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This is Page 1 of 4 pages of quotes from news articles on notes companies gathered from various sources. Some of the links may be dated.
Go to Pages 2, 3 & 4!

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From The Boston Globe, October 25, 2003

BU tries to fail business selling lecture notes. By Marcella Bombardieri.

Boston University professor James Johnson walked into a freshman science class one recent day to find every seat covered by a flier: A sample page of notes from the previous week's lecture on one side, backed with an advertisement for a new company called Beantown Notes, which buys class notes from BU students and then sells them back to other BU students... But now BU wants to shut the company down for stealing its intellectual property, saying that what Beantown Notes is doing is illegal. This week, BU general counsel Robert B. Smith sent the company a "cease and desist" letter threatening legal action... "I figured they had the professor's permission," said the student, who quit when she learned they didn't. 

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From the Daily O'Collegian, April 17, 2001

The Right of Intellect (Editorial)

When someone creates something, it should belong to the creator. That is the basic precept of intellectual property. Where, however, does that notion stop? Take Versity.com, the former note-sharing Web site. The site's main draw was class notes from classes at universities. Students could log on and find out what they missed while they slept in (or took one-legged orphans to visit a senior citizens home).

Professors uniformly denounced the site, complaining that those notes were their intellectual property... Versity.com is dead, as is competitor Classnotes.com. Time to go to class.

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From MIT News, April 4, 2001

MIT to make nearly all course materials available free on the World Wide Web: Unprecedented step challenges 'privatization of knowledge'

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology...announced today it plans to make the materials for nearly all its courses freely available on the Internet over the next ten years... MIT President Charles M. Vest said of the program: "MIT OpenCourseWare is a bold move that will change the way the Web is used in higher education. With the content posted for all to use, it will provide an extraordinary resource, free of charge, which others can adapt to their own needs. We see it as source material that will support education worldwide, including innovations in the process of teaching and learning itself." 

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From Lingua Franca, March 2001

May the Course Be With You: Universities claim the right to sell classes on the internet. The faculty strikes back. by John Palattella

... The rise of the Internet and the lure of lucrative on-line distance-education programs have suddenly and unexpectedly made courses a hot commodity... Though some recent studies have argued that university-based on-line learning is unlikely to offer sustainable growth or profit, the issue of course ownership is now out of the bag. And as the latest power struggle in the university system, it's not going away... Charles Nash, a professor emeritus of chemistry at UC-Davis, recounts a horror story about another UC-Davis professor who visited the Web site of a commercial note-taking firm and found notes for one of her courses. "She went through the roof," Nash says, because she felt that the notes, which had been posted without her permission, carelessly "misrepresented her point of view and opinions. In her view, they made her out to be anti-Semitic, which is of course not true." ...Signed by Governor Gray Davis this past September, Assembly Bill 1773 was conceived as a reaction to several Internet-based note-taking services that were selling their wares to University of California undergraduates. The bill prohibits the recording of all or part of a professor's live lecture without the professor's permission... [John Palattella's essays and reviews have appeared in Lingua Franca, Dissent, Newsday, and other publications]. 

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From the Purdue Exponent, February 12, 2001

Students should go to class, take notes [Editorial]

Get ready, class, the topic of today's lecture is plagiarism. Don't take credit for work that isn't your own. For that matter don't get paid for work that isn't your own. Students who sell their notes taken in class to online or local notes companies are committing plagiarism. Sure, you aren’t passing the work off as your own, as the class the notes were taken from is properly listed, but you are being paid for the recopying of someone else's work... Professors are hired for, among other things, assembling the lectures you take notes on. It's their job... 

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From the Purdue Exponent, February 12, 2001

Professor opposes sale of notes, by Dave Stephens

When a student takes notes during class, there is an unwritten rule that the student will use those notes only for academic purposes... Mathieu Deflem, an assistant professor of sociology, started a campaign to stop Internet notes sites from selling professors' notes. Deflem said that a professor's lecture notes were a matter of intellectual property rights and that the distribution of notes should be at the discretion of the professor. "Professors are all about sharing their work," said Deflem, "but I want to share my work in the way I want it to be shared."... "Many universities and colleges now have policies that prohibit the sale of notes based on intellectual property rights. In the state of California, it is even a law," said Deflem... 

