"I can perfectly understand the distaste of members of the faculty who discover that some crude and inadequate summary of their lectures is being offered, but our students are certainly wise enough to understand the very limited value of such things."

Berman, however, says the online notes need not "replace" lectures by professors. "People use notes in innumerable ways," Berman says. He suggests students could use Verity's notes to clarify concepts that they didn't understand in the course of the lecture or as an extra study aid before exams.

Copyright Chaos

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Publishing lecture notes online also brings Versity into the murky region of copyright infringement.

"My view is that they're stealing my intellectual property, but I didn't know my course was on it. I'd be happy to join a class-action suit," says Mark Kishlansky, Baird Professor of History. Kishlansky teaches Historical Study B-27, "The English Revolution," a large Core course.

Professors have precedent in claiming ownership of their lecture material. Richard McNally notes that when lectures at conferences are taped and distributed, copyright scuffles ensue.

But Versity.com is on firm legal ground, Berman says. Berman says appellate court decisions from the 1970s had always ruled in favor of note-buying companies. "Two plus two has equaled four for a long time, and professors can't have copyright on that." Frank J. Connors, a university attorney in the Harvard Office of General Counsel, disagrees.

"In terms on a legal level, it seems to me that if students take notes in class of what a professor says--verbatim or almost verbatim--and then publish that, that arguably constitutes a copyright infringement," Connors says. "It's well-established as a matter of law that professors own the copyright on their own lectures."