To: Members of the Berkeley Faculty From: Carol T. Christ, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Subject: Unauthorized On-line Note Taking Services Date: January 2000 Dear Colleagues: In recent months, a number of commercial companies (e.g., StudentU.com, Versity.com, etc.) have published on-line the lecture notes of courses taught at many universities throughout the country. In particular, the lecture notes of a small number of Berkeley courses were published by these note taking services, in violation of the campus's policy on Course Notes and Recordings (see http://www.chance.berkeley.edu/evcp/Lect.Note.html). As we begin a new semester, we have every indication that these companies will be even more active in recruiting student note takers for their unauthorized services. Some, in fact, are contacting instructors directly in an attempt to obtain permission to publish notes of their lectures on the Web. Under our rules, Black Lightning Lecture Notes is exclusively authorized by the Chancellor to provide course notes subscription services for Berkeley courses; no outside commercial entity is permitted to provide these services. If your courses are targeted by an unauthorized note taking service, I encourage you to refer your students to the on-line policy above, which is also printed in Berkeley's 1999-2001 General Catalog (pp. 445-446). Students should be admonished that, except as provided by this policy, those who sell class notes are subject to University discipline under the Code of Student Conduct. We have formally requested these companies to cease and desist publishing the lecture notes of Berkeley courses. We are also working with the University of California Office of General Counsel to decide what further measures we will take to ensure that they comply with our policy. In the meantime, my office will continue to monitor the situation.