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From USA Today, February 7, 2001

Dot-bomb's fallout holds lessons as layoffs mount; When Versity.com imploded, its employees were blindsided --and jobless, by Stephanie Armour

"Daniel Brecher, a senior project manager at Versity.com, was so sure about his financial future that he splurged on a silver 1958 Porsche Speedster convertible, which he adorned with a vanity plate reading VERSITY... Some Versity.com workers who had relocated to San Diego were laid off just days after moving. Investors who poured millions of dollars into the company got nothing, and some former employees still are out of work or paying off credit card debt they ran up before they were fired... Former Versity.com employees describe what happened next as a firing frenzy. By mid-May, they say more than 90 workers had been laid off with more job cuts to come. They say some of the fired employees had just arrived, with families in tow and belongings in storage... By August, about 5 months after the market began its swoon, virtually all of Versity.com employees had left or been laid off."

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From The BG News, via University Wire, January 17, 2001

Internet Companies Lacking (Staff Editorial)

New companies had sprung up, such as BigWords.com, to capitalize on the fervor created by online bookstores Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble... And boy did they have some advertising campaigns... Online student bookstores aren't the only Web companies trying to make a profit off college campuses. Sites such as Verstiy.com and College Campus offer lecture notes from a range of University classes across the nation.

But now that the dot.com industry is slowing down by slamming on the brakes, these Internet companies are finding themselves just as susceptible, if not more so... It's only as these Web sites are closing down that we realize the lack of impact they've had upon campus life... Online lecture notes didn't fare as well, either. Professors resorted to class attendance policies and copyrighting their notes... These Internet companies marketed toward campuses are disappearing, one at a time. And nobody seems to mind.

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From the Minnesota Daily, December 1, 2000

Policy monitors posting of U. Minnesota lecture notes online, by Sam Kean

A policy condemning the publication of lecture notes online has been amended to protect students... Under the new rule, students cannot distribute lecture notes for commercial purposes without the express written consent of the instructor. Possible punishments range from warnings to expulsion... The policy targets companies who purchase lecture notes from students and post them on the Internet for profit; it also forbids students from posting lecture notes on private sites that receive ad revenue... 

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From the Cavalier Daily, December 1, 2000

Online notes promote laziness, intellectual theft, by Laura Sahramaa
 

[I]n the end, Versity.com and sites like it aren't good for anyone... Relying on online notes and skipping lectures... means students aren't getting what they paid for -- or, more accurately, what their parents paid for, with their tuition... Besides the fact that online note-taking sites enable uber-slacking, there's also the fact that supporting sites likes these is wrong, because they are based on a form of stealing. When students get paid for summarizing their professors' lectures, they are profiting off work that is not their own. Ethically,... selling notes to these companies and supporting them through visiting their sites is clearly wrong. A university is only as good as its professors...

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From the Indiana Daily, November 13, 2000

Indiana University students wait to receive checks from note takers' Web site,
by Ben Lincoln

Indiana University senior Laura Hammer was counting on the $ 800 promised to her by StudentU.com, an academic Web site that offers class notes to about 150 colleges nationwide and money for those who provide the site with notes... But months after the company's guaranteed payment date, and after several e-mails from Hammer, the company's CEO Oran Wolf wrote back, suggesting he was not as optimistic about the reimbursements as he had previously been... "We have recently required a lot of unanticipated debt," Wolf said. "It has left us with basically no money to pay Laura or other note takers..." 

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From The Post, October 25, 2000

Student Advantage Inc. and Versity.com Not Under the Same Roof, by Jennifer Furia

Versity.com was bought by CollegeClub.com, the number one college-orientated Web site, according to a report from Media Metrix and PC Data Online... CollegeClub Inc. filed for bankruptcy, and Boston-based Student Advantage Inc. soon acquired it... But there were some assets of CollegeClub.com that Student Advantage Inc. did not wish to acquire, one of them being Versity.com. One reason that Student Advantage may have had a lack of interest in Versity.com is the controversies surrounding whether offering a professor's lecture notes online is considered copyright infringement... The future of these free online lecture notes is unclear because no company has purchased Versity.com... 

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From the Northern Star, October 25, 2000....

Most know better than to rely on online notes

In response to your recent editorial on commercial lecture note companies (Oct. 19), several clarifications are in order. The bill that passed in the state of California does not ban the posting of notes online, but only the distribution and sale of lecture notes without the permission from the instructor. Teachers can (and many teachers, myself included, already do) post their own materials online. That is perfectly acceptable because teachers ought to be in control of their own teaching, relying only on the feedback from their students... Students and teachers should and can exercise their rights from one another without interference. With a misguided support for note companies, it is ironic that some actually would be willing to relinquish their rights to education in favor of a dependency on the fickle market of e-commerce. (signed) Mathieu Deflem. 

