CSU Seeks to Ban Commercial Sales by Students of Class Notes

The LA Times reports that a student at Cal State who sells notes taken in classes as a business was warned by CSU to cease doing so on the grounds that the materials are the property of the instructors under California law.

Excerpt: Entrepreneur gets a stern lecture from Cal State

October 15, 2010, Carla Rivera, Los Angeles Times

Recent graduate Ryan Stevens sought to put his business degree from Cal State Sacramento to use by creating a website where students can buy and sell lecture notes, old homework, study guides and other class materials.

The site, NoteUtopia.com, which was launched in August, is intended to function as an online community, a place to network, discuss courses and rate professors. But Stevens, 22, has run afoul of a little-known provision of California's education code that prohibits students from selling or distributing class notes for commercial purposes.

Now, the young entrepreneur is battling the California State University system and claims that students' rights have fallen through the cracks. The case also touches on who controls the intellectual property of notes taken during class... After Cal State officials learned of the website, they sent Stevens a cease and desist letter on Sept. 21, asking him to stop facilitating the sale of class notes, to inform students about the law and to stop promoting the site to Cal State students. The university then e-mailed students at its 23 campuses, warning them that selling class notes "including on the NoteUtopia website, is subject to discipline, up through and including expulsion from the university."

...The prohibition on publishing class notes for commercial purposes stems from a 2000 law co-sponsored by the California Faculty Assn. after many websites began posting notes without faculty permission... But legal experts said that notwithstanding California's education code, the question of whether the state can prohibit the sale of lecture notes is far from settled.

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-class-notes-20101015,0,7797568.story

In any event, some students take better notes than others: