Not a good idea... (Score 2)

Personally, I'd have to say that the professor has overreacted. Of course students will defame professors, it is inevitable. I can't imagine that a tenured professor will be able to prove damages were caused by a student bad-mouthing him on the internet. And if he can't do that, he won't have much of a case for libel.

This story is most interesting because it's representative of academia's new watchfulness of the internet. I'm a student at columbia university, and we have a controversy surrounding a service called Versity.com. Basically, versity pays people to take notes in the larger lecture courses. These notes get posted on the internet and students can join versity (i believe for free) and see the notes. The professors here are concerned about the intellectual property of their lectures. My history professor told the class that some people in the university structure were considering suing versity.com. One of my friends takes notes for versity, and his teacher made him stand up in a huge lecture hall, and chewed him out for the above reason, and for undermining the "academic integrity" of the school.

Interesting, no? Although we generally think of higher education as at least one stronghold of the net, and of free speech, it seems like this isn't quite as true as we imagined. Especially not in the non-science disciplines.

peas,
-Kabloona