Stossel: Entrepreneur Saves Free College Courses from Government Ban

An internet entrepreneur saved 20,000 free online college lectures (and more) after the government declared them illegal.


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Berkeley once had 20,000 college lectures available on their website. Anyone could watch for free. But then government said the videos were illegal because they didn't have captions for the deaf.

Captioning 20,000 videos would cost millions. So instead, Berkeley just took down all the videos. That meant nobody outside the college would be able to see them.

But one person didn't let that happen.

Jeremey Kaufmann just started a new service called LBRY (pronounced "library"). He posted the Berkely videos and thousands of others.

LBRY is kind of like Youtube–but unlike Youtube, it can't be censored.

Kaufmann says he isn't afraid to host the videos on his operation, because unlike Berkeley, he didn't create them. He says that means he's not legally responsible. We'll see. One never knows what our authoritarian government will do.

Three cheers for entrepreneurs like Kaufmann who risk their time and money to keep information like these college lectures available.

Produced by Maxim Lott. Edited by Joshua Swain.