Chiding USC from within

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing writes extensively on what he sees as the abuses of copyright and the law's dampening effect on free exchange of ideas and art. Just because he's spending the year at USC as the Canada-US Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy doesn't mean he's going to stop. This week he took on the university's warning to students about using file-sharing services that violate copyright, annotating a memo from the powers-that-be:

> > > Copyright infringement occurs whenever someone makes a copy of any copyrighted work -- songs, videos, software, cartoons, photographs, stories, novels -- without purchasing that copy from the copyright owner, or obtaining permission some other way.

Wait, wait, wait. Doesn't USC have a law program? This is just utterly wrong. Copyright infringement occurs when you make a use without obtaining permission, provided that your use doesn't fall under the banner of fair use and other user-rights under copyright....

> > > USC prohibits any infringement of intellectual property rights by any member of the USC community. As an academic institution, USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation and lawful use of intellectual property.

This is the single most shocking thing I have ever read from a university. The purpose of a university is to promote learning and scholarship. To say otherwise is just jaw-dropping -- if we're to take this at face value, we'd measure USC's success by the number of patents filed and copyrights registered, rather than the caliber and quality of the research and work done by our students and faculty.

He followed the next day with a student's run-in with the rules.