Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Cory is teaching a USC undergrad course called "Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?" .

If you are in the USC vicinity, you should enroll and take the damn thing - really should be a great experience. The class will be a look "behind the scenes" at all the players shaping DRM standards.

Fortunately for those of us who cannot attend, this class will still benefit us as well because the main "assignment" is "work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries."

That is simply uber-cool. Not only will these students knowledge about these subjects certainly help our society cope with these issues in a more consumer and innovation friendly manner in the future, but the output of the class will also be helpful to others right now in the form of publicly disseminated, meticulously researched and well informed encyclopedic information.

This is a great concept. Teach a course that teaches the students all the important aspects of the subject matter they need to grasp, and at the same time produce tangible output that society at large can also use. (I know this is not the first time someone has done something in a college course that directly produced some benefit back to society, rather than just to the students, but it is the first time I have heard the Wikipedia tact.)

Props, once again, to Cory, the superhero of the day defending our rights to bits from the deciders, tube explainers and executives at corporations that think surreptitious rootkits are a wise choice for their customers.