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From the Wallstreet Journal, October 19, 2000....

Business bulletin, by Pamela Ridge Sebastian

A Footnote on college note-taking services tells a familiar dot-com tale. Academia mounted a strong campaign to stop the unauthporized sales of lecture notes during the past year, but competition may have meted an even stronger blow to the fledgling businesses that buy notes from students and post them online, says Mathieu Deflem, a professor at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., who opposes the note-selling on ethical grounds. Since last fall, the dot-coms have dwindled from a dozen or so to just a few... California last month passed a law barring the sale of lecture notes from its colleges without the teacher's consent.

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From the PR Newswire, October 19, 2000

Court Approves Student Advantage, Inc. Purchase of CollegeClub.com...

A Federal Bankruptcy Court today approved the sale of substantially all of the assets of CollegeClub.com, Inc., including its popular Web site, CollegeClub.com, to Student Advantage, Inc., the commerce connection for millions of college students and the businesses and universities that serve them. The acquisition, first announced August 22, is expected to be completed by October 30... CollegeClub.com will retain its name and brand identity and operate as a division of Student Advantage, Inc... The purchase price consists of approximately $7 million in cash and 1.4 million shares of Student Advantage common stock and the assumption of certain liabilities... Student Advantage did not purchase certain other College Club properties, such as Versity.com and Izio... 

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From the Daily Pennsylvanian, October 10, 2000

University of Pennsylvania faculty tackle copyright issues, by Stacy Humes-Schulz

Currently, the Faculty Senate is looking at Penn's proposed policy on copyrights, drafted last spring --which applies only to faculty, not students or staff... With Penn's proposal, the copyright would now, with key exceptions, rest with the faculty member... "If you give a lecture, the lecture that you're giving verbally is non-copyrightable," Provost Robert Barchi explained. "[However, t]he copyright exists immediately when you reduce something to concrete form," like when a professor types out a lecture before delivery... 

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From The Daily Free Press, October 2, 2000

Web lecture notes: student's savior, professor's bane, by Scott Brooks

Students, take note. The rapidly growing practice of obtaining unauthorized lecture notes from the Internet may soon be obsolete, if recent legislation banning online lecture notes in California goes national. The new law, signed by Gov. Gray Davis, combats bad attendance and preserves the integrity of professors' lectures... College of Communication Dean Brent Baker described the distribution of lecture notes as "morally wrong." "I spend a lot of time preparing for my lectures, doing my homework," Baker said.-

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From The GW Hatchet, October 2, 2000

Company eliminates online note services, by Katie Hallenbeck

Online notes publisher Versity.com no longer emphasizes its note-taking services after a merger with Collegeclub.com. Students searching for Versity.com online are forwarded to Collegeclub.com, a Web site that offers academic tutorials in a variety of subject areas... Versity.com came under intense national scrutiny after some professors said their lecture material from class is "intellectual property" that cannot be published or reprinted without their permission. Professors also said students benefit from class attendance and should not rely on the online notes... Although Collegeclub.com continues to offer some notes online, the site's policies for purchasing and posting notes have changed.-

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From the Daily Bruin, September 29, 2000

Calif. law will prohibit sale of lecture notes on Web, by Hemesh Patel

Starting next year, students at University of California-Los Angeles and any other public college campus in California will not be able to access lecture notes from commercial companies. AB 1773, a bill Gov. Gray Davis signed last week, prohibits the unauthorized recording and publication of a professor's lecture at any UC, CSU or community college campus... This bill is the first of its kind and states including Florida, New York and North Carolina have inquired about the new legislation, according to Dennis Hall, legislative director to assemblywoman Gloria Romero, D-Monterey Park, the bill's author... Officials at Versity.com, an online note-taking company which recently merged with CollegeClub.com, said they are not sure whether or not they will continue to post lecture notes on the Internet. "We are currently reevaluating that piece of business," said Lisa Wayne, spokeswoman for CollegeClub.com. "No lecture notes are posted yet."x

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The Daily Californian, September 28, 2000

Editorial: Lecture Notes Will Protect Students From Illegitimate Services

Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill last week prohibiting unauthorized notetakers from selling or distributing lecture notes to students at all colleges and universities in California, including UC schools... Black Lightning is the only note-taking service that currently holds a licensing agreement with the university. UC Berkeley lawyers have successfully fought other fly-by-night companies in court. Most of these other companies have a history of providing students with unedited notes that are factually incorrect. Some shut-down half way into the semester, leaving students short-changed and desperate... Students should stick with notes taken with the university's approval. Not only are they the only fair notes, but they are also the most correct ones.x

