Coursera Commits 'Cultural Vandalism' As Old Platform Shuts (i-programmer.info) 119
Reader mikejuk writes: Coursera has announced that 30 June is the date when it will shut down the servers hosting courses that were the first, free, offerings on its platform. The new model isn't just a revised interface, it is also a new monetization model, and presumably the decision to throw out all the original free content, by shutting the platform, is motivated by greedy commercialism. You could say that the golden age of the MOOC (a course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people) is over with the early enthusiastic pioneers doing it because they were passionate about their subject and teaching it being replaced by a bunch of "lets teach a course because it's good for my career and ego" with subjects being selected by what will sell.
Closing down the old platform is an unnecessary destruction of irreplaceable content. Coursera needs to rethink this policy that goes against everything it originally stood for. The courses affected are from the early days of the MOOC that are likely to be important in the history of their subject. The most relevant for us, but far from the only one, is Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Networks for Machine Learning which gave a "deep" insight into the way he thinks and how neural networks work.
Something has to be done to preserve this important record -- they don't have to turn off the servers just because they have a new platform.Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central has written about ways one can download Coursera's courses before they're gone.
Closing down the old platform is an unnecessary destruction of irreplaceable content. Coursera needs to rethink this policy that goes against everything it originally stood for. The courses affected are from the early days of the MOOC that are likely to be important in the history of their subject. The most relevant for us, but far from the only one, is Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Networks for Machine Learning which gave a "deep" insight into the way he thinks and how neural networks work.
Something has to be done to preserve this important record -- they don't have to turn off the servers just because they have a new platform.Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central has written about ways one can download Coursera's courses before they're gone.
Re:they want the student loan cash cow (Score:5, Interesting)
Business is way more complex than that. Human group behavior often appears as something simple, especially when it isn't. In business, this often produces an effect whereby everyone in a business has honest, benevolent intentions, and manages to build a shambling, evil empire; actual malicious intent and selfish greed are rare events, but common outcomes.
Coursera has, for a long time, been molding itself into a corporate service platform. In reorganization, aligning the business with its strategic goals would rightly include removing out-of-scope practices such as providing open, free online courses. The major failure in that model is in evaluating those practices in the context of their *impact* on the business, rather than on the business strategy: not thinking about how the world interacts with you or how your actions will be seen by the world leads to taking actions that upset the population.
There's a lot of middle-class radicalization and social justice warrior stuff going on in this summary. There's even a direct attack on colleges and professors ("Let's teach a course because it's good for my ego"--teachers are all selfish assholes, right?), as if the entire practice of teaching is a pox on society, while the practice of learning is something cherished and valuable.
Re:they want the student loan cash cow (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot of middle-class radicalization and social justice warrior stuff going on in this summary.
Indeed. Coursera is a for-profit company, so no one should be surprised that they engage in "greedy commercialism". That is what enables them to grow as a business and pay people salaries. They are not a charity, and should not be expected to behave as one. MOOCs are far from dead, and much of this same content can be accessed on Youtube, along with hundreds of other courses.
Disclaimer: I have competed several MOOCs, mostly free courses from MIT. I have never taken a course from Coursera.
Another "cloud" lesson (Score:3)
You cannot trust an entity to keep your data online for (what appears to be) free interminably. In the US, the web is not a public resource (tax supported, then free downstream for all.) It is a commercial resource, where presence requires upstream expenditure.
That means someone, or someone(s), somewhere, has to support the model with actual money. When the reasons to support that model go away -- and there are many ways that can happen -- so will the data.
You want your data to remain available? Keep a copy
Can we do something about it? (Score:1)
Instead of discussing the philosophy behind this matter can we do something about it?
While not all the Coursera courses are worth saving, we won't know who needs what in the future.
I have nieces (in third world countries) who have benefited a lot from free Coursera courses to complement the poor quality teachers they got in their high schools.
Can we start a coordinated downloading campaign on as many Coursera courses as possible, first into our own private cloud servers, which later we can compiled together
Re:they want the student loan cash cow (Score:4, Interesting)
You make it sound as if this is somehow a feature of big, complex organizations. But good intentions frequently yield disastrous outcomes even at the individual level. Ultimately, it isn't people's intentions that matter, it's actual outcomes.
