Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Rumors, Features, Education, iTunes, Podcasting
FairPlay: coming to a classroom near you?
We haven't talked about iTunes U here in a while, but it's been on my mind lately, as I'm heading up my U's roll-out. It's a long, tortuous process--because of our internal bureaucracy, not Apple's--but, despite the fact I haven't been talking to our official reps (the extent of those conversations has been "we're still working out the details"), I have had the opportunity to sit down with some people from Apple and talk about the project. One of the topics of discussion was the direction of iTunes U 2.0 development. Apparently Apple has significantly increased the personnel dedicated to the project and has a number of enhancements planned. The person I was talking to couldn't tell me what, exactly, but he said that they were looking at community feature requests. Naturally, my next question was "well, what features have people requested?" The answers surprised me. Among the most requested features is on-site storage. This was a little bit of a shock, since one of the selling points for me was letting Apple handle the potentially multi-terabyte storage requirements and not worring about managing--not to mention funding--a SAN of that size myself. I can understand, though, that people want to keep control of their own information, and have on-site backups, etc. Closely following that was e-commerce capability. Again, a bit of a surprise. I wouldn't expect a free service to allow me to charge for access. on the other hand, I suspect that some professors would like to include materials that require royalty payment, so some vehicle for processing that will be required eventually, I suppose.The #1 request, though, completely floored me: DRM. In fact, it is so in-demand that it has apparently been the deal-breaker for the majority of universities that had been approached about iTunes U and refused. That revelation literally left me speechless. It's one thing to realize that not everyone is as rabidly anti-DRM as I am, but DRM in the classroom flies in the face of not only my general IP position, but everything I like to believe about academic freedom. I've heard of cases, of course, where universities have claimed faculty-developed course materials as work-for-hire and property of the university, but that's never been the case at any university I've been associated with and I've generally understood that those were fringe cases. The idea that a significant number of universities would refuse to participate in iTunes U because of a lack of DRM is just...staggering.
Of course, that doesn't mean that FairPlay or any other DRM will find its way into iTunes U. But if Apple is dedicated to the project and the one of the biggest stumbling blocks seems to be DRM, well, you do the math.
And the worst part? If FairPlay does show up it won't be Apple's fault, or even the RIAA's. The universities will have done it to themselves.
Update: just wanted to clarify that second sentence a little. It's come to my attention that the original wording led a couple of people to jump to incorrect conclusions. You guys remember the bit about "assume," right?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
John Iburg said 4:15PM on 9-23-2006
You can't have people taking clases for free......
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cozart said 5:08PM on 9-23-2006
wow, that's incredible that universities want DRM for iTunes U. heading up my own institution's iTunes U project, i REALLY hope that Apple doesn't build DRM into lectures or materials downloaded from iTunes U. i agree that that would completely fly in the face of academic freedom.
as far as e-commerce, i don't see why the universities that want it cannot build their own system into place where a student pays for the materials or access to iTunes U through the registrar or something, and then is given access to the materials that they have paid for. that's what our institution is looking at, now that Apple has released private authenticated access for iTunes U.
universities don't have to make all their content available for free on iTunes U, if that's what they're worried about....
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cozart said 5:11PM on 9-23-2006
just to add on what i just said, not only would it fly in the face of academic freedom, but it would also make it seem as if Apple owned the rights to the lectures, which i'm not so sure would be the best move, legally, for Apple to make.
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Rafe said 5:26PM on 9-23-2006
"Academic Freedom" does not mean free as in beer, it means free as in speech (sort of).
Adding DRM simply puts boundaries on the classes: "this course is intended for its paying participants, and not intended for youTube." If everything gets youTubed, why would I have ever attended upper-level physics class at U-Vermont when I could get world class lectures from MIT while sitting on my couch?
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edward said 5:36PM on 9-23-2006
do you want to take a class? pay the money for.
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Jay Savage said 5:53PM on 9-23-2006
hmmm...
The line between free as in speeh and free as in beer is particularly thin when it comes to questions of academic freedom. If DRM were simply a way to enforce copyright or keep people from--god forbid--learning something for free, that would be one thing, but as we know, it's much more. It actively interferes with people's ability to make derrivative works and excerpt, and in many cases meaningfully cite works, all hallmarks of rigorous acaemic work.
Furthermore, taking the hisorical long view, open access to lecture materials is essential to our intellectual tradition. Many of historiy's greatest thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle right down to de Saussure and Wittgenstein are known to us only or largely through their lecture materials. We wouldn't know de Saussure at all if some of his students hadn't collected and psthumously published his lecture notes. And that paradigm holds even more in obscure and technical fields. Where would we be, for instnace, if the only access we had to Einstein's was his few published works?
