According to Natalie Gott from the Associated Press, ‘Blue Macellari wrote the term paper back in 1999 while studying abroad, so the Duke University graduate student didn’t understand why it was on the Internet — or why it was for sale.
Last January, Macellari learned from a friend that her paper was posted on Web sites registered to Carroll’s company and contained notices that the sites own the copyright to the papers. Furthermore, her name was listed. Macellari never gave the papers to the Web sites or gave them permission to post her papers, Parke said.
Now, she’s suing the operator of Web sites selling her paper and seeking more than $100 000 for copyright infringement, invasion of privacy and damage to her reputation. … Readers can find previews of essays but on a linked site, customers are prompted to sign up for memberships that cost as much as $104.95 for 180 days.’
Faculty are already concerned about students who turn in papers downloaded from the Internet but this case raises another issue about protecting your work, said David DeCosse, director of Campus Ethics Programs at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
Students and university professors want to post student work on the Web, he said. “But perhaps we should all be aware of … requiring passwords or things of that nature a little bit more so we don’t contribute to that traffic, sort of illicit student paper traffic,” DeCosse said.
With respect, that’s not really a viable approach. Authors can’t disseminate their work by restricting access to it. A better way would be for the original author to promote their work to such an extent that their website has a higher PageRank than the plagiarist. That way, a Google search would instantly verify the true author’s credentials. Infringing commercial sites are probably best dealt with through the courts. Scoundrels, the lot of them.