As for Coursera, their "good intentions" may simply be running into financial reality: the MOOC space is crowded, there is a lot of good free content, and big name universities are not necessarily at an advantage here. Good intentions don't come to fruition if the people with the good intentions can't figure out how to pay for them.
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It's not good intentions per se. The mode of thinking as a group and, really, in any context differs from the mode of thinking in any other context. Look at the UBI crowd (or any politicians), the Computer Science Primary Education crowd (or any educators), or any other group of people with a common ideal between them. The way an unaffiliated individual evaluates an ideal is *different* from the way the group evaluates it. Goals narrow and secondary impacts become invisible. Bad logic comes into play.
Cultral Vandalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cultral Vandalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I have always said, if people believe things should be free they can produce what they want and give it away. They shouldn't expect everyone else to do the same.
Re:Cultral Vandalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're so enthusiastic about free courses, they can pay for the servers and bandwidth costs.
Re:Cultral Vandalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that was the point.
People created content for Coursera with the intention of giving it away for free. Coursera appropriated that content and is denying access to it so that it can sell it's other paid content.
So, it's not a question of "people wanting something for free" but "people being denied access to something they were given".
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They induced people to donate it by representing that they would make it available.
You want to create a course for people to see. Somebody offers to host it if you create it. You put in your effort. How do you feel when they don't hold up their end? Especially if you don't happen to notice until the only copy is no longer available to you?
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You create something, and you want to offer it for free.. go ahead. Just because one channel for hosting it has been closed doesn't mean there's not available channels.
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Coursera appropriated that content and is denying access to it
Hogwash. Coursera didn't "appropriate" anything. They just made it available, for free. Then they stopped. Most of this content was, and is, available through other channels. TFA mentions Geoffrey Hinton's Neural Net course. I have taken that course, and I didn't even know that Coursera offered it: I watched it on Youtube (great course, btw).
Is there even a single course that will no longer be available elsewhere? If the original creator failed to keep a backup, that is not Coursera's fault.
Re:Cultral Vandalism? (Score:5, Informative)
Coursera appropriated that content and is denying access to it
Hogwash. Coursera didn't "appropriate" anything. They just made it available, for free. Then they stopped.
Agreed. No company or internet service who hosted something for FREE has an obligation to keep hosting said content for FREE forever. They're not "denying access" to content; they're just not going to host it anymore.
If the original creator failed to keep a backup, that is not Coursera's fault.
It surprises me that people haven't figured this out about the internet yet. I realized it 20 years ago.
Two rules that constitute the grand oxymoron of internet content durability:
(1) Once you put something on the internet, it may be on the internet FOREVER. (Corollary: Be careful what you post; it could follow you for the rest of your life.)
(2) Anything that's on the internet could disappear FOREVER at any time. (Corollary: If you actually want to preserve something, you need to download it and be responsible for preserving it yourself.)
Unfortunately, many people haven't caught on to this. A century from now historians will be looking back in puzzlement at the "Dark Decades" between the end of paper records and the beginning of more permanent digital archives, where huge amounts of electronic content was created but then lost forever. Meanwhile, I'm sure most of the meaningless Tweets and Facebook posts of drunken party photos will still be around for historians to assess....
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Attempting to use semantics for your argument is a desperate sign you've lost the argument.
"Things" is a generic term. A thought is a thing yet it has no substance. A feeling is a thing yet you cannot hold it in your hand. The same for a wish, curse or prayer. All insubstantial yet all "things'.
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Nonsense. I can, for example, sell you the location and disposition of enemy troops. Information. Not material, yet incredibly valuable.
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It depends on the definition of semantics/I. that you're using.
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When's the last time anyone really "produced" anything? Machines do all the work, the rest of us are entertaining each other.
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Exactly this. Back when Khan Academy was new, I inquired about paid positions. They countered with me generating content and giving it to them for free. Sorry, but I didn't go through the time and expense of getting a master's degree to work for nothing.
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I did. I didn't plan to.
I really thought underwater sociology was going to be the hot new thing.
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Just because you want something to be free doesn't mean it has to be free.
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Worse, some people are pissed off that someone else isn't continuing keep servers running at their expense to keep giving stuff away.
It's not "vandalism" to stop offering a service. It might be akin to vandalism to damage someone ELSE offering a service, but that's not happening here. Someone's just feeling entitled and whining.