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The Daily Californian, September 26, 2000

Legislation Forbids Lecture Note Sales, by Eric Hyun

Students who would rather purchase lecture notes from online companies than attend class may soon find themselves scurrying to class at 8 a.m., due to a bill Gov. Gray Davis signed over the weekend. The bill, authored by Assembly member Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, prohibits the commercial sale or distribution of lecture notes at any UC, California State University or California community college campus, as well as at private universities in the state.Companies that sell lecture notes without consent of the university's administration and faculty are now subject to a civil penalty.

Unauthorized lecture note companies are a growing problem despite previous actions taken by UC Berkeley officials, said Michael Smith, the campus' assistant vice chancellor of legal affairs. The main problem with online lecture note providers is it is difficult to ensure the accuracy of their notes... Intellectual property and copyright concerns were also key issues that influenced the bill... 

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From the Chronicle (Duke), September 7, 2000....

Shut Down: Universities fight the online notes phenomenon, by Ambika Kumar

Since dozens of online class note-publishing companies invaded the Internet a little over a year ago, the academic world-and even one state government-have taken measures to fight back... Duke, too, issued a policy on intellectual property rights late last year following versity.com's activity on campus... "Teachers should be in command of their own classrooms. The teacher doesn't only have the right but has the responsibility to teach his or her class," said Mathieu Deflem, an assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University...

Some online companies have been feeling the heat. Versity.com, bought out by CollegeClub.com-an online campus community-in April, may no longer have financial backing... But studentadvantage.com will not buy the assets to versity.com. "We decided not to put versity.com in the agreement because their business model didn't really compliment ours," said Heidi van Vliet, associate manager of public relations for studentadvantage.com. "We do need to protect our university relationships because we work very closely with many of them. Versity.com historically has not worked in conjunction with universities." The deal to buy CollegeClub.com's assets will not be completed for about eight weeks. 

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From the Daily Iowan, August 30, 2000

Online Notes Irk University of Iowa Profs, by Jessi Todden

Versity.com has recently come under scrutiny at Iowa State University for posting lecture notes on its Web site --a practice which some consider theft of intellectual property. ISU recently outlawed students from selling notes to companies such as Versity.com without first getting permission from the faculty member whose class the notes would cover... The University of Iowa has no policy concerning the companies, although some professors have been grappling with the issue for some time. "I've been against any note-taking service coming into my class for about 10 years," said Jay Holstein, a UI professor of religion. "It's counterproductive for students to buy notes rather than attend class." 

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From the Iowa State Daily, August 25, 2000

Versity.com outlawed from Iowa State U. campus, by Robin Larson

Students who sell their class notes this year to Internet sites could face disciplinary action. To protect intellectual property rights, Iowa State Univeristy officials are taking a stand against Web sites that hire students to post class notes. A new policy prohibiting the unauthorized sale of others' intellectual works took effect this fall... Michael Kenealy, professor of animal science, said the sharing of notes becomes a problem "when someone is taking my notes and making a profit without a contract with me..."

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From Upside Today, August 22, 2000

School's out for CollegeClub.com, by Adam Feuerstein

Student Advantage Inc. (STAD) has agreed to purchase the assets of troubled community website CollegeClub.com for about $18.25 million in cash and stock. On Monday, CollegeClub, beset by financial shortfalls and employee layoffs, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection... The purchase price consists of $7 million in cash and 1.5 million shares, or 4.5 percent, of Student Advantage stock, trading at $7.50 per share this morning... The deal is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Diego, where CollegeClub is headquartered. In June, CollegeClub withdrew an $85 million initial public offering and put itself up for sale. At the same time, the company’s founder and CEO resigned, and an undisclosed number of employees were fired to cut costs... The problem, of course, was that CollegeClub could not generate enough revenue from its relatively large member base. The company lost $25.8 million on $2.9 million in revenue during 1999, all the while rapidly burning through its remaining operating cash. 

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From PR Newswire, August 22, 2000

Student Advantage, Inc. Agrees to Purchase Substantially All of CollegeClub.com's Assets

In deciding to acquire CollegeClub.com, Student Advantage Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Raymond V. Sozzi, Jr. said, "We expect to bolster considerably the business potential of CollegeClub.com..." Student Advantage has proprietary commerce relationships with nearly 50 national retailers... "CollegeClub.com has created an online suite of community services that resonates with the college student marketplace," Sozzi said... [Some] assets of CollegeClub.com, Inc., such as Versity.com and Izio, are not being acquired by Student Advantage... 

