University Sues Course Hero
Plus, linguists cannot spot AI text. Plus, some shameless self-promotion.
Issue 252
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Post University Sues Course Hero for Copyright Infringement, Trademark Violations, Unfair Trade, and More
Post University (NY) has sued cheating provider Course Hero in federal court for a slew of claims including copyright violations, unjust enrichment, trademark violations and unfair, and deceptive business practices.
The suit was filed in September, 2021 and I am disappointed I didn’t know, and that I am just getting to it now.
It’s significant in its own right and noteworthy, I think, that the case has survived its first challenge — a Course Hero motion to dismiss one of the claims. As it stands now, and as I understand it, the case is moving ahead and Post University has asked for a jury trial as well as what could be significant damages.
First, if you know me at all, you know I am the last person who’d say anything nice about a for-profit college, which Post is. But, it’s an enemy of my enemy deal. And it turns out that Post being a for-profit is essential to this legal challenge. So, I will say it — good for Post University.
Post’s status as a for-profit is key because, unlike many other education providers, Post owns the copyrights and IP on the materials its teachers and other staff create. So, when Course Hero uses their materials without permission to make money, which they absolutely do, the school can act.
From Post’s suit:
Post University is the owner of all documents created by faculty and staff of Post University including, upon information and belief, thousands of documents which have unlawfully been made available for distribution and sale on Course Hero’s website.
Yup. In other words, Post and other for-profits may be uniquely suited to bring these kinds of challenges.
As I get into the case, keep in mind I am not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV. I cannot credibly speculate as to the legal merits of this suit. But I know enough to know that what Post says is true and very important in understanding what Course Hero does, why it’s straight-up cheating, and why anyone who cares about education should be outraged by it. I also know that, if successful at all, the challenge could obliterate Course Hero’s business model.
On another fast note, most of the time I quote Post University’s complaint(s), the quoted sections are preceded by the phase, “upon information and belief,” which I assume is important legal jargon. Since it’s repetitive and not essential to me here, I often omit it.
Prelude
To start, Post says that, as of 2021:
The Course Hero website states that more than 23,000 documents from 189 Departments at Post University have been uploaded by Course Hero users.
You bet they are. Frankly, I am surprised it’s just 23,000. (To find out how many documents Course Hero has and is selling from you or your school, see Issue 92.)
Knowing that their materials were being trafficked on Course Hero, Post sent a take-down letter on January 6, 2021, and a different one on February 24, 2021. The first one:
identified sixty-four (64) instances of materials appearing on Course Hero to which Post University was able to obtain a good faith belief were copyrighted materials owned by Post University. In addition, Post University put Course Hero on notice that additional copyrighted materials are highly likely to exist on their site, and that documents bearing Post University Trademarks continue to appear on their site.
The second:
identified thirty-five (35) additional instances of copyrighted materials appearing on the Course Hero site.
In each case, Post told Course Hero that more copyrighted materials were likely to be inappropriately on Course Hero’s site and asked to work with Course Hero to review the documents and get them removed. Technically, for the record, Course Hero does not sell the material, it grants a license to use it. But if Course Hero does not own it, which they usually do not, the distinction does not matter much.
With each letter, Course Hero simply removed the cited documents and did nothing else.
The problem, and a major part of Post’s case, is that to even see the documents Course Hero is hawking, to even tell if they belong to you, you have to pay Couse Hero. Even if you do pay them, they limit how many documents you can see to about 30. Per month. You can buy more, of course. But in tens and twenties. So, trying to review and act on more than 20,000 potentially stolen documents is a joke.
From Post’s second letter:
In addition, Post University explained the impossibility of policing the Course Hero site due to the pay wall and subscription requirement. In a good faith effort to avoid litigation, Post University offered to negotiate for free access to the Study Resources for the purpose of locating copyrighted materials owned by Post University.
As mentioned, Course Hero essentially declined.