How dare someone offering something for free... (Score:1)
...not agree to keep paying for offering it free forever?
Summary is a bit over the top (Score:5, Insightful)
It's their platform. If they want to change it up, start charging or whatever, that's their right. People sure do whine a lot in 2016.
Re:Summary is a bit over the top (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding. Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas = Cultural Vandalism. ISIS in Palmyra = Cultural Vandalism. Company charging for services rendered so they do not go out of business = I dunno, a better business model than their older one? Its not cultural vandalism though.
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No kidding. Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas = Cultural Vandalism. ISIS in Palmyra = Cultural Vandalism. Company charging for services rendered so they do not go out of business = I dunno, a better business model than their older one? Its not cultural vandalism though.
Why not? The Buddhas were the Taliabans to destroy, right? Same with Palmyra. ISIS took it fair and square, so why shouldn't they be allowed to blow it up to their hearts content? You're not against private ownership and the rights to do as you see fit with what you own, right? Right?
I mean, it's a lot cheaper to provide a few servers, than it is to make sure that Palmyra doesn't fall over on its own accord. Upkeep ain't cheap you know, just keeping the looter and vandals away is a serious burden, so why s
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Yes, but a lot of universities converted their *entire* set of OpenCourse Ware (OCW) to MOOCs.
For me as a user, OCW had many advantages over MOOCs, and I am quite saddened that over the last 4 years, MOOCs have killed off the tremendous progress that had been made on the OCW front over the prevous decade.
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Yes, but a lot of universities converted their *entire* set of OpenCourse Ware (OCW) to MOOCs.
Which was a stupid thing for them to do - and I bet a lot of people were telling them that at the time.
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Exactly--this is no different than an individual trusting their content (photos, music, contacts, files, etc) to a free cloud service and then act surprised when the cloud vendor decides to stop providing the service for free. It's really not that different when companies do the same thing for paid cloud services and experience the pain of lock-in and trying to get their data out.
It's unfortunate that this content will no longer be available, but Coursera has no moral or ethical obligation that I know of to
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While TFS talks mainly about replacing "free" with "paid for", there is also change of the web platform. For the worse. Terribly.
The old platform that is being phased out was lightweight, fast, compact, worked everywhere. The new platform is bloated (the main page fails to load on my tablet with 1GB of RAM), slow and has so many flaws, that the discussion threads in the Men
Nothing is destroyed. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't claim that someone is committing cultural vandalism and in the same breath provide instructions on how to preserve something. Just because someone created something or provided a host platform in the first place doesn't obligate them to preserve that platform at that price for eternity.
It's free. Download it. If you want to preserve it then do so, but don't have a whinge when someone else doesn't want to.
Yet another reason to support the Internet Archive (Score:1)
The Way-Back-Machine helps preserve deleted content.
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Who's going to pay for the massive bandwidth bills for hosting thousands of videos? Coursera should at least upload videos to youtube playlists or similar before shutting access to them.
In related news, Ms. Petterline retired this year (Score:2)
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She needs to be cloned so that she can continue teaching and passing along her valuable skillset FOREVER!
Vacant lot analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Obviously you neglected to play the "cultural vandalism" card back then.
Re:Vacant lot analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you are correct.
Also it seems a lot of other websites focusing on online courses used the coursera APIs, https://building.coursera.org/... [coursera.org] , including https://www.class-central.com/ [class-central.com] .
So it is more than just playing in the vacant lot, I think some sites were making some cash from their online courses via the API and now their business model is getting flushed.
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I think some sites were making some cash from their online courses via the API and now their business model is getting flushed.
Good business model, relying on something free that someone else is providing without any contract for continuation or preservation ... not. Sorry their own fault. If you build a business on something you need to put the effort into protecting your primary resources.
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The situation you describe is why we have squatter's rights -- because we do not believe that absentee landlords can swoop in later and displace people who have actually been using the land, regardless of what some bit of paperwork at the registrar says. Property rights are not the end-all, be-all of a society, or at least not one I want to live in.
Even without squatters rights, explaining how something is "legal" isn't the same as explaining why something is ethical or a collectively desirable outcome. Som
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You do realize the proper alternative for the landlord would have been to just have someone come around every year or two and bulldoze the kids' racetrack a lot sooner, don't you?
