Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 20:48:01 -0500
From: dtussey@mindspring.com
Your proposal might offer a good opportunity for cyberprofs to collaborate
on the framework for a basic cyberlaw course as a test project. It would be
in electronic format, hence updatable as the law unfolds, could take
advantage of the latest techologies, and would serve as a shared resource
for all of us who struggle to keep up with rapid changes in the field.
--
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 21:30:18 -0500
From: litman@mindspring.com
In fact, a fair amount of that has been going on on an informal basis for
a couple of years. One advantage of the cyberprof list is that we all have
or know where to find the URLs for each others' Cyberlaw courses, and most
of us have been shamelessly borrowing from one another since the list got
off the ground. The courses and seminars seem, at least to me, to be
better for the cross fertilization.
Jessica Litman
Professor of Law, Wayne State University
--
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 14:37:57 -0500
From: cabell@mama-tech.com
I'd love to help put it together. Anyone else interested?
I started collating syllabus materials from the Jurist site last summer for a
possible LL.M. program. The (dated) outline is at http://www.mama-tech.com/syl.html.
I'm sure you'll recognize your own stuff. I can move it over to
cyber.law.harvard.edu as soon as people are comfortable with the content.
I can go back to the Cyberprof syllabus pages at Jurist and start adding links to
materials that are there. If you have a better resource, send me the URL. If anyone
wants to edit/own a particular section, please let me know and I'll hang your name on
it. If you've processed any link or electronic permissions that ought to be
considered, send me the contact and I'll start tracking those down also. Please send
recommendations for revisions of the outline.
Any reason we shouldn't include links to online vendors for those wishing to purchase
text versions of reference materials?
--
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 15:08:03 -0500
From: gquinn@uco-iplaw.com
I would be very interested in assisting in this book endeavor. I will be
teaching Internet Law this summer at Whittier and I am currently in the
process of putting together my materials.
Eugene R. Quinn, Jr.
Adjunct Professor -- Franklin Pierce Law Center & Whittier Law School
--
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 15:49:33 -0600
From: mwinick@airmail.net
I would also be interested in participating in the project. Wes Cochran and
I will be teaching Intellectual Property and the Internet this summer and
also are in the process of compiling online materials for the course.
Mitchel L. Winick
Adjunct Professor of Law
Texas Tech University School of Law
--
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 14:45:56 -0800
From: lgibbons@sprintmail.com
I support it, shall we elect an edit(s) in chief, then divide the book into major
sections, then chapters, etc and seek volunteers to write away? If there is an
interest, I'd be willing to take the first stab at going through all the on-line
syllabii and try to prepare a rough working outline of what's out there as a point
to begin the discussion.
Llew Gibbons
Assistant Professor
College of Law
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606
--
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 18:29:11 -0400
Subject: from free software to free courseware
From: hal@martigny.ai.mit.edu
Can we develop the educational course
material analogue of free software, and try to make that fly with a
few courses? Is there a way to get the same leverage from community
participation in on-line course material that free software gets?
How would you handle the IP issues? Is there a GPL for course
material?
Going beyond that, is there some kind of hook that would make "free
courseware" fly ecomonically, similar to the way that free software
provides service opportunities? If so, we might be able to get MIT
Press and other presses interested.
Hal Ableson
--
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 01:42:57 -0400
From: philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu
A big incentive for free software authors is that they get good feedback
from users on what works and what doesn't work. Maybe the same thing
would be true for courseware. People using it at other places could give
structured feedback on how long it took their students to complete
problem sets. They could also perhaps update psets when they became
stale. E.g., in the law case they would add more recent cites. In the
computer science world, they might take something that had been written
for an obsolete computer language like C and redo the examples in Java.
The author of popular courseware will always be in demand to teach
the course personally. So the incentive is sort of the same as for free
software (where the original author could make the big bucks doing
consulting/adaptation). This works for subjects like computer science,
where industrial companies will pay $50,000 for a week of instruction
to a group of employees yet an individual book in CS doesn't give the
author much royalty. It probably doesn't work for junior high school
biology where the instructors are paid nothing and yet a successful
textbook author could be rich.
--