There’s no way they want anyone digging around in the content they’re selling. No way. And I have to believe that if Course Hero really thought that there were just a few incidents of copyrighted material here and there — or if they cared at all — they’d invite schools and teachers to check, and work with them to clean it up. But, no.
This feels like a good place for the reminder that when a professor found his exam on Course Hero, and that students had used it to cheat, Course Hero told him to get a subpoena before they’d cooperate (see Issue 102).
Anyway, unable to even see what documents of theirs Couse Hero was selling, Post sued.
Cheating, Incorporated
Before getting into the top-line details of the lawsuit, which you may not care about, I want to share other details from the Post documents. Information that, if you were unsure at all about what Course Hero really does, ought to end your indecision.
Before anyone can access the documents on Course Hero, they have to subscribe — pay Course Hero. To entice the subscriptions, the site blurs the content of the documents, distorting much of the information as well as, in some cases, clear copyright marks. Before paying, you may be able to see that a document is an exam for a specific course, but you can’t read what it says.
But, Post says, even after you pay Course Hero, some of the content is still obscured. In the example of an exam:
The blurring of the content in the original document has been removed; however, yellow opaque banners have been placed over the answers to the Exam Questions. The yellow opaque banners read, “Need the answer? / 4511 tutors online. Answers in as fast as 15 minutes. / Get it – with an explanation.”
It’s not just that to see the answers you have to pay Course Hero a second time. It’s that Course Hero flatly sells answers to exam questions — “in as fast as 15 minutes.” Not tutoring, not help, they sell “the answer.”
We knew this. But it’s nice to see it laid out so clearly.
And here is where I’d like to also remind you that the security company Cisco has Course Hero on a blacklist for “academic fraud” (see Issue 42). And about that time I told Course Hero that I was taking my exam right then and needed an answer, which they gave me (see Issue 97).
The Suit
Most of the Post suit is easy to understand.
Course Hero has documents that do not belong to it. Course Hero will not let the likely owner see them, and obscures important copyright information. Course Hero is using trademarks without permission. Course Hero is selling access to this material, the documents it does not own. And even though the documents and materials are uploaded by users, Course Hero knows exactly what it is doing.
From the suit:
It should be apparent to Course Hero that documents identified as, for example, Assessments, Assignments, Lesson Plans, Lecture Slides, Syllabi, Rubrics and Test Prep are of the type work product created and owned by schools, textbook companies, educators and/or subject matter experts, not students.
Course Hero is aware that certain documents uploaded to their site are materials that have been created by schools, textbook companies, educators and/or subject matter experts. Upon information and belief, Course Hero is aware that such materials are copyrighted materials owned by a party other than the uploader. In light of these “red flags”, Course Hero has opted to forego any efforts to police the site and instead obscures the valuable material to a higher degree during the creation of the Preview document. In other words, Course Hero seizes the opportunity to heighten their advertising efforts to sell more subscriptions and/or services through their knowledge that valuable copyrighted information exists in the uploaded documents.
Yes, they do.
And that’s important. When Course Hero has documents that are more likely than not to be the property and toil of educators, and schools, and publishers, they obscure them more. That’s no accident.
And they do this with literally thousands and thousands of schools and professors and other educators. Every day. It is what Course Hero does.
Risking repetition, Post’s lawyers lay it out again:
the value of the Course Hero subscription service lies in providing access to infringing materials locked behind the paywall that are copyrighted materials.
Course Hero has the right and ability to supervise and control the infringing activity of its users, and has a direct financial interest in such activities. Course Hero has full control over the distribution of documents via the Course Hero website. The original uploader of infringing material does not distribute the material to other users. Rather, the infringing materials are uploaded behind the Course Hero paywall. Course Hero does not distribute any documents as uploaded by its users, including copyrighted documents owned by Post University, until a Course Hero subscriber provides compensation
Yup. Nailed it.