Universities taking a short, shelfish, purely monetary view of intellectual proerty is bad, bad, bad business.
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arnvid said 6:06PM on 9-23-2006
Why shouldn't these be free for all to learn. You still have to pay and enroll to turn your knowledge into certificates through examinations. The courses itself are quite worthless in a business point of view. You can take them, learn everything, but it's fairly useless in a real world environment when you don't have the proof of your knowledge.
If they do make it free, or keep it free, people might take a course for fun, get genuinely interested and might turn up paying to enroll.
Share the knowledge, it's key for a better world.
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TheBizofKnowledge said 6:08PM on 9-23-2006
I don't think there's anything wrong with academic institutions wanting to protect their lectures and other materials. Why should they be compelled to provide these things for free? As someone above said, they would just be placing boundaries on the content, not limiting access. You pay, you get the content. You don't pay, you're locked out.
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cozart said 6:29PM on 9-23-2006
but with iTunes U they can limit access without having to DRM the files. you don't have to put everything up for free on iTunes U
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icruise said 6:30PM on 9-23-2006
It's not just a question of people "learning for free." There are lots of things to consider, like who owns the rights to lectures, and don't forget that having these materials freely available to all would make it a lot easier for unscrupulous teachers to steal the work of others for their own purposes. Ultimately, if you want the benefit of the materials, you need to pay for it.
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Mark said 7:18PM on 9-23-2006
All of my professors put copyright notices in the corner of their powerpoints. I'm not surprised that they would want to make sure people weren't copying and distributing their work without acknowledgement, and if I spent as much time as they did putting together lecture notes I probably would as well.
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Ben said 8:26PM on 9-23-2006
I am surprised that automating content delivery to itunes u via RSS feeds isn't higher on the list.
Though it is dismaying that DRM is so high on the list, it does make some sense. Many professors don't want to have their lectures available beyond students enrolled in their class. DRM helps with this in a way that security by obscurity or hiding your links behind authentication cannot.
I get the sense that the DRM thing here is less about commerce and more about Apple helping Universities to mollify faculty members who may not be so comfortable giving away their intellectual property, or appearing on the world stage... Apple's end game here may be enterprise type software and hardware systems for feeding the beast (Itunes U).
In any case my personal feeling is that information wants to be free, DRM will likely be hacked and it will get out anyhow... so let it be free.
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Zack Williams said 11:04PM on 9-23-2006
One of the sick things about universities is that when you pay for a class, you're really paying for the credit hours, not the content.
Ever heard of "auditing" a class? Basically, you pay a fifth to a tenth of the cost of the class, get to go and sit in for everything (lectures, assignments, etc.) but you don't actually get credit for it.
By requiring DRM, these universities aren't saying that everyone can't take their classes for free, they're saying you can't even audit their classes for free.
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mathmonkey said 11:19PM on 9-23-2006
Some folks are still in the dark as to what academic freedom is;
It's got nothing to do with freedom to learn. It's about freedom to research, and freedom to teach, material and points of view that may be unpopular with the institution. If I teach at a highly conservative institution (which I do) and I want to teach, e.g., non-conservative voting methods (which I do) then I'm depending on my academic freedom to protect my job. My administration respects academic freedom, so I'm good. I'd also love to have video (not audio--math doesn't work like that) of my courses freely available, but I can understand some prof who don't. That's their right, since it's their intellectual property. Very different.
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hairatic said 11:35PM on 9-23-2006
You need money to access knowledge. Knowledge is power. Dare they risk empowering the poor?
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Ross Carter said 11:47PM on 9-23-2006
The good news here is that we're getting at least one more iTunes university. The Stanford and Berkeley lectures have been outstanding. Some of these lectures contain life-changing knowledge. I'm ever so grateful to the unis and to Apple for making iTunesU work.
As a consumer, it's hard to complain about DRM until we know the price, but one thing seems sure: it will be a DRM that plays on my iPod! And for all we know, it's not the professors behind DRM, but rather the performers whose campus concerts will be distributed. I can't blame them for wanting some compensation.
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Christopher Williams said 1:02AM on 9-24-2006
As an academic myself, I'm not sure how to see DRM on lecture materials. On one hand, having free access to knowledge and the abilities to use otehr people's materials in order to further the field is the key to academic progress. DRM would actively hamper that from a researchers point of view.
On the other hand, as an academic I would like to control what materials of mine are viewed by the larger public sphere of academia. I would like to choose what information gets published, and what I tell in the privacy of my own classes. There are also many things that I've written that I would rather not publish for the world to see.
Academic freedom isn't just the freedom for people to get whatever academic information they want access to, but also the freedom for a professor to choose what information is available for public access via publication and private access for the benefit of his own students.
