California Watch reports:
California State University and University of California campuses are taking new steps to limit what students can do with their class notes: At least one CSU Chico student recently was reported to judicial affairs for selling notes to a website, while a newly updated UC Berkeley policy restricts how students share their notes with others. ...
The CSU and UC systems have made efforts to shut down private note-selling websites for some time. As early as 1999, the note-selling website Versity.com sparked officials' furor at UC Berkeley. In fall 2010, CSU sent a cease-and-desist order to NoteUtopia, which allows students to upload course notes, study guides and outlines to a website, then set a price and earn cash for their work.
More recently, both UC and CSU have sent cease-and-desist letters toNotehall, a note-selling website owned by Santa Clara-based Chegg. ...
The letter from CSU to Chegg cited CSU's own student policies and the California Education Code, both of which prohibit selling, distributing or publishing class notes for a commercial purpose.
Personally, I tend to agree with those who think this is making a mountain out of a molehill:
"Given the amount of money students are paying to go to school right now, to ... confront them with these policies and say, 'You don't even have the right to use your own notes any way you want,' seems to be the wrong message to be sending," said Jason M. Schultz, assistant clinical professor of law at UC Berkeley and director of the university's Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic.
Precisely. Besides which, I've figured out a much more fun solution to the problem: I'm going to buy some of these note sets and outlines being sold for my classes. I'll go through them and find all the mistakes. And then I'll write exam questions testing on those very same mistakes. If we all did that, the market would dry up pretty quick.
