DigiPen students penning deal with the IP devil?

To address the end of the article which references Full Sail, here is something from the student website, Propeller:

"The students own all of the materials that they create. Full Sail does reserve the right to use any materials that the students create while enrolled for instructional or promotional purposes, and other activities that pursue the betterment of the Full Sail students and/or faculty.

From the Full Sail enrollment agreement – '10. PERPETUAL LICENSE - STUDENT agrees to grant FULL SAIL perpetual license to all materials including but not limited to scripts, video, film, computer media, audio recordings, and other creative work created in the course of a school project or activity. Use of these materials by FULL SAIL will be limited to promotional and educational activities for the benefit of the school and its STUDENTS and not for any commercial use whatsoever. STUDENT furthermore agrees to grant FULL SAIL the right to use his or her likeness and/or voice in FULL SAIL advertising or promotional pieces.'"

Basically they can show other students how your edge flow works in a model, or use your face in a commercial for the school. That's about it.

At the University of Guelph here in Ontario, the school does not own the work of students and faculty. As stated on the school's web site:

"The University reaffirms its traditional practice that copyright in works produced by faculty members belong to those faculty members, except in the special cases listed below. The University extends to non-faculty professional and support staff, and to students, these same rights, namely, that ownership of copyright will belong to the author, except in specific cases."

The "specific cases" where it doesn't apply are when specific work to which copyright will apply is commissioned by the school. Everything else is owned by the person who created it, as it should be. The fact that many American universities are for-profit, non-public institutions likely accounts for the difference.

Sorry, forgot this in my last post. It's Guelph's policy specifically as relates to software creation, which also says that ownership of most software created at the school is held by whoever created it:

"The general policy is that, except for the special circumstances described below in Sections 4.1(b) and (c), the ownership of software developed by University personnel in the course of carrying out their normal University responsibilities utilizing resources normally available to them, shall belong fully to the creators. Normally available resources include, but are not limited to, research grants and contracts, regular budget allocations and facilities and other resources available to atudents as part of a course."

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I'm not sure if this is a case of you or a friend being personally disenchanted with the place, but you can't call yourself a journalist without givng the other side a chance to respond to something as strongly worded as this.
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Lol, guess what, 99% of all journalistic crap is just like that, yep that's 99% of all journalistic writings.
Biased, uninformed, one-sided and mostly wrong when it comes to facts. Take the whole crap that comes out about violence in computer games for instance ... Why doesn't this article surprise me you ask? Lol, get real,

Regards,
E.

I didn't look at all the comments but:

At Full Sail (I graduated June of '06), the school shares IP rights of your work with you so they can use it for educational/promotional purposes. This really only applies to school work. They encourage you to make a dime off your work if you can (as some of my classmates have, one group attracted a publisher with their final project).


And I think that only really applies to class work. If you made anything on your own, on the side, during school, and you didn't hand it in as an assignment, I don't think/know if they would or even care if you ran off and sold it.


PS: Don't let this thread turn into a DigiCom vs Full Sail flame.

Wow, Kyle Schwaneke, you sound like the biggest tool in the world. I'll be looking askance at any Digipen graduates I interview from here on out... especially if their name is Kyle Schwaneke.

There is actually an interesting tale yet to be told about DigiPen and IP.

Comair is really an awesome idealistic leader. He is sincere and as described, talks with the students (and not just upperclassmen; I am but a freshman.) Once in conversation with a small group of people, myself included, he brought up issues that he was inclined to talk about that face us as students. He brought up the IP policy by asking us if we knew why it was that we had such policies. When no came up with a reply he told us. IP used to be in fact given to the student. One of the game teams produced a game called RedShift (I don't know that is has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the game that is actually out; just so happens to be the name). He thought it was brilliant and the team wanted to get money for it as they were offered by a company. Comair was excited and everything was wonderful until one of them tried to swindle the other three out of cash. (I heard the story some 6 months ago so the main idea is there but details are a bit fuzzy.)

So at the very least Comair, our leader, tried to give those kind of rights but as the policies stand they are for good reason. Although, it is unfortunate it had to start this way it is hardly a vindictive policy held over the students' head.
"If you've got the next Tetris don't make it here" --in the words of Erhardt.

I could say more but the main points have been plenty iterated. (iterated: I feel programmer pun love filling my heart)That's all.