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Emilian said 7:57AM on 9-24-2006
hairatic, you said it in the best way.
Knowledge is power ! And power means succes in all!
Emilian | http://www.auto-power-girl.com/
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dave said 9:50AM on 9-24-2006
I am rather confounded by the academics on this comment strand that somehow see DRM as a good thing.
1. You would not need DRM to protect your content. Indeed there are better ways, slap a creative commons license onto your work. Done. Not only is it protected and you will get credit, but more importantly you insure that others who can build on your work will maintain access.
2. Most academics already give access to the materials they research simply by publishing in journals. These materials are widely available to anyone who has library access, why would you not want to increase access beyond the library, especially given that the library is quickly becoming outdated.
3. The history of academic scholarship is completely antithetical to intellectual property, but even more so DRM, which could prevent even fair use.
4. Under what circumstances could you possibly want to keep what is in the classroom in the classroom? I can't think of an instance?
4. The idea that academic freedom is based on right to pursue research and teaching separate from the University, but does not extend to the realm of academic freedom is more than spurious. Academic freedom necessitates a free flow of ideas that is only hampered by intellectual property, in fact in the end the University's claim to material that you produce runs counter to your ability to pursue research and work. Why? Because they can limit access to material they do not see as fit. Academic progress is only made on the condition that information flows free of constraint.
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Mark said 10:29AM on 9-24-2006
I wasn't going to post a comment to this thread, really. But Dave pushed me over the edge. I'm not sure what's more annoying -- the holier-than-thou attitude of someone who I have to believe doesn't work in academia lecturing those of us who do about "academic freedom," as if he was aware of the meaning, or the blinkered outlook of people who hate DRM so completely that they see no legitimate uses for it.
I am rather confounded by the academics on this comment strand that somehow see DRM as a good thing.
I don't see that. Even those of use who agree that it's necessary don't always see it as good.
1. You would not need DRM to protect your content. Indeed there are better ways, slap a creative commons license onto your work. Done. Not only is it protected and you will get credit, but more importantly you insure that others who can build on your work will maintain access.
Right. Because everyone respects CC licensing, don't they?
2. Most academics already give access to the materials they research simply by publishing in journals. These materials are widely available to anyone who has library access, why would you not want to increase access beyond the library, especially given that the library is quickly becoming outdated.
Excuse me while I get my laughter under control. Are you seriously asserting that freeform classroom discussion is academically comparable to researched, peer-reviewed published materials? Well then, why have academic journals? Why not just have everyone exchange videotapes of their classes! They are not the same thing. You're making a false equation to validate your position, plain and simple.
3. The history of academic scholarship is completely antithetical to intellectual property, but even more so DRM, which could prevent even fair use.
Which shows what you know. Some of use have to employ some form of DRM to meet fair use restrictions. For example, I can get a fair use allowance to use commercial or copyrighted materials in class, but only with the understanding that said material will be used only in the class I'm teaching. But what if I record and podcast that class sans-DRM? Blammo...I'm in violating of fair use, because I'm now publishing that content for anyone. You don't have to like it, but you do have to understand that these are the restrictions under which we operate.
4. Under what circumstances could you possibly want to keep what is in the classroom in the classroom? I can't think of an instance?
I want what is in the classroom to stay there, or stay within the members of that class, because I want to ensure the free flow of ideas and discussion, without anyone (including me) having to stop and think about what might happen of someone outside the class hears what they have to say. Part of the appeal of classroom discussion is its natural insulation from the outside world. People have a hard enough time speaking up when they might be wrong in a class of 20, let alone with the implied review of hundreds of listeners.
[5]. The idea that academic freedom is based on right to pursue research and teaching separate from the University, but does not extend to the realm of academic freedom is more than spurious. Academic freedom necessitates a free flow of ideas that is only hampered by intellectual property, in fact in the end the University's claim to material that you produce runs counter to your ability to pursue research and work. Why? Because they can limit access to material they do not see as fit. Academic progress is only made on the condition that information flows free of constraint.
I have the right to refine and perfect my ideas to my own satisfaction before you get hold of them. This is one reason why we publish papers. Tell me -- if you wanted to buy a piece of ironmongery, would you visit the gallery and purchase a finished piece, or would you insist on invading the blacksmith's forge and taking a half-finished work out of his hands?
The classroom is the crucible that refines thinking. Classroom discussions are not publish constructions -- they are a work in progress. That you demand access to them tells me that you really, truly don't have a clue. The sense of entitlement among the anti-DRM crowd is palpable, and more than a little offensive. You want to know what I teach in class? Prove you're worthy of it -- get yourself admitted to the University and sit through my class.
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