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From The Boston Globe, August 22, 2000

Student Advantage Said To Be Buying Out Troubled Rival , by Steven Syre and Charles Stein, Globe Staff

Though CollegeClub managed to attract a huge student following, it was driven to serious financial trouble in the process. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankrupty protection yesterday, sources said. Acquisition of CollegeClub assets will be subject to the approval of a Bankruptcy Court judge... Though its assets are selling at bargain-basement prices, CollegeClub had been contemplating an $85 million initial public stock offering just two months ago. The company pulled its IPO registration in June, when chief executive and cofounder Michael Pousti resigned. CollegeClub's chief operating officer, James DeBello, quit soon thereafter... Other surviving public competitors have been struggling in the stock market... Shares of Washington-based Varsity Group Inc., which went public at $10 each in February, traded below $1 yesterday. Student Advantage has hardly been immune from stock market problems. It went public at $8 per share in June 1999, and the stock peaked at $28 in December. But those shares have tumbled to as low as $3.0625 this year and finished yesterday at $7.0625.

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From the Business Wire, July 5, 2000

iPrint Signs Multi-Year Contract for CourseNotes

iPrint.com,... print shop and print infrastructure provider located at http://www.iPrint.com, today announced that it has signed a multi-year agreement with CourseNotes, Inc. (http://www.CourseNotes.com)... Instead of going to their school bookstore... [c]ourse materials are printed, assembled, and delivered in a matter of days. "CourseNotes is shaking up the university market...," said Royal P. Farros, chairman and CEO of iPrint. "Our technological backbone, ability to scale, and strong printing network creates opportunity and advantage for us across the majority of business markets."

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From the Columbia Daily Spectator, June 28, 2000

Columbia University trustees pass revised intellectual property policy, by Sunnie Kim

In a move that solidified Columbia University's stance for the protection of its intellectual property, the Trustees, earlier this month during their annual meeting, unanimously voted in favor of a policy that establishes rules for the ownership of intellectual property created by faculty, staff, and students at Columbia... Last spring,... [w]ithout the consent of the University or the professors, Versity.com assumed the rights to these notes, despite the fact that the information was developed and organized by Columbia faculty... 

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The Node @ CanLearn, May-June, 2000...

Legal Battles Brewing Over Online Class Notes.

Many professors and administrators think that the posted notes violate professors' copyright, threaten their reputations, and jeopardize their control over their classrooms... Mathieu Deflem... has created this website collecting information about online note-taking sites. It also houses two of Dr. Deflem's position papers on the topic: one arguing the educational implications of note-taking sites, and another outlining the legalities of copyright in lectures. 

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The Charles Street Standard, May 2000.

Studying 24/7: Virtual classrooms and property rights collide in cyberspace.

...Viewing the notes is completely free to any student or non-student from any campus on-line. But it is precisely this globalization of ideas that Dr. Gabrielle Spiegel, Professor and Chair of the Hopkins Department of History, opposes: "I do think there are serious issues of intellectual property that have been raised by the Internet, including the proliferation of notes." This past semester, Li Chu Cheng was a NoteTaker for Study 24-7.com. I asked Li Chu why he had wanted to be a NoteTaker: "Besides the money, there isn’t enough cooperation between students..."  It is obviously true that on-line notes promote absenteeism in class. Students will take advantage of the system and will skip class assuming that they can make up the lost time on the Internet. 

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Badger Herald, May 13, 2000....

Online academic note services commercializing education

Yale University has recently joined the ranks of Harvard, Princeton, UCLA and several other universities that have successfully implemented policies against commercial academic notes companies... Many colleges and universities across the country are now discussing appropriate policies to secure a respectful environment in which students and teachers can fulfill their educational goals... [signed] Mathieu Deflem. 

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From the Baltimore Sun, May 17, 2000....

Colleges take note of paid note-takers: Services that provide class summaries online stir controversy over intellectual property rights, by Ann LoLordo

The University of Maryland-College Park notified some firms of its ethical concerns about making money from a professor's work. At Harvard and Yale, officials reminded students that selling lecture notes violates university regulations. The concerns range from infringement of intellectual property rights to the integrity of the educational process. Online notes encourage students to skip classes, critics say... Sharing notes is one thing, professors say. Selling them is another... At least 13 companies are offering this service on the Internet to students, according to Mathieu Deflem, a sociology professor at Purdue University who has written on the issue... 

