An interesting little brou-ha-ha has erupted at Harvard over the effort by students to provide materials the University makes available through an official portal, in alternative ways. As explained at The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: No Course Material Allowed on Student Site, Harvard Says, and elaborated a bit in the comments, many issues are mixed into the controversy.
It is not always so obvious to some that course materials that are available only behind password protection, are there because institutional rights to use them are limited, either by the terms of Harvard's licenses with the suppliers, or by the doctrine of fair use to the extent, if any, that Harvard relies on fair use to provide course materials to students in electronic formats. In either case, Harvard probably would be liable for its failure to protect the interests of the copyright owners in those works, either under its contracts, or under copyright law, if it failed to act in the face of complaints from the copyright owners.
There are branding issues also. The Harvard portal is appropriately adorned with Harvard's logo. The student site raises significant trademark use issues, but again, not everyone knows or fully appreciates these issues.
So, we are educators. Why not use this event to teach those who are clearly eager to create some of the rules of the road for creating? This is the perfect "teachable moment," as we in academe would say. We have here energetic, creative, positive students who see something they think is a problem and who do more than simply complain, or grumble about -- they actually invest their own time and energy to demonstrate what they believe is a better alternative (that's debatable of course, but frankly beside the point here).
But it gets even better: When one factors in the incredible power of Web 2.0 capability, not only are the students in line to learn something about intellectual property law, but Harvard (and all of us) are in line to learn something about the potential reach and value of information we have on our servers if we will open it to opportunity. Aside from the information that we must protect by limiting its access, there is a wealth of information on our servers that we could open to other uses. This is a great mutual learning opportunity, one I would jump on like a duck on June bug if I were there! This kind of thing doesn't come along every day.
