Performer General Release Form: Fill & Download for Free

If your advisor has collaborators who are going to attempt to steal your work, you have much, much bigger problems than what’s in your source code.The novelty of your thesis is in the ideas. The code is merely a way of testing those ideas. It’s similar to an experimental thesis in physics. Showing someone the lab apparatus you are using isn’t nearly as important as discussing the ideas that the apparatus is designed to test.Since your advisor has presumably already discussed the ideas, if the collaborator is going to steal your ideas, they already likely know enough to do that if they know enough to want your code.Much more likely, assuming your advisor isn’t a naive idiot, they will build on your code to expand the larger system in some way. (This could be by writing more code, by running some experiments in another area, or doing something else that is out of scope of what you are doing.) That’s going to be good for you in that they will then publish papers, possibly with you as a co-author, which will bring more attention to your system and your work.As others have noted, there may also be intellectual property (IP) questions. If you are in the US, there’s a relatively good chance that you don’t own the IP anyway, in which case it doesn’t matter. If you do, it’s worth having a brief discussion with someone who knows about IP only if you believe the ideas are such that you might be interested in forming a company or otherwise licensing the IP in the future. (In particular, for patents, in the US, public disclosure is an issue. However, if done properly, you will be able to argue that giving code to a collaborator with restrictions on redistribution is not public disclosure.) In any other case, more exposure is better.In any case, I’d be tempted, when sending the code and with the agreement of your advisor, to send a “cover letter” that tells them where to get the code and also that states the purposes for which you are providing them the code (e.g. to extend and perform other experiments in the context of the collaboration being performed). My goal there would be less legal and more simply to make sure that everyone has a common understanding of the collaboration. The idea is to avoid bad feelings if the collaborators believe, for example, that you are generally releasing the code when you have the intent to share it only with them.Edited to add: I’ve gotten several comments suggesting ways that one can protect the intellectual property, particularly as embodied in the code. Let me suggest that people with that point of view write answers. A careful read of my answer will show that my belief is that the code itself is probably of low value and that the ideas may have more value, but the value to a grad student is in dissemination. Beyond that, if this question is from the rare grad student with an immediately businessworthy idea, the advisor has probably already messed up any possible patent or similar IP claims. So, overall, annoying the advisor by getting a lawyer or claiming trade secret status or other approaches is likely to annoy someone with great power while bringing no benefit at all.

Recently there has been a huge debate on Chinese social media about whether or not women should use anesthesia during childbirth, and if the mother has the right to choose between a C-section or vaginal delivery.The debate was triggered by a tragic event: Ma Rong Rong was a 26 year old first time mother. She was in the hospital waiting to give birth. During her prenatal examination, the doctor discovered that the fetus' head was too big. There was a risk at attempting a vaginal delivery, and they suggested a C-section. However, believing that “natural birth" was the best option, Ma and her entire family (her husband and in-laws) had signed the agreement that the hospital would perform a vaginal delivery regardless.Ma's labor started at 10 am on August 31st. The labor lasted 12 hours and Ma was in excruciating pain for the majority of it. She had repeatedly asked the hospital to perform a c-section, but her family (husband and in-laws) refused to sign the liability form. During this entire time, no anesthesia was given to relieve her pain. Ma eventually couldn't take the pain and jumped from the window of the 5th floor, where her room was located. She died soon after due to massive injuries.This incident had started a national debate on a few different issues, asking who has the right of women's bodies? If a mother wants to decide how she's going to give birth, why must her family sign the form for her? What makes vaginal birth better than C-section and should a woman choose how she wants to give birth? Last but not least, relating to our topic at hand, should women use anesthesia during childbirth?Doctors do give anesthesia during childbirth, such as epidural analgesia and spinal analgesia, but a lot of mothers choose not to take it because it's not natural. During this debate (which I mostly observed, since I never intend to have children), I read a lot of comments from mothers who advocate “natural" birth without anesthesia or god-forbid c-section:The babies are healthier.The pain is a rite of passage for a woman to be a mother,Their mothers and mothers’ mothers had done it just fine, why did we suddenly become so weak?Women are strong, we can take it, for our children.It didn't hurt that much for me, those women must be faking it.All that… ALL delivered with quite a lot of pride and sense of superiority. That somehow being able to give birth without complication is an accomplishment that makes them better mothers than those less fortunate. It’s because of this mentality, that delivery must be excruciatingly painful to be natural, that a lot of women refuse to take anesthesia, that a lot of women don't know there is anesthesia available, and that a lot of hospitals do not have anesthesiologists for labor. It is exactly this kind of mentality that pushed that poor woman into ending her life.I'm not a mother. I never want to be a mother. I have no stake in this discussion, but I don't think anyone gets to say “natural born mothers are better because they can take the pain and women using anesthesia are cowards!”Childbirth is already difficult and dangerous enough. Perhaps as a society we should be more sympathetic to women's pain. Just because most women experience it and just because some women handle it better than others, doesn't make it less horrible, and if some women choose various methods to reduce that pain, it doesn't make them any less “badass". All mothers who went through pregnancy and childbirth are pretty badass to me.Her body. Her choice.Many people commented on anesthesia, vaginal deliveries and C-sections. I did mention this in my answer, but I think it needs a bit more clarification:In China, anesthesia for labor is not as common as it is in the West. A lot of women don't know that there's pain relief for labor, and hospitals (especially local, rural clinics) often don't even have anesthesiologists on-call for labor. As a result, the common impression for many many people is that c-sections (which are performed under general anesthesia) are the only way for women to have a “painless" delivery. That's why the young mother in the incident mentioned, Ms. Ma, begged to have a C-section because of the pain. I suspect if she knew she could have anesthesia, she'd probably have asked for that instead of a c-section.In general, the doctors do have the final say on delivery methods if there's a health risk involved. I think in this situation, the doctors believed, from a medical standpoint, that it was possible to have a vaginal delivery even with the fetus' big head. They did raise the risk, and recommended a c-section just to be safe, but the family chose to have a vaginal delivery instead.In this case, the family did try to sue the hospital and lost. The hospital had very clear documentation saying the risk was clearly communicated, and release form was signed; the mother was healthy without medical problems. The delivery, while long, was normal and without complication… All in all, the doctors believed that she was almost ready to deliver, and the tragedy… The saddest part is that things like this are totally avoidable.

A photographer doesn’t need a photo consent form if the subject or location on the photo is unidentifiable. For example, you can photograph a landscape of a random mountain that looks similar to the thousands of different mountains. Or you capture a leg of a person in a photograph, and it’s almost impossible to tell who it is.As long as you can prove that your subject is unidentifiable beyond a reasonable doubt, then a photo release form isn’t required.At the same time, if a photographer takes a snap of an identifiable subject for enjoyment or artistic expression, then a release form is not needed.There are generally two types of such a release form - photo release form and model release form.They are often used interchangeably but, technically, there are some differences between the two contracts. To summarize, a model release form benefits the subject, and a photo release form benefits the photographer. But, commonly, these terms are used to describe both situations.A model release form effectively gives ownership of an image to the photographer. That is, a subject provides permission to the photographer to use the photos for whatever they want.A photo release form gives ownership to the client. So if a photographer takes professional photos of you, by default, the photographer owns those images, and you need permission from them to use it.It is a legally binding contract between a photographer and a subject. A subject could be a client for a professional shoot, a property, branding, or performers at a concert - in your case. When it comes down to it, a photographer needs legal permission to publish images of people and property. Here is an example of its template: Photography Release Form (Free Downloadable Template)