So far, all of the publicity surrounding the UCLA metaphorical fisticuffs has been pretty predicatable (you know...the story about the pencilneck ideologue offering students $50-$100 to record lectures and take notes from the evil faculty indoctrinators [cue orchestral violin swell in minor key]). The most interesting development I have read was UCLA's response to the pureile and ineffective jihad against Academic Freedom. At the very end of a predictable CNN writeup about the fight (written pretty much as a "right-vs-left" horserace) is an interesting sentence.
*snip*
UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton said the university planned to send Jones a letter warning him that faculty hold copyrights to all their course materials and that his campaign encouraged students to violate school policy.
*end snip*
I'm not sure how most universities handle faculty lectures, but I haven't seen this copyright angle used (at least publicly, John Logie?). It might be interesting to see intellectual property law hitch its wagon to academic freedom. After all, Universities are finding the commons model more difficult to articulate to state politicians looking to slash taxes and win elections. The "it's good for the state" model curries less and less favor, so it might make sense to see what comes out of the mouth of teachers as a type of owned property (and therefore off-limits to those who would treat utterances as public property and therefore actionable in the public sphere). It probably opens a can of worms, but I'm not sure this idea is all that bad.
Chomsky is right--you need to read the end a news story to find out what is REALLY important.
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