Yale is now offering complete video recordings, together with supplementary materials, of seven of its introductory courses online, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0. I am very pleased to see more open education content available online, especially since I feel that lectures have value beyond what we can convey in a textbook or lecture notes. I recall someone saying that writing on a blackboard is more than just what you put there--it is how you write it: a sweeping gesture underscoring an important result; a brief pause while providing explanation of some tricky concept.
I'm looking forward to watching a few of these myself. I little need another introductory physics class, but all the others look fairly interesting, and I'll try to make the time to watch at least one lecture from each to see how interesting they may be. I may watch the Philosophy and Political Science courses entirely, although twenty hours (each!) is rather a lot to do at once, so it may take me a while.
I regret that the lectures are for non-commercial use only, although it is understandable. This limitation will prevent (for example) DVDs of the courses being made and distributed at even a very small profit, which could help distribute them to people who have not got the internet access to download them themselves. It also prevents them being used on Wikipedia, which though non-profit itself, requires that commercial use be allowed so that downstream users of its content can use it as they see fit. Additionally, the CC-BY-NC-SA license isn't compatible with the CC-BY-SA license, so many freely-licensed works will be unavailable for use should one want to create some derivative work based on the lectures. Sadly, the fact is that Non-Commercial Isn't Really Free.
Still, the right to republish these is one that I greatly appreciate--had they simply provided these lectures for free download with no license attached, then it would have been illegal for others to provide them for download in the event that, for example, the servers hosting them crashed, or funding was cut, or Yale simply decided that it wasn't worth keeping them around. Now, at least, should Yale stop offering them, anyone who has downloaded a copy will legally be able to share it with others, ensuring that these lectures will be available forever to anyone who wants them.
Now that several universities are offering course materials online (some of the available lectures from various universities are listed here), I hope that other universities will follow, and that Yale and MIT and the others will continue to add more lectures. It would be absolutely wonderful if a complete undergraduate course of study were available for free in all or even some disciplines, and I would really like to see more advanced courses available as well, since most of the content at present looks like fairly introductory undergraduate material. Even with just this, though, the world is made a more open, better place. Rock on, Yale.