I got this email today:
I’m not sure what opinion I have about it, but it’s yet another interesting difference between xMOOCs and cMOOCs. If you wanted to go to CCK09, an early cMOOC, it’s still there, open to everybody, both in Wikiversity and a Moodle site, and, of course, distributed across the web.
Now, nothing’s perfect, and there is a lot of linkrot with some of the older MOOCs. But it’s definitely a different orientation.
Does this sort of behavior matter to things like MOOC-wrapping? Maybe. We are asking students to make more explicit connections between their courses in things like portfolios and the like. At Keene State part of this new focus is reflected in our commitment to keep old courses accessible to the student as much as possible. So some subcategory of stuff they do in the LMS freshman year will be available to them when taking their senior capstone, and the presence of this older stuff will hopefully help them both understand their progress and see connections they may not otherwise have seen.
So, if we’re wrapping a MOOC that doesn’t save student work and course material for later review, it’s a step back. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s definitely suboptimal. Does anyone know what the Canvas.net policies look like?
Hapgood 
I cannot think of a valid or technical reason to remove content fromt he web. Disk space is cheap.
It is antithetical to what the web is. Breaking links breaks the fabric of the web. I think every time someone does this a cat in Tm Berners-Lee’s house cries out in pain. This is very much the subtle difference of being ON the web versus being OF the web.
The said cMOOC exception was University of Manitoba’s decision to remove the CCK08 site, the original MOOC. I bet George Siemens still cries himself to sleep over this.
Let me repeat- you should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever remove web content. Can’t think of any exception. Except maybe funny cat photos.