The founding fathers believed that it's better to let a guilty man run free than let an innocent man be found guilty.

And that should be trivially obvious too - it doesn't take a complicated debate on ethics. When a guilty man is found not guilty, a guilty man goes free. When an innocent man is found guilty, an innocent man is punished and a guilty man goes free.

If the facts are against you, bang on the law. If the law is against you, bang on the facts. If both are against you, bang on the table.

Making an anti-copyright statement in court would be the equivalent of banging on the table, which Pirate Bay don't appear to need to do.

Is the purpose of a college class to give a student knowledge of a field of study? Or is it to just award a credit towards a degree?

Sound to me that the lecturer thinks it's the latter, which is a problem. Those notes are a valuable resource to any student who wants to retain that knowledge, whether for future classes, a job after college, or just for the pure love of knowledge for its own sake. The student has paid for those notes in time, effort, and money. Asking him to give them up is short-sighted and stupid. Taking them from his backpack is theft.