company in 1995, and took it online Sept. 6, 1999, said he is surprised that some people think his service to students is unethical.

"I don't think this is unethical," Wolf said. "When I was in school, my classmates and I shared notes all the time. Notes are free to students in the class - why shouldn't they be free to the world?"

Perhaps because it may be stealing from professors, said Rebekah Herrick, associate political science professor at OSU. Someone in her Introduction to Government class is posting the lecture notes on StudentU.com.

"I wonder if there are intellectual property theft issues here. The notes are presented as mine," she said. "Someone else is profiting from my labor. This bothers me."

Herrick may be right.

"There could be intellectual property in the presentation of her lecture," Yalcintas said. "The presentation technique of her lecture may be unique.

Her lectures may also be coming from her own research. In these cases, she has the right to claim intellectual property."

Wolf said the disclaimer on his Website protects his company and the students he employs. The disclaimer reads, in part: "You need to know that the lecture notes you find in StudentU.com are just a notetaker's interpretation of what was presented in the lecture. They are absolutely, positively not the professor's lecture notes."

Yalcintas said the disclaimer really does not mean anything. It does not protect StudyFree or the students posting the notes.

"A disclaimer is just a disclaimer. It's not God's law - there are always holes," he said.

According to Yalcintas, students could be held liable if they misunderstand professors' lectures.

"If students pass the lecture notes on to a third party without consent and knowledge of the professor, they can be held liable because they're recreating the lecture based on their understanding, which may be quite different than the professor's original lecture," he said.

Yalcintas also said students could be held legally responsible for the accuracy of the notes.

"Any good lawyer could find a way to hold the site owner and the students liable," he said. "They are taking a risk."

Wolf said he encourages the students and professors obtaining the notes to contact him if the notes are not accurate.

"We want students to contact us," he said.

"If these notes are not accurate, I call the notetaker for the appropriate class. We work together to try and improve the notes or the notetaker's skills," he said. "I have never had a professor tell me the notes were not accurate."

But Wolf has never talked to Raegan Burlingame, a second-year graduate student and teacher of Introduction to Psychology. She said a portion of the notes for her class, dated Aug. 27, is wrong.

"According to the notes, the definition for central fissure is incorrect. The notes say it is involved with vision, but it's not," she said. "It is a structure in the brain that indicates the boundary of the frontal lobe. It has nothing to do with vision."

According to the Web site's disclaimer, students are held accountable for the accuracy of their notes. Herrick, though, feels that the accountability is placed on her because her name, not the name of the student who took the notes, is attached to the notes.

"I have no control over what's being put on the Web for my classes," she said. "These notes may be what I said, and they may not be. There's a tradition in academics that professors have control over their class material. Some of that control has been taken from me. This bothers me."

Yalcintas said professors do have some control.

"The site's disclaimer doesn't protect professors' intellectual property," he said. "The only way they can protect that is by filing an invention disclosure with OSU's Intellectual Property office."

Yalcintas said by filing an invention disclosure, professors are saying their lecture notes contain some of their own research, or that their lecture style is unique, and cannot be reproduced without their knowledge and consent.

09-23-99