[Infowarrior] - YouTube: Free Downloads of College Lectures

[Richard Forno]

New From YouTube: Free Downloads of College Lectures

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3615/new-from-youtube-free-downloads-of-college-lectures

YouTube began testing a new feature that lets users download videos  
posted to the site from partner institutions — including colleges —  
rather than just watching the videos in a streaming format. That means  
people can grab lectures from Duke and Stanford Universities and  
several institutions in the University of California system to watch  
any time, with or without an Internet connection.

YouTube partners have the option of charging users for such downloads,  
but all the universities have offered to make their lecture videos  
free instead, using Creative Commons licenses that restrict usage to  
non-commercial purposes and prohibit derivative work.

Some universities already allow users to download lectures through  
campus Web sites or through Apple’s iTunesU using Creative Commons  
licenses. But Obadiah Greenberg, a strategic-partner manager at  
YouTube, said in an interview this week that the site’s new feature  
would allow an even larger audience to take advantage of such content.

Scott Stocker, director of Web communications for Stanford, said the  
university had made audio and video content available for download  
through Apple’s iTunesU since 2007. But Mr. Stocker said that iTunesU  
and YouTube attract different audiences: Users of iTunesU generally  
search out content to download to their devices, while YouTube users  
stumble upon content through videos embedded on blogs or links shared  
among friends.

Mr. Stocker said Stanford had no plans to charge money for its video  
downloads, since the university sees giving away lectures as part of  
its educational mission.

Other YouTube partners participating in the test include a weekly Web  
show hosted by Dan Brown of Lincoln, Neb., and Khan Academy, a non- 
profit organization that offers video lectures on subjects like  
physics and finance for 99 cents per download. —David Shieh