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From Forbes Magazine, May 15, 2000....

URLazy.com, by Adrienne Sanders

In the past year 13 Web sites, including Versity.com, StudentU.com and Study24-7.com, have posted lecture notes taken by students in thousands of courses at hundreds of schools. That has brought rebukes from Harvard, UCLA, Princeton and other universities... "These companies interfere in the student-teacher relationship and have no accountability," says Mathieu Deflem, a Purdue University sociology professor... The sites have raised millions of dollars in backing, aiming to turn a profit on advertising revenue. Versity, founded in 1997 by four 20-year-old college dropouts, landed $12 million from the likes of Venrock and Sigma Partners. Collegeclub.com just acquired it for an undisclosed sum. StudentU raised $6 million from Houston incubator NetStrategy... 

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From The Oracle (University of South Florida), April 28, 2000

Students should not sell notes (editorial)

Students have been cashing in on their professors’ lectures by selling their notes to online agencies such as Versity.com and StudentU.com. This is unethical and students should have more respect for their professors than to sell a person’s intellectual property and research without consent... Whether legal or not, students should not make money off the intellectual property of another... 

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From The Oracle, April 25, 2000

Online notes frustrate faculty, by Joe Humphrey

Professor Festus Ohaegbulam was surprised to learn Monday that one of his students is making a profit off of his lectures... "Why would the university allow that?" he asked while reviewing the students recollection of Friday's class. "This is my lecture."... At least one USF professor kept Versity.com out of her classroom. Mass Communications associate professor Barbara K. Petersen has a policy of not allowing students to sell her class notes. It's spelled out on the syllabus of her communications law class... The University of California at Berkeley told Versity.com and others they weren't allowed to operate there... "They don't care about the university," Petersen said. "It's a business". 

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From The San Diego Union-Tribune, April 20, 2000

Big Dot-Com on Campus, by Leonard Novarro

CollegeClub.com... filed to raise $85.3 million in an initial public offering... The company also recently acquired CollegeStudent.com, CollegeBeat.com and Campus24.com... Yesterday, the company also said it will also purchase Versity.com... It also secured an additional $55 million in financing, $40 million in series C convertible preferred stock through the Seligman Technology Group of New York and $15 million from a group led by Convergence Partners of Menlo Park. The company, which lost $25.8 million last year on $2.9 million in revenue, said it would use proceeds of the initial public offering to fund its growth. 

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From The Defender (St. Michael's College), April 20, 2000

Online note services pay students to go to class, by Monique Mcginn

The problem, some instructors feel, is that student notes are the intellectual property of the professor. There is no requirement, when posting course notes, to include the professor's name or even to get permission... Professor Slaybaugh, Chair of the History Department, believes students should not be allowed to sell their course notes to these sites.  "This wouldn't be a plagiarism issue but rather a matter of what we might call 'intellectual theft.' I wouldn't like it. It should be treated as a form of stealing,"says Slaybaugh... Junior Jason Harrington says he would post his class notes online.  "I would do it for the money..."  For biology professor Douglas Facey what's important is not students sharing notes but profiting from them. "The issue for me is who controls it (quality control), and whether someone else profits from it. I don't mind sharing these things for free, as long as it's my decision and I can regulate the quality of what is shared," says Facey. 

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From the Business Wire, April 19, 2000

CollegeClub.com Acquires Versity.com; Deal Brings Online Class Notes to CollegeClub.com Members

CollegeClub.com... today announced the acquisition of Versity.com, a leader in providing online academic resources for students... "This acquisition expands CollegeClub.com's position within the academic space," said Michael Pousti, chairman and CEO of CollegeClub.com... With the acquisition of Versity.com, CollegeClub.com extends its lead in the rapidly consolidating college market. Other recent CollegeClub acquisitions include: CollegeStudent.com,... eStudentLoan.com,... Campus24.com,... and CollegeBeat.com... 

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From Footnotes, ASA Newsletter, April 2000....

University4Sale-dot-com: The Educational Cost of Free Notes on the Internet,
by Mathieu Deflem

Website companies posting lecture notes raise concerns in terms of their anticipated effects and the problems they create in principle... At the heart of this problem, I believe, is a free-marketization of our educational system... Fortunately, over the past months several universities have reacted against the menace of notes companies and have developed and implemented appropriate policies... 

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