Legal to post lecture notes online?

[Isaac]

As long as I cite who I took the notes from, and the other needed information, it's completely legal, right?
It includes almost everything needed to get an A in each class, for the last semester, and then some.

I figured, it would be nice of me to share my class directory in Google docs, on my homepage.

[fliptw]

no. snippets yes, whole lectures not without the speaker's approval.

[Gekko71]

As long as I cite who I took the notes from, and the other needed information, it's completely legal, right?
It includes almost everything needed to get an A in each class, for the last semester, and then some.

I figured, it would be nice of me to share my class directory in Google docs, on my homepage.

Attribution of a source doesn't necessarily absolve you of copyright issues. However seeing you can quite rightly quote its for educational purposes I don't think legality will be an issue (aside from the very valid point above from flip). Weather or not its a good idea in terms of your career, or possibly tainting your hard work with the inference that your work is not fully your own - that's another story.

Furthermore, if your course notes contain your own intellectual property (IE any form of information that can be legally protected and has commercial value) then why give it away? I know of many people who have gone on to profit greatly from the IP they created in the course of doing their degrees (and I'm not talking about selling assignments to other students - I'm referring to business ideas and programming algorithms that went towards commercial products.)

You work hard to get any 'A' at tertiary level. Why let others ride your coattails for free?

[Thenior]

As long as the notes are your material, you have rights to them. If you go to any conference or meeting, and take notes, you never have to ask if you can share them. They are your notes, and again, as long as that is all they are, than you have every right to distribute them.

Now, if you just take notes in your lecture book, and then want to copy that... that's a different story.

[Sirius]

Only exception would be if you signed an NDA before attending the lecture, but you wouldn't be asking if that were the case.

[Isaac]

There is some conflicting information here.

[Floyd]

just ask your lecturer.

[Xamindar]

Posting someone else's work is wrong unless you have their permission. Are your morals that messed up that you are not sure?

[Isaac]

I love how we're all on the same page here. I really do love this forum; there are so many different moods, by people of different backgrounds.
\"DO it!\" \"You'll die!\" \"It's fine, only if...\" \"I like pizza and fishes!\" \"Yeehaw! Post'em!\"

I think I'm going to host the data, cite the information properly, and if a teacher or the school asks me to take something down I will...
The things I'm going to post are related to the same things I had lots of trouble finding online. If the data were all in one place it would have been easy memorization work. The work itself is not property of anyone, but common knowlege; the properties, with photos shot, of about 50 rocks and thousands of Chinese defined characters, all ready in digital flash card format. Not to mention, hundreds of lecture note pages on Google docs, which might end up being a problem. But, I guess I could send off a few emails asking them, which shouldn't hurt.

[Lothar]

I guess I could send off a few emails asking them, which shouldn't hurt.

Sounds like the smart thing to do.

Are the materials personally created by you, or are they scans of someone else's (possibly copyrighted) work? Did you get permission from the photographers to use their photos?

Recall that "fair use" allows you to quote segments of something for educational purposes, but typically not the whole thing. This is true even if you've handwritten copies of someone else's stuff -- it's still their intellectual property even if you reproduced it in your own hand. Common knowledge shouldn't be a problem, but hundreds of pages of lecture notes could be.

[Isaac]

Are the materials personally created by you, or are they scans of someone else's (possibly copyrighted) work?

The only photos are of actual rocks in lab. A group of us shot them all with a digital camera to make study notes.

The Chinese characters, with their definitions, come from a book. Much of the info has been changed, due to the quality of the book. All of the defintions used are also found anywhere else you can find Chinese character definitions, like 我 is wŏ and means 'me'; that is found anywhere and is common knowledge. Nothing is scanned out of the book, and the characters are written in the Linux IBUS system, which makes typing them easy. Everything is retyped and put on a Google Docs spreadsheet, which can be shared or embedded. I don't think the spreadsheet and the book could ever be connected, as a source, for these reasons. It might only require citation because it's common knowledge that has been edited (improved/simplified) by me.

[fliptw]

only the photos you took are ok.

Everything else started as being copied form other sources, and thus must have permission of those sources.

[Isaac]

Then when is only a citation ok, if not for exactly this?

[fliptw]

Then when is only a citation ok, if not for exactly this?

Not this. If you where publishing a research paper, then you'd use citations, but from what you've described, your notes on Chinese characters was basically copied information from other sources.

[Isaac]

Ah. This is true.

[Xamindar]

So the photos are yours. If you have any photos that are not yours be VERY careful. \"Professional\" photographers are a dying breed and are fighting for deer life to stay \"special\".