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The Rice Thresher
Phone:
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by OLIVIA ALLISON THRESHER EDITORIAL STAFF Several universities have taken action against Versity.com, a Web site that recruits and pays students for lecture notes for university classes, which are posted online. Yale University sent a cease-and-desist letter to Versity Feb. 25 asking them to pull all notes from Yale courses off the site. The notes were removed from the site that day, Yale Director of Public Affairs Lawrence Haas said. "There were about three dozen courses on the site. We heard complaints from several faculty members, and within a couple of weeks we were taking action," Haas said. Haas said posting these notes on the Web site without the permission of the university and faculty violates intellectual property laws. Also, "students are not permitted to engage in commercial ventures as part of their campus activities without permission from the administration," he said. "There is something special about Yale and other top universities, Rice included, and it is a question of fairness as to whether this education, which is coming at considerable cost, should be available to anyone with a computer," Haas said. The University of California at Berkeley also sent a cease-and-desist letter to Versity, Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Carol Christ said. "We don't allow unauthorized commercial enterprise on our campus," she said. "We will have a meeting with Versity.com in two weeks. ... They do not currently have permission to post our university's class notes and this will not change at all." The Berkeley Campus Code of Student Conduct prohibits students from selling their lecture notes. The code outlaws "selling or distributing course lecture notes" and "using [the notes] for any commercial purpose without the express permission of the instructor." Rice Associate General Counsel Carlos Garcia said he believes that, as these types of commercial note-taking practices expand, universities will primarily address the issue as a student conduct issue rather than a legal issue. "If you make it a student conduct issue, at that point it is not a legal issue and [banning students from selling their notes] is an effective way to deal with the problem," Garcia said. The Columbia University Committee on Instruction agreed on a policy prohibiting students from selling syllabi, exams or class notes, according to the March 9 issue of the Columbia Daily Spectator, the Columbia student newspaper. Janet Cardinell, Director of University Relations at Versity.com, said most universities have not complained about the site. "In more than 90 percent of the universities we work with, no changes have ever been requested," Cardinell said. One professor's campaign
"I was kind of offended because it is intruding on my work and on students' work," Deflem said. "This campaign is just me, I update it a couple times a week, look up articles, gather information and write about it." The site, "Free Education Now!" at www.sla.purdue.edu/people/soc/mdeflem/education.htm, has received over 4,500 hits. Deflam's site includes links to five information sites and two position papers. One of the information site links lists all of the 13 national sites that currently provide notes for students, including small regional sites. Deflem also writes letters and opinion pieces for various universities' student papers. Although Deflem said Purdue does not currently have any policies against these kinds of sites, no student has ever submitted notes to Versity for any of his classes. Deflem said he is so concerned about this issue because as a student, he would have been attracted by this type of site. "I'm so passionate [about this] because I nearly flunked out and eventually became a professor," Deflem said. "I oppose this because these sites don't encourage students to think, and students get sucked in without understanding the implications."
The three major sites that provide notes for students are Study24-7.com, Versity and StudentU.com. Of the major sites, only Versity provides notes for Rice classes. Study24-7.com was the first such site, founded in December 1997 and online in January 1999. The site currently has about 370 universities' notes. Brian Maser, co-founder and co-CEO of Study24-7.com, said that while Versity has recently been forced to remove Yale and Berkeley's notes off its page, Study24-7.com has only received a few complaints, including one from Deflem, in the entire time the site has been online. Maser said that the main difference between Study24-7.com and Versity is that Study24-7.com does not actively recruit students. Maser said the main feature of the Study24-7.com site is discussion, not the actual lecture notes, which better protects the company from copyright laws. Both students and professors can post lecture notes, and payment is based on how many participants use the discussion site. "We have a discussion group, called a Virtual Classroom Connection, in which students can discuss their interpretations, and therefore we're not doing anything wrong," Maser said. "We involve professors, and you can't say someone can't publish their own material." Versity's site had the URL www.notes4free.com when it was founded in 1997, but the name was later switched to Versity.com. The site has about 150 schools' courses on its Web site. Cardinell said the difference between Versity and other online note-taking companies is that it is "solely dedicated to being an online academic resource for college students." "The company's goal is to collaborate with educators and students to deliver online course materials that meet academic standards for faculty instruction and advance the learning process for students," Cardinell said. - back -
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