After reading the replies, I now think my first assumption was wrong, and that Coursera does in fact offer substantially more than raw stacks of torrented pdfs.

After reading the replies, I now think my first assumption was wrong, and that Coursera does in fact offer substantially more than raw stacks of torrented pdfs. But that's just my second point. MOOCs are a substantial service built on top of the free internet. Surely that costs money? And surely the fact that MOOCs are increasingly charging for stuff (and taking measures to make sure users pay) is not a sign that "social fairness" is deteriorating, but simply the usual costs of building anything at all?