MIT Offering Free Copyright Course Online

IANAL writes "MIT is offering Introduction to Copyright Law as a free online course. Interested Slashdotters might find it a good way to challenge their firmly held misconceptions about copyright law as it concerns fair use, Napster, Grokster, the GPL, and P2P filesharing, among other things. There's also an article about the course over on Groklaw."

Leaders in the area

[2.7182]

They've been offering some great math courses too. Try Strang's linear algebra. He is a genius of a teacher. And you can't copyright a matrix.

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[The Empiricist]

But the Wachowski brothers were able to copyright The Matrix.

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[ctennenh]

I just completed the lecture series for this course to prep for a prelim, as I'm out of practice in Linear Algebra. Wonderfully done. If I pass I'm going to find a way to buy him a beer in MA from CA. If I ever get a real academic job then I'm donating to the program. It's got to be one of the best education paradigms I've ever seen. See the other courses with full video at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/OCWHelp/avocw.htm [mit.edu].

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[n0rr1s]

The introduction to biology with Lander and Weinberg is excellent too. Lander in particular is a superb lecturer.

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[geoffspear]

Did Microsoft acquire MIT when I wasn't looking?

/.'d already?

[RingDev]

Or did they take it down?

Sorry, the page you requested was not found.

-Rick

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[bassgoonist]

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-a nd-Computer-Science/6-912January--IAP--2006/Course Home/ [mit.edu]

bad url perhaps...

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[bassgoonist]

and it has already been fixed...lol

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[SNR monkey]

You clicked on the link? You must be new here.

Actual Link

[MLopat]

Here's the actual link:
Course 6.912 [mit.edu]

Late comers

[AntEater]

MIT is just getting around to this? The RIAA has been offering an "Introduction to Copyright Law" to select individuals for the past few years.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA course is not free.

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[Stellian]

I've [demonoid.com] already [mininova.org] passed [thepiratebay.org] this [torrentspy.com] subject [isohunt.com].

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[PetriBORG]

The difference between MIT offering it and the RIAA, are like going to Bible Studies course where Satan is the pastor.

LINK UPDATE

[ericlondaits]

The course is no longer available following the link in the article.

The new link is:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-a nd-Computer-Science/6-912January--IAP--2006/Course Home/index.htm [mit.edu]

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[A beautiful mind]

Technical Requirements

Special software is required to use some of the files in this course: .rm

Wow, it's so bad they want me to delete it? Oh wait wait! That dot must have some significance..

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[ericlondaits]

According to the course, rm is a standard unix utility whose abbreviated name stands for "Remove Malware".

In one of the lessons you're supposed to scan your p2p downloads directory for malware using rm.

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[JoshJ]

If you click the ".rm" link, it takes you to a page [mit.edu] that says:
.rm RealOne(TM) Player software is required to run the .rm files found on a course site.


Also, it seems that OCW is Free as in speech:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/terms-of-use.htm [mit.edu] You are free:

* to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
* to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
Noncommercial. You m

Ha

[GregNorc]

I don't have any misconceptions - I just believe what is moral is not always legal. (and vice versa in some cases)

free as in keg party?

[Speare]

I haven't RTFA yet, but my first question was, "is the course also free (libre)?" Can we post large non-trivial excerpts or wholesale clones elsewhere without any fear of MIT intellectual property bullying?

Re:free as in keg party?

[Zackbass]

Well if you had RTFA'd you notice the Creative Commons License 2.5 button on the bottom of the page. Many professors and assistants go to great lengths to get permission to post materials they use in courses (I get notices from time to time for permission to post diagrams from our FSAE team), find alternative Free sources, and strip out non-Free material. It usually works out very well since a lot of classes rely almost exclusively on the professor's own material.

Ok, I'll ask...

[cybermage]

The submitter's email address is shown as: [e-mail]

If that's accurate, should we really be taking copyright advice from the RIAA?

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[NthDegree256]

Especially from someone who isn't a lawyer?

MIT IAP

[jaxon6]

The IAP at MIT is a really neat concept. Anybody can take almost any class, and almost anybody can offer a class to teach. One that caught my eye when I worked there (never took one) was a class on 'players'. You know - those among us with the lady charm; how to be one, how to spot one, etc..

A friend of mine took a welding course during IAP, just because welding random stuff in January is definitely fun in my book.

Keith Winstein

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

The course was taught by Keith Winstein, the same guy who as senior editor of The Tech interviewed Jack Valenti [mit.edu] and showed him his DeCSS Perl script.

OpenCourseWare

[antonymous]

Just so that everyone is aware, MIT's OCW program [mit.edu] has been offering the lectures, course materials, etc. for almost all of their undergrad courses. They only provide the bibliographic info for copyrighted reading materials though (not links to the actual text) - you'll have to find that yourself.

Anyone going to take it, want to discuss, etc?

[loraksus]

If so, feel free to email me - my username @gmail.com

Great! Now we can answer those MP3 questions!

[KWTm]

There were questions left unanswered from a previous Slashdot article [slashdot.org] with questions about the legality of copying CD's under various circumstances. Maybe, with this course, we would be able to clear up some of the confusion. One particular set of questions was:

1. If I purchase a CD and it is subsequently stolen (along with my 5 disc changer *@$#!!) do I retain any rights to listen to that music?
. a. Are the .mp3 files of that CD on my computer legal or do they now belong to the thief too?
. b. Can I re-

why is this news? everyone does it

[sentientbrendan]

A number of good universities offer much of their computer science curriculum online, usually just in the form of uploading course notes, or letting the public have access to their class websites. MIT notably has the opencourseware.

Realistically all these online classes do is let you see what sort of reading you'd need to do for the actual classes. Aside from that they give you access to slides which may or may not be more enlightening than the book. I've yet to see a class that's uploaded videotaped lectures.

UW's (quite notable) computer science program has every year's class website online, and from what I've seen they generally have more material than MIT's online stuff...

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[Jezter!*+$nothername]

It's faintly ironic that in the UK, where for nearly 40 years we've had access to Open University programmes on TV (BBC2), the last ever edition was televised just over a week ago.
The courses were part of a true degree path and, as they were shown after normal terrestial television had finished for the night (usually between about 03.30 and 06.00), a godsend to insomniacs - some of whom, like me, learned about all sorts of fascinating subjects. Happy hours immersed in lectures on everything from Engineerin

Very Cool...

[PreacherTom]

This deserved primary front page attention. Much thanks for sharing this high quality and very informative offering!