Syllabus Access Before Registration

[UptonSinclair]

I have been thinking about the issue of syllabi lately. Wouldn't it be nice to have access to the syllabus of a given course before registering for that course? This seems like a pretty simple concept, but seems to be a loaded topic. There are some who claim that copyright protection extends the professor for their syllabus and therefore they should not be online. This makes little sense to me considering the amount of government money that supports higher education. I can understand protecting a syllabus from being used to teach a course, but that is a far different issue from making them available to students before registration. It seems that higher education has gone into a bit of a turtle mode where it pulls into its shell to avoid scrutiny.