And since we’re here, more:
Course Hero deceptively promotes itself as being a platform for course-specific study resources including study guides and class notes where users may only upload content that they have the right to upload, while in fact the Course Hero website is replete with unauthorized and copyrighted materials owned by Post University and, upon information and belief, unauthorized and copyrighted materials owned by many other copyright owners.
Many, many copyright owners. Including, at one point, even me (see Issue 155).
To put a cherry on it:
Course Hero has and continues to benefit financially while its conduct promotes cheating, diminishes the value of Post University’s educational services, and necessitates the development of new course materials, tests, and answers at great expense to Post University.
On that, I cannot improve or expand.
Why it Matters
First and most directly, a win could be costly to Course Hero. The alleged violations of copyright alone — selling, altering, denying access — could cost Course Hero tens of millions of dollars, according to the penalties outlined in the law.
Post has also asked for a jury trial. Impossible to say what a jury may do.
But even bigger, if Post wins a finding that Course Hero is violating its rights and benefiting financially from selling material it does not own, it may open the floodgates for others to follow — on behalf of schools, professors, or publishers or even as a class. That could be devastating.
Just as bad, if Course Hero allows Post University behind its paywall and takes down all of their protected, copyrighted, trademarked items, it could shatter Course Hero’s business model. As Post correctly points out, the real value is in the tests and assignments — not in another student’s class notes. If Course Hero lets Post in, and other schools follow, the value in what Course Hero does goes way, way down. And they know it.
I am not saying this challenge is the end of Course Hero — they also own cheating engines such as Quillbot. But I am saying it could be. And even if it turns out not to be, I am deeply satisfied to see someone say ‘enough’ to the theft and nonstop education degradation that enriches Course Hero and its investors.
As one of Post’s lawyers, Timothy Johnson of Getz Balich LLP told me:
Course Hero's business model is fundamentally grounded in unauthorized use—it undermines academic integrity for students, deceives educators and parents, and, most egregiously, profits from the author's work without permission.
It’s a real pleasure to see someone finally doing something about it.
Study: Linguists Can’t Tell AI Text from Human Text
I’m not going to get into this study too deeply since it’s not directly related to academic integrity.
But two researchers, J. Elliott Casal and Matt Kessler, from the University of Memphis and the University of South Florida recently tested whether reviewers for linguist journals - linguists - can tell the difference between AI-generated text and human-written text.
They cannot.
Yes, linguists.
From the summary:
Findings suggest that despite employing multiple rationales to judge texts, reviewers were largely unsuccessful in identifying AI versus human writing, with an overall positive identification rate of only 38.9%.
Good gravy.
But it’s not even that good. In the study, the reviewers and linguists were given four sample research abstracts to review, and:
none of our 72 participants were able to correctly identify all four abstracts they viewed. Of the reviewers, only 18.1% correctly identified 3/4 abstracts, 34.7% identified 2/4
I resist the urge to read too much into this, but please weigh this finding of 39% accuracy among human linguists with the finding, from Issue 250:
three … [AI] detectors were more than 96% accurate overall — getting the human work perfect and missing just one of 18 AI works. Another was 92% accurate overall - getting all the human work right but missing two of 18 AI submissions.
And some otherwise really smart people just insist that it’s the AI detection systems that don’t work.
I Speak About Academic Integrity, Too
Since you’re reading this, you know I write about academic integrity. You probably know I do it quite frequently.
So, being self-indulgent and self-promotional for a moment, I also speak about academic integrity. After I was honored to address the annual conference of the National College Testing Association in August, a few schools extended invitations for me to meet with or speak to their faculty or administration. It’s something I enjoy and, as you can tell, this is a topic about which I have great passion.
So, if your school or organization is seeking a speaker, or you think it beneficial to have me speak with colleagues, leaders, or practitioners, please ask. I’d be happy to discuss it and do what I can to make more people aware of these crucial issues.
A reply e-mail to The Cheat Sheet reaches me.