This is quite interesting because there's obviously several implied sets of values under discussion. Taste. Legality. Economics. Maybe more... If the proverbia

This is quite interesting because there's obviously several implied sets of values under discussion. Taste. Legality. Economics. Maybe more... If the proverbial bus squashed me tomorrow I'd be rather pleased that my recorded lectures continued to be watched and gave some use to students. The internet is full of talks, conference keynotes and lecture series by people who have passed on, and in a sense the longevity of ones work is a good indicator of its value. The issue is that universities are cheapskates. I can certainly confirm that. They're bloody mercenaries, that's for sure. It never occurred to me until the pandemic, when the topic was raised amongst colleagues, whether my recorded sessions were 'works for hire' or not. I actually assumed, in a rather good natured way, that should I be unable to give a course one semester, the uni (next module leader) were free to use my slides and videos. Most times if I inherit a module to give I'd rather make my own materials, but sometimes if in a hurry using the previous professor's stuff feels fine. There are unwritten academic rules around attribution etc. One should never substantially use the works of an another teacher without leaving their name on the titles and slides. Not all unis play fair. I was once contacted out of the blue by a student at Queen Mary University London who sent me an email saying their class was being taught using my slides and website materials, with my name deliberately taken off and passed off as the work of another professor. That's a bloody Russell Group institution! This raises another interesting question around self-plagiarising or the ethics of selling my work many times. Being a visiting prof at more than a few universities, I sometimes reuse and remix my own materials to put new courses together. Once I felt rather bad about re-badging a whole module of 10 lectures. But then, neither institution were paying me adequately for them. Since the pandemic I've done a lot more legal research and got more savvy about it all. Basically, my stuff is now explicitly _not_ work for hire. I think anyone who teaches and allows their materials to be captured should look into where they stand legally. Universities are cheeky little monkeys and will try it on whenever they can. So I've started to use CC BY 4.0 explicitly in my materials and contracts. Most administrators have no idea what that means and just pay regardless. If an institution wants ownership I now charge three or four times as much. Most are happy with that so far.