[anonymouskimmer]

Re: the course descriptions. Yes, I can see a judge buying that defense. And yes, we don't know what license to use exists for MIT faculty. I could also see a judge buying that the research article here doesn't need to publish the course descriptions in order to make its point at all.

> IANAL either, but figure 4 is likely not the "work", rather a small quote from a much larger work. How does a small quote from a work (even if allegedly unpublished) "fully and completely destroys its value"?

Exams are often composites of multiple independent works. Said exams being recomposited periodically (i.e. using a database of questions to create an exam). The argument here is that the individual question is itself a complete work (equivalent to an independent chapter in a book of works on a topic). And here it is not just on its lonesome, but with its answer, too.

[skissane]

> Exams are often composites of multiple independent works.

If figure 4 came from an exam. For all we know, figure 4 actually came from course notes, assignments, etc. Whether or not issuing those to students counts as "publication", they are easily available to future students in a way that past exam questions are often not, hence their publication does far less damage to their value.

Also, MIT says that "Iddo did not have permission from all the instructors" – for all we know, figure 4 is from one of those instructors for which he did have that permission.

[anonymouskimmer]

Yep, those sorts of possibilities is what the "(possibly)" in my earlier post was for.

Based on a quick search it seems the figure 4 question and answer have to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process , which seem to be used in computer science. Iddo Drori is an associate professor of CS, so it seems quite likely it's his own question.