Student Sues Term Paper Site For Selling Her Paper
from the not-so-surprising dept
Among the many shady businesses online, you can pretty much assume that those who are in the "selling term papers" business are certainly not the most honest and trustworthy of businesses. So, it comes as little surprise to find out that some of these sites (gasp!) don't actually own the copyrights to the term papers they're trying to sell you. In fact, one woman is now suing a few of these sites after discovering that they're selling a term paper of hers, which she had posted online. The copyright issue is a concern to her -- but the much bigger concern is that she'll get in trouble in her current grad school program, if the school believes she's been selling her old term papers. While it's understandable why she's suing, perhaps what's more amusing is that whoever bought her term paper (can't really have too much sympathy for people cheating, can you?) probably could have found it for free online, the same way the company selling it found it in the first place. Update: Steve Mueller notes in the comments that this woman's lawyers are going too far with their claims. They're not just suing the term paper seller, but also that company's ISP. It's not clear if she first sent a takedown notice, but either way it seems to be far reaching to go after the ISP. Secondly, among the charges the lawyer is filing is "invasion of privacy." It's hard to see how that's a valid charge when she put this paper up on her site for the public to see.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
Its a shame that nothing is sacred. Dishonesty overshadows credibility, and Money rules good judgement. That is the case in the world. For the author who posted her paper on the net, however, I would question motivations, as she , (by her admission)is still a student. That is one of the primary difficulties in doing research on the net. You have no idea regarding the scholarship, or level of Academic achievemnet, of papers quoted, willy nilly , whilst researching for an assignment. To what purpose was the paper posted but for giving the impression of Academic excellence & "peer review" on a non-reviewed (Grade Posted?) environment. She took the risk when she posted her paper. If no EULA was attached to the reading, printing, copying, or reproducing, her "copyrights" were relinquished when she hit "upload".
Sorry about that. Its a harsh world. Save your money. don't throw it to your lawyer.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
If she wants to make sure of that copywrite she can apply for one and she'll get it. From there it's a matter for the courts.
AG
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
However, if they claimed the work as theirs, or claimed she gave them permission, that could be a criminal act.
By the way, AG, the words are "plagiarism" and "copyright".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Good For Her
She is charging the owner of the sites (as well as the sites’ Internet service provider) with copyright infringement, consumer fraud and invasion of privacy, among other things.
First, I don't see how she can sue the companies' ISP. Unless she gave the ISP a take-down notice, don't ISP's have immunity for the acts of their users?
Second, where is the invasion of privacy? If she posted it on a public Web site, and the term paper stealers found it there, nobody's privacy was invaded.
Maybe if the lawyers are reading, they can respond....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
I've corrected the header, so please do carry on.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
This is incorrect. Just writing something gives you an automatic copyright and has for many years. I believe the law was changed in the 70s to grant automatic copyright to anything written with or without the copyright notice.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Good For Her
Second, where is the invasion of privacy? If she posted it on a public Web site, and the term paper stealers found it there, nobody's privacy was invaded.
Both excellent points... I'm going to update the article.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
That isn't quite correct. While it is true that the 1976 Copyright Act changed the law such that copyright is now granted automatically when a work is created, the 1976 Copyright Act still required that a work bear a notice of copyright. It wasn't until March 1, 1989 (when the U.S. adhered to the Berne Convention) that the notice requirement was eliminated.
The U.S. Copyright Office has all the details here.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
One can register a copyright. However, registration is not a guarantee against infringement and is not a confirmation that your ownership of the work is valid.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
However, your post seems to imply that registration isn't very useful. While it's patently obvious that it can't prevent infringement, at the risk of exposing more out-of-date copyright knowledge, my understanding is that registration does provide significant benefits.
For example, registration allows you to sue for statutory damages and attorney fees, not just actual damages and profits. It also provides an independent means of verifying when a work was created (as you obviously can't register a copyright for a work that doesn't exist). More on registration is available here.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
Registration of copyright still has a good purpose, I think. Mostly because it gives you a better legal footing in court. You theoretically should have solid footing anyways, but this isn't always the case. For instance, if you write a song and post it on your website, and 6 months later you hear a band on the radio singing it, you might find fighting a record company hard. If, however, you registered the copyright, you need no other evidence except that your copyright registration preceeded theirs.
I think that in and of itself would be significant, but only if you are the little guy taking on the big company lawyers. It Could be the difference between settling for $10,000 and winning the case and being awarded 100% of all past, current, and future profits.
So, good idea to register anything that could be a high profit format. Music, longer-than-short stories, even video. Conversely, I don't think registering blog entries would be useful at all.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
To assume that everyone in the world is honest and will use your intellectual "property" for good shows a certain lack understanding reality.
General rule for anyone reading this, "Don't post anything on the Internet that you can't live with the knowledge that someone else may use it for their own gain." I have many sites on the Internet with lot of information. They all say copyright on them, but I know this doesn't mean much to millions of people around the world. If someone else copies my information, I'm not goinig to waste anyone's time suing them.
By the way, how many corporation out there are publicly posting critical information about their business that they may need to sue someone for in the future. I'll bet you money there isn't one. Learn from them.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
The ideal of the internet is to share information - not withhold it.
What the author of the paper is attempting is to highlight that someone is making a profit out of selling her paper that is available publically.
She did not publish it to prevent that - it was published to share information. Academic use of papers found by the net, referenced of course is the ideal by which academics work. Many institution publish papers by there honours and postgraduate works due to course requirements.
Here fair use applies. Use, and acknowledge that someone else created it. Thats the ideal behind it - why else do we reference our work?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plagiarism and sales.
To Steal from one person is plagiarism, but to steal from several people, I believe they call that research...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
By all means, let's correct spelling, but we don't have to be pedantic about it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Plaigerism and sales.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Term Paper Lawsuit
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Term Paper Lawsuit
Those are freely and publicly available. As is alot of stuff of pubmed. Selling any one of those is a big no no.
[ link to this | view in thread ]