> It's difficult enough to get through the copyright issues to produce printed lab material for a class; publishing online adds an additional layer: Material has to be licensed for unlimited distribution, in a way that is compliant with each country's copyright laws.
You seem to assume that teaching always requires licensing copyrighted materials from others, like textbooks I guess. In my personal experience, that's not really necessary.
I've experienced higher education in two countries, Germany and China. In Germany, there were no mandatory textbooks. Professors always used materials they created themselves, sometimes just before they were needed, sometimes adapted from previous times the course was taught, sometimes in cooperation with other professors. If you wanted to read more about the topic from a different angle, you were free to read a textbook, but it was completely optional and I never did.
In China, the professors had all been to the US for their PhDs and they used textbooks popular there, always stressing which prestigious universities the book authors were affiliated with. That doesn't mean anyone bought the books. You'd usually get credentials for an FTP server that had all required material.
In neither case any copyrighted works were licensed. In Western countries you'd have to follow the German model, but in countries with less effective copyright enforcement, the Chinese model also works.
You seem to assume that teaching always requires licensing copyrighted materials from others, like textbooks I guess. In my personal experience, that's not really necessary.
I've experienced higher education in two countries, Germany and China. In Germany, there were no mandatory textbooks. Professors always used materials they created themselves, sometimes just before they were needed, sometimes adapted from previous times the course was taught, sometimes in cooperation with other professors. If you wanted to read more about the topic from a different angle, you were free to read a textbook, but it was completely optional and I never did.
In China, the professors had all been to the US for their PhDs and they used textbooks popular there, always stressing which prestigious universities the book authors were affiliated with. That doesn't mean anyone bought the books. You'd usually get credentials for an FTP server that had all required material.
In neither case any copyrighted works were licensed. In Western countries you'd have to follow the German model, but in countries with less effective copyright enforcement, the Chinese model also works.