In the case of MOOCs (or other ways of chunking online instruction), Harvard could impose burdensome licensing rules in an effort to protect the scholarly professionals elsewhere. (Just as the Wall Street Journal is now Online but hardly Open.) But of course UC [the University of California system] would then utilize someone else’s product, resulting in lower quality instruction at UC, perhaps at a higher price. Would we at Harvard then sleep better, knowing that if any philosophers had been laid off in California, it was not because of OUR MOOC?
Bits and Pieces: MOOCs, and MOODs?. Well, first of all, I would certainly hope so: I would hope that you’d sleep better knowing that at least you had not actively participated in the elimination of other people’s jobs. And second, why are you so sure that “someone else’s product” would be “lower quality instruction”? This whole blog post is wrong on so many levels.