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One of the pillars of freedom at the founding of the U.S. was property rights
Yeah, and you used to be able to just walk west and claim as much land as your family could build hold hands or build fence 'round.
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Unless they have more guns than you. And blankets infected with smallpox.
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Squatter's rights apply to situations where the squatter has been expending resources (money, labor) to maintain a property in the owner's stead..
Nope. "A method of gaining legal title to real property by the actual, open, hostile, and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by state law. "
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Squatters+rights
You don't get a claim on a property just because you've been secretly living on it or using it.
Right: it has to be open and continuous, not "secret". More here http://mentalfloss.com/article... [mentalfloss.com]
You must have actually expended resources to maintain it - stuff the owner should have been doing but was neglecting to do. The squatter's rights are compensation for the resources you've expended doing the landlord's job.
Nope.
Hellish demons walk the Earth (Score:4, Funny)
The new model isn't just a revised interface, it is also a new monetization model, and presumably the decision to throw out all the original free content, by shutting the platform, is motivated by greedy commercialism.
You fucking stooge! Slashdot should be ashamed of itself for taking part in this false flag operation. Clearly the decision to monetize content is motivated by Satanic vampirism! Death to these unholy monsters and anyone who supports them!
it can be preserved (Score:2)
Free content (Score:5, Informative)
Being in the middle of taking a Coursera course right now I can state that the content is still free if you audit the course. Auditing a course gives you access to the lectures, coursework, and the forums. You cannot submit coursework for a grade, nor receive a final grade and certificate (if you pass) unless you have paid for the course.
Having taken several of the original free courses I was concerned at first but once I read through all the fine print I think it's a fine way to monetize the system. Free for those that want information and a charge for those that want proof of having taken the course.
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I've tried a couple of audit only courses, and to be honest I don't learn well without having to apply some knowledge and process the material.
I couldn't care less about certification or grading, but the courses I've tried on the new platform don't provide me with any feedback on whether I understand the material or not.
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Free auditing was allowed in the older version. Right now, I'm seeing many courses that were once free but are now only available after payment.
no, the sky isn't falling (Score:2)
You can download the free Coursera courses and host them yourself. You can probably upload them to YouTube as well if the copyright permits it.
The idea that Coursera has been an "enthusiastic pioneer" also strikes me as silly. MIT OpenCourseWare started in 2001 and Khan Academy in 2006, and even those were far from the first efforts. There have been tons of lectures on iTunes as well. Coursera has been a relatively late effort by Stanford to get into the game using its Silicon Valley connections. Good for t
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"Vandalism is "action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property""
Kickstart a content license (Score:1)
More generally, I must call out what appears as a contradiction: (1) this content is extremely valuable, (2) I'm not willing to pay anything for it (it should be zero-dollars-free).
Op Ed? (Score:1)
Stuff costs money (Score:3)
Why Blame Coursera and Not the Content Creators?! (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone who works at an educational institution that creates MOOCs on Coursera, I can tell you that any courses that disappear after June 30th will have done so because the CONTENT CREATOR (the universities, professors, etc.) decided to not migrate them to the new platform. The migration is not a terribly difficult chore, so you can blame the content creators for deciding to not migrate... and maybe they did so because THEY, not Coursera, were tired of giving content away for free.
And anybody who thinks
New platform (Score:2)
Outside of the fact that the some old courses may go away, am I the only one who thinks that their new platform, which prettier, is actually less usable than the original one?
Do I really need to say it? (Score:2)
The FOSS community has had this problem solved for decades:
Fork it!
Who's being greedy here? (Hint: not Coursera) (Score:2)
Back to reading books (Score:2)
Watching video's takes too much time anyways.
Let's IPFS this content! (Score:1)
Torrent? (Score:2)
Is this a legitimate use of Torrent technology? Hosting a simple site with torrent links is cheap, but illegal if the material's copyrights disallow it. But it's open material?
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When a company is offering a new type of product/service, especially an internet one, they often give it away for free, but only initially. They must have plotted a bait-n-switch, from free to paid, from the very start. Lure millions with free content and switch to a paid model once you have enough suckers (customers) roped in. That's a highly disingenuous and deceptive business practice, but not uncommon in the business world.
If they're not being deceptive, they should upload the content to some video site