Ask Slashdot: Best Copyright Terms For a Thesis?

plopez gets in his first Slashdot submission with this question, writing: "I am wrapping up an MS. In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation. I don't want that happen to me. I know the joke is 'No one will ever read your thesis,' but in the slim chance it is useful to others I don't want them to be required to hunt me down for a release. Basically I want to say: 'Copyright is released as long as this work or excerpts is properly attributed. Also, any published excerpts cannot be copyrighted by other parties, nor can the original work in its entirety.' Is this good enough? I don't want to encumber legitimate uses of the work but I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain. Is public domain good enough? Or does it allow the work to be restricted by commercial interests? I know of copyleft, but copyleft is a family of copyright notices and I am unsure which one is right for my intent. Please help."

Creative commons!

[NalosLayor]

Creative commons has a tool to help, and human readable licenses. I'd guess you can find what you need there. http://creativecommons.org/ [creativecommons.org]

Re:Creative commons!

[paulschreiber]

danah boyd did this: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/02/18/licensing_your.html [zephoria.org]

Re:Creative commons!

[NeutronCowboy]

And what he's probably looking for is CC BY-ND [creativecommons.org]. "This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you."

Re:You don't own it

[PopeRatzo]

It doesn't matter what you want to put on your thesis, you university owns the copyrights to it.

I don't think that's even true for half the universities. I'd be surprised if it was true for 1/3 or 1/4.

I've seen thesis manuscripts with and without copyright language and none of them has ever been held up or given any trouble from the institution. And I've been on PhD panels for several universities, public and private. Had scores of grad students get their degree without this ever becoming an issue.

I remember a university head librarian who wanted to make an issue out of this and he was practically laughed out of the meeting. And this at a top-five US school.

All of this changes with faculty research and other publications, of course. Then it matters, big time.