Fight Fiercely: Harvard Law School Offering Free Online Copyright Course w Certificate

Figure 50% of the people who read about this will want to know where they can sign up.

The other 50% will want to know what's the catch.

And a considerable percentage will probably want to know both.

Major universities are starting to offer free online course content. With a real syllabus, actual graded tests and a certificate if you pass. To apply, be accepted and receive a Harvard Law degree the conventional way costs @$75,000 per year (tuition, room, board and the occasional beer) for three years of study. The acceptance rate is not for the faint of heart or wallet.

However, there is no shortage of applicants. And this appears to be a pretty good deal for everyone involved. Like President Obama. Or Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (job tenure for life, dude!). And the university doesnt make out too badly.

So the question is why big global brands like Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne, et al would bother with giveaways. And the answer is a)global branding and b) because the world is changing and if you want to stay out front, then you had better reinforce your primo image or people will decide they dont need your fancy sounding degree.

It is both fitting and somewhat ironic that the first course Harvard Law is offering this way is on copyright. After all, ripping off other people's content is the first law of the internet and the questions about how what constitutes plagiarism versus dubbing or honoring others remains a murky subgenre filled with spite, envy, outrage and contempt.

Harvard is staking its claim as The Source. The variable cost of offering the teaching and related materials is arguably de minimus. The potential benefit of maintaining its primacy is as yet incalculable, but figuring that out is a far more engaging proposition than trying to determine the lost value of surrendering position to others, wherever they may be. JL

Justin Reich reports in Education Week:

Copyright is one of the most confounding issues facing educators. The laws on the books simply didn't foresee the networked world that we live in today. Moreover, content creators (mostly in the entertainment industry) have successfully shifted the public discourse of copyright towards the imperative to protect market share and away from the original constitutional purpose: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
In a world where educators and students are increasingly borrowing, remixing, and sharing resources, educators and education researchers need to have a deep understanding of copyright law permeated throughout our community. Folks like Renee Hobbs have worked on this issue for many years (her book Copyright Clarity is the best introduction to these issues for educators), and we need more pathways for more educators to deepen their understanding.

So it's very exiting that first edX course to come out of Harvard Law School will be on copyright, taught by Terry Fisher, Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and a small army of HLS teaching fellows. (I'll be helping a little bit with researching the implementation and outcomes of the course.) This free course represents a terrific opportunity for educators to dig deeper into these issues.

HLS1x Copyright (affectionately known as CopyrightX) will not be a MOOC. edX is an institution charged with using networked learning experiences to improve learning opportunities on campus and online, and not everything it does has to be full open enrollment. As the announcement of CopyrightX explains:

Enrollment for the course is limited because we believe that high-quality legal education depends, at least in part, upon supervised small-group discussions of difficult issues. Fidelity to that principle requires confining the course to the number of participants that can be supervised effectively by our 21 teaching fellows.
So while not everyone can play this year, the several hundred folks who do get into the course will have an opportunity to have a learning experience very similar to the one offered to students at HLS: lectures and carefully curated readings from a leading expert and discussions facilitated by senior HLS students. You'll even have to sit for a three hour exam, just like everyone else at HLS, to get your certificate.

The course materials will be available through an open license (similar to Open CourseWare), and there are emerging plans and dreams for how such an experience could eventually be scaled up. For now, this represents a pretty amazing chance to have an intimate experience with the faculty and students of the Harvard Law School, along with people from around the world interested in copyright. It will be open to the public broadly, and I hope educators are well-represented!