Copyright and helping my student sister

[nahbios]

Hi all,

I’ve been told I’m scrupulous a few times and, with God’s help, I’m trying to manage it and am doing reasonably okay (I think). The Ten Commandments of the Scrupulous have particularly helped. However, something that I did over the weekend is really niggling at my conscience and I hope someone can help.

I try to be as “by the book” as I can with regard to copyright issues as I know it can be grave matter to violate copyright in many cases. Now, my sister - who is a student - came to me asking me for my old college username and password to try and gain access to a journal which wasn’t apparently available through her college. I gave it to her before while I was still in college in order to help her out and she found it very useful. (Was that wrong? I didn’t feel as conflicted as I do now.) However, I’m now finished with college altogether and I didn’t really want to provide access to that which I *myself *no longer am entitled to have access.

I’m telling myself it wasn’t a mortal sin as there was doubt. However, I had the chance to find out whether or not I could provide access to my old university’s journal network in this case, but I didn’t - thereby adding to my culpability.

I feel a lot of guilt. Could someone help me, please?

Thank you!

 

[PatrickSebast]

You are entitled to access the materials provided through your university account as long as the continue to allow you access. The university included the cost of upkeeping your user account past graduation in your tuition, when I worked for the computer center at my college we had a record of all active users and used that number to figure out what was needed in the way of subscriptions and licenses. We were well aware that graduates still had access and they were considered as part of the package, unless you graduated more than a year ago it probably isn’t an oversight that you still have access but just a part of policy.

The only real question is whether or not you can legally provide your access to published information like that to another person in such a manner, and as far as that is concerned I have no clue. I know it is perfectly legal for me to write reports citing information and statistics from information found in such databases, and I know I am even allowed to extensively summarize an article. I can even show it to someone I am working with on a pertinent subject matter if they do not have access themselves. I don’t know the rules about sharing it with a family member or outside academic though. If you sister is publishing a paper I know she needs to be able to prove she had legal access to any sources she sites in said paper (though in most cases it will go unnoticed) so if this is for something like a thesis then it isn’t okay for her, but if it is just some research paper for an undergrad course then that is an issue I have never really seen come up.

 

[Cat_Herder]

Hi all,

I’ve been told I’m scrupulous a few times and, with God’s help, I’m trying to manage it and am doing reasonably okay (I think). The Ten Commandments of the Scrupulous have particularly helped.

I am a recovering scrupulous soul. I have already mentioned St. Dymphna once tonight so this may not be a coincidence that I am mentioning her again.

I try to be as “by the book” as I can with regard to copyright issues as I know it can be grave matter to violate copyright in many cases. Now, my sister - who is a student - came to me asking me for my old college username and password to try and gain access to a journal which wasn’t apparently available through her college. I gave it to her before while I was still in college in order to help her out and she found it very useful. (Was that wrong? I didn’t feel as conflicted as I do now.) However, I’m now finished with college altogether and I didn’t really want to provide access to that which I *myself *no longer am entitled to have access.

Are you sure you’re not entitled to have access? Pretty much EVERY school allows library privileges to all alumni and that would include access to the journal in question. What you did was pretty much equivalent to taking your alumnus ID to the library, checking out the physical journal and lending it to your sister.

The stuff that gets phased out after graduation is software, parking, and the like. It would be highly unusual if your school banned alumni from the library!

 

[edwest2]

I suggest you contact a person in authority at the school library. Find out their policy on such things. If the answer is no, or you shouldn’t do that, then find out how she can gain access to the journal in question in some legitimate way. Libraries can loan books to other libraries that lack them. Find out what your options are. Finally, after learning about all of your options, it may be possible to get the article from the journal publisher’s web site. I have downloaded one article, for example, for my personal use for $11.00.

Ask someone who knows the law to explain the options available to a student who needs the information. In college, I was generally free to copy a few pages at the library to help write a paper and I had to list my sources.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Whitacre_Girl]

It seems to me that if they are giving you access, then there is no violation. Universities are really good about following copyright law and cutting off people who should no longer have access. There are whole people dedicated to the job of keeping records like that current – my friend is one of them!

In your case what you did was no different than giving a journal in your possession to someone to read in your home or to borrow. Absolutely nothing wrong with it IMHO. Now, if you had helped her defraud a system to access that journal, that would be a different idea.

As for the mortal sin part, don’t worry about that. If you did it, then wonder later if t was in fact sinful, you couldn’t be culpable for mortal sin. You have to know at the time it happened beyond all doubt that what you were doing was gravely sinful and do it anyway. You clearly didn’t do that.

Sounds like your scruples gotcha. :hug1: Don’t worry!

 

[nahbios]

Whitacre_Girl, edwest2, Cat Herder, and PatrickSebast: thank you for your help: I very much appreciate it. I imagine that it wouldn’t be grave matter in this case, and I was going to let it slide, but something kept niggling away at me. I think my sister picked up on my anxiety coming across in my frequent inquiries as to her search and my offering of help in finding journals, as she has just told me that she will not use the journals from my university any more. I still feel bad because I know that making a decision to do something wrong is, in and of itself, a sin, so I’m going to send her links to open access journals.

Many thanks again to everyone for your help!