Friday, November 19, 1999
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Colleges Weigh Legal Action Against Web Sites That Publish Lecture NotesBy FLORENCE OLSEN
Professors and administrators were not overly concerned when Web sites that publish lecture notes from college courses first appeared on the Internet. But evidence of at least 10 such sites, most of
So far, however, it's not clear to university officials what the most effective legal strategy is. And the companies say they're operating within their rights. Officials of the University of California's Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses recently mailed cease-and-desist letters to two companies that are publishing lecture notes from the two institutions on sites supported by advertising directed at college students. The letter sent out by Berkeley's Office of Technology Licensing informed the companies that their activities violated the university's policies against the unauthorized commercial use of its facilities and institutional name. Mike Smith, assistant chancellor for legal affairs at Berkeley, says it's too early to tell whether the letters will have the desired effect. One Internet company has asked to meet with Berkeley officials to discuss the matter, a request the university most likely will grant, he says. So far, no Berkeley students have been disciplined for violating the university's student-conduct rules, which prohibit the selling of lecture notes. But in several cases, Mr. Smith says, university officials have identified students who were apparently selling their notes for on-line publication and have given them a warning. The students have stopped providing the notes, he says. "The problem here is that, particularly in large classes, all students are taking notes, and the faculty member has no idea which of those students is the one selling his or her notes," Mr. Smith says. At U.C.L.A., meanwhile, an assistant provost went to a class for which notes were being published on the Web and gave students a talk about the possible consequences to the student supplying them. The notes stopped appearing on line after that. "While it's not one of the most important issues facing higher education, it's of increasing concern," says Mr. Smith. But the university has not considered prosecuting the companies for copyright violations, he says. "We consider the copyright question to be a distinct and separate question," Mr. Smith says. It's not clear, for example, how or if copyright law protects lectures. "There's really no good case law on this," he says. In the absence of clear-cut legal protections for lectures, universities may be able to protect themselves by writing explicit policies that can be tested in court, says Mathieu Deflem, an assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University. Mr. Deflem, who has written about lawsuits related to college teaching, says that universities should consider legal means to resist what he views as an invasion by on-line notes companies. He has posted a paper about the topic on line. John R. Sandbrook, an assistant provost in U.C.L.A.'s College of Letters and Science, says the publishing of lecture notes without the permission of the professor or the university is not -- as some of the companies claim -- a free-speech issue. "A classroom," he says, "is not a public park." Mr. Sandbrook says a university has the right to control, on behalf of its faculty members, what goes on in its classrooms. In conversations he has had with the entrepreneurs who are publishing lecture notes without permission, the assistant provost says, he has scolded them for using the notes "as bait" for their commercial sites. A company that operates one of the sites says publishing lecture notes on the Internet is legal because the notes are a student's "interpretation" of the lectures, rather than the lectures themselves. Craig Green, a founder and chief executive officer of Study24-7.com, says he interprets copyright law to mean that the students themselves own the copyright to the notes they take in class. Neither Mr. Green nor his business partner, Brian Maser, says he spends much time worrying about being sued by a university or a professor. "We're a peer-to-peer, interactive site that allows students to communicate and study together, which is what students want," Mr. Maser says. Study24-7 has not been threatened with a lawsuit. But in June, the University of California system's Board of Regents filed a lawsuit against a traditional note-taking company that produces, prints, and sells lecture notes without university permission. "We're already suing one company, and whether we choose to sue others is a decision we might consider down the line," says Mr. Smith, the assistant chancellor for legal affairs. Berkeley's chancellor has authorized one service, Black Lightning Lecture Notes, to sell notes on its campus, but only under special conditions. According to Mr. Smith, the lecturer must approve of the note-taking, must have the right to review the notes for accuracy, and must be able to negotiate royalty payments for use of the notes. Boston University, which has taken on-line term-paper mills to court, has so far not taken action against the two Web companies that have published notes from the lectures of two of its professors, says Peter Wood, an associate provost and professor of anthropology. He says that initially he viewed the notes sites as unlikely to succeed, but that now he's not so sure. "If they can draw in substantial numbers of people, the advertisers will be there," he says. "It doesn't really matter whether the product is intrinsically worthwhile."
Background stories from The Chronicle:
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Copyright © 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education