“Letting professors own the copyright to their online courses is absolutely ridiculous.”
I know rather little about copyright; so my 2 cents are probably not very useful here.
This is what I think: designing an online course is not that different from writing a textbook. The information contained in a course or a textbook is largely from the existing knowledge; i.e., previously published and known. But regardless of whether we are talking about a course or a textbook, it is really up to the instructor and the author(s) to decide how the known information pieces will be included, excluded, edited, organized, and presented. This involves some degree of arts and thinking. If one agrees that the author(s) of a textbook own the book’s copyright, he/she is likely to agree that an instructor also owns his/her course’s copyright. After all, both deliveries are some forms of publication. In addition, a book is a media, and a selection of video and course materials is also a media. Here, my understanding of media is a means of communication to a group of audience.