Some answers about IP(NEW!)

I found out that it is the student that owns the IP for his work, as he is not paid to do it, but student can give up copyright to University if he wishes. Users of wonderWOL will have to agree for their work to be displayed on the University system, but not to give up their rights. If there will be a need we can introduce different agreements if someone for example doesn't mind his work being used by other students, but doesn't want it to be visible from the web. I will talk to TRS about it soon.

Concerns about legal ownership of posters and ideas

There is a 'conspiracy theory' that university has legal rights to part of the ownership on all the work created as a course work, or even during student's stay at University. It might be true so these concerns will have to be addressed, so that students will feel safe about their Intellectual property.

Another concern is with publishing posters on the Internet and them being accessible from outside. Are students protected from theft, or maybe some some student would like to apply some sort of copyleft, or Open Source licence where their ideas can be used as long as their input is mentioned. Possibly all WOL would be free to view and use (including ideas) as knowledge in education should be as freely accessible as possible.

DIY copyright - once published never forgotten

Musicians use following DIY copyright method: if you snail mail (in envelope) record of your music to yourself an keep it unopened, than it is a proof that that material was created before letter was posted. Legally it might be used as an evidence in court if someone steals your music.

It is one of possible usages of WOL to put project proposals and projects in progress on-line so that there is an evidence of who is an author of published ideas and when were they created. Again this issue requires some deeper thoughts and a trip to library and student office. It is put on the TODO list.

Plagiarism and inspiration

With a general register of projects and ideas it would be possible to search by tag words to find out if some of them were stolen from other projects. Obviously it is possible not to allow students see other students work in case they steal it, but how much more powerful is an approach to trust in student's independence. Once trusted students should in principle learn on their colleagues experience and make their decisions and develop their own ideas. This is the real difference between high school and university that students study for themselves, and they are trusted with managing their own skills and time. There is nothing more mobilising than being independent and trusted with difficult tasks, what will be expected of students once they graduate anyway.