Copyright holders lost another battle this week in their legal war with universities over the boundaries of educational “fair use” in the digital age. A district court judge on Wednesday issued a decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, a year-long lawsuit over a shared digital repository based at the University of Michigan.

The decision comes on the heels of a similarly disappointing decision for copyright holders in a landmark infringement case involving electronic reserves at libraries; and a second defeat in another copyright case involving online video streaming at the University of California at Los Angeles.

“A Legal Sweep” Steve Kolowich

We tend to think of property as fixed but it isn’t; it’s evolving at a steady pace under contemporary technological and scientific pressures. Commercial interests want to keep private property as narrowly defined as possible to ensure profitability; educators and open science and technology advocates want to use governmental policy and law to make knowledge and information more accessible and so loosen capital’s grip.

If these three legal rulings are any indication, the corporate attempt to define intellectual property narrowly is failing, in very stark contrast to what’s happened in science.”The patent,” as the Center for Responsible Genetics reminds us, “has become the primary mechanism through which the private sector has advanced its claims to ownership over genes, proteins, and entire organisms.” Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train after all.

What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it’s all about?

(With Thanks to my friend Anne, and her story about Piccolo.)

As nonprofit colleges have moved into online education, most have tapped technology vendors to help them do it. The study said these “online enablers,” such as Embanet/Compass, Bisk, Deltak, Academic Partnerships and Pearson, help colleges do much of the heavy lifting that for-profits do themselves, like course development, IT support and even generating “leads” among prospective students. That support industry will only expand, the study predicted.

“Brand New Online Heavies,” Paul Fain

I have to say that after my experiences with the for-profits over the last few years the ongoing rise of the nonprofit schools seems like very good news. Non-profits, at least in theory, should have fewer administrative costs (no $5 million executives, for example) and so more able to put an online education within reach of working people and other non-traditional students. It won’t be cheap– not until some other part of the higher education economic model breaks– but it could be affordable.

The trends outlined in this article made my heart sink.  At some point, I think the ratio of full to part-time faculty, and maybe faculty salary, is going to play an important role in what the article calls (in an unfortunate bit of corporate jargon) “brand appeal.” That won’t happen soon. Meanwhile, the non-profits seem to be trying to get ahead of the game by repeating the worst mistakes of the for-profits, especially by out-sourcing so many services instead of developing them in-house.  We need more in-sourcing.

It would be a slower process, but a truly innovative school could integrate faculty development and pedagogy into their plans for growth. Most universities have programs in the computer sciences. Why not use these programs, building from available open source software and technology, to develop your systems, from IT to course management to support?  In fact, everything that you need in a university could be grown from the bottom up, grounded in education not grafted on to it.