Online Plagiarist Sues University

raistphrk writes "The Reg reports that an English student at the University of Kent has sued the university after the university caught him ripping his papers off the Internet and kicked him out of the English program. I guess the stakes are now being raised for universities that use services to check for plagiarized papers."

The services have nothing to do with it

[idesofmarch]

The crux of the lawsuit is that the student was punished too late, to his detriment, and, arguably, the university's benefit. There is no question that whatever method was used to catch the plagiarism did produce an accurate result.

No... RTFA

[Ieshan]

No it isn't. Read the article.

The basis for the suit is: "I've been plagarizing for 3.9 years, and right as I was about to graduate, you told me I couldn't. You shouldn't be allowed to kick someone out for plagarism after they pay you for 4 years of education."

This is a very silly argument, but if the student can find some evidence that the administration had knowledge of the plagarism scheme, led him to believe he would graduate, he paid all his fees, and *then* they pulled the plug, that would probably be just as immoral as the plagarism itself.

Lets be honest with ourselves. Who plagarizes anymore and thinks its okay?

Re:There is an issue here

[TheRaven64]

The usual rule is that you can only not re-use material you wrote for another reason if someone else owns the copyright (i.e. you sold it) or you have already been awarded course credit for it (on any course, even at another institution).

University is running a pilot scheme

[mikewas]

According to the BBC [bbc.co.uk] article:

The University is running a pilot scheme which uses plagiarism detection software to analyse student work.

So it's not like they knew all along and were stinging him along. They just got smart, started using the same technology he was using to cheat, and finally caught him.

This was the English department after all. It took them awhile!

Re:There is an issue here

[mscheid]

They're probably a bit touchy at the moment...
Even the UK government published parts of an old forgotten PhD thesis as their report on Saddam's WMD arsenal, mind you :-D

Re:This person is a complete retard

[The_Red_Bull]

How anyone at UKC (I go to the same uni) could have not noticed all the warnings everywhere is beyond me. He must be illiterate.

On my course (cse), there were warnings about plaigarism left, right and center - I would expect it to be the same in the English dept.

Re:He knew the consequences...

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't disagree with you on your point about excessive administration becoming a problem in Universities, but the existance of a "deputy vice chancellor" isn't as indicative of that as you think. In UK universities the title of Chancellor is just an honorary one to be giving to some worthy public figure who doesn't really have anything to do with the uni. The person at the top of the tree is the "Vice Chancellor", and so it's not unreasonable that he/she has a deputy, it's not a "deputies to deputies" situation.

Re:There is an issue here

[markxz]

There is no issue with quoting (from yourself and others) provided the work is properly referenced.

The issue is when work is not referenced and passed off as your own new work.

Re:There is an issue here

[Ieshan]

In "Professional" science, "Published" means that a paper was included in a peer-reviewed journal. If you've previously written something for a class and passed in it, and later in the same class, you realize that something you said in that first paper was very useful and relevant here, it's very difficult to cite because there's no official standard for citing previous unpublished work.

I was just saying that "Unpublished Manuscript", which would technically be the correct way to cite it, is a really over-the-top thing for a student to do. I always chuckle to myself when students cite themselves as coming up with specific "Effect" names in powerpoint presentations and stuff.

Yes, but why are those rules in place?

[IshanCaspian]

There are two reasons.

1) Citations are useful for people doing research. If I read your paper, and I want to know more about a specific item, I will look at your references and get other related books. This is not applicable or useful in this case because the only purpose of the paper was to demonstrate the student's abilities, NOT to create a work that will be read and used by others.

2) To make a clear distinction between what is YOUR thinking and what thinking you BORROWED from someone else. This is the primary reason why plagarism is frowned upon; you're tricking the teacher into thinking you did work when all you did was copy someone else's. However, this isn't applicable here either, because the student actually did the work.

Really, this is just the product of a paranoid administration more obsessed with the letter of the law than the purpose.

Re:Wow next thing you know...

[EvanED]

God damn it... read about the case before you go and think you know enough to judge.

1. She wasn't driving.
2. The car wasn't even moving when she spilled it.
3. She only sued after McDonalds offered her $800 to reimburse her for her $20,000 legal bills.
4. She didn't even end up with the $2.9 million or whatever everyone thinks, it was reduced on appeal to $480,000, then settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Now, you still may disagree with the ruling, and that's okay, but it is *not* a clear cut case and you can't just spout out about someone being stupid enough to put the cup between her legs while driving. There are good arguments for why McDonalds shouldn't have to pay, but you brought up a whole... ZERO of them.

Re:Wow next thing you know...

[jolyonr]

Great story, but unfortunately it's a hoax [trendmicro.com].

Jolyon

Re:Wow next thing you know...

[Gorobei]

It was substantially hotter than coffee served at other restaurants in the area. McDonalds had also been repeatly warned that the coffee was being served too hot for the cups they served it in (some would just collapse based on the heat.)

So, yes, too fucking hot sums it up well.

Re:Need Yet Another Warning Label?

[darkonc]

The missing link here is that McDonalds raised the temperature of their coffee to unsafe levels at the same time as they started a "Free Refils" campaign. Serving the coffee at an unsafe temperature meant that customers would almost never finish their coffee in-store and be able to get a refill. -- But McDonalds still got the extra business from the add campaign.

The woman in question was awarded 75% of her medical costs (she was found partially at fault), and a regurgitation of McDonalds' profits from willfully wounding their customers. The almost the entire $15M she was awarded came from this regurgitation of profits.

The real warning should have been placed at McDonalds' world headquarters:

• warning: do not injure your customers in the name of profit, or you may (sooner or later) face a seriously large punitive damage suit.

Re:There is an issue here

[Anonymous Coward]

there's no official way to quote an unpublished paper you wrote last semester in APA format.

Pge 263 of the APA Publication Manual seems to disagree. I think the section entitled "Unpublished Work and Publications of Limited Circulation" might have the answers which you seek. Specifically, check under "Unpublished manuscript not submitted for publication."

"Unpublished manuscript" just sounds fucking pompus. =)

Pompous or not, it's correct. Deal with it and properly cite your sources in scholarly writings.

Re:This person may have a relative named DARL.

[kenthorvath]

Plagirism is also copyright violation, so he's likely to get laughed out of court just on that basis.

Not necessarily, there are places that do in fact sell papers that come with the rights to redistribute. There are works in the public domain (Shakespeare etc..) that you can republish without copyright infringement. And paraphrasing without citing the source, while not illegal, is still plagirism.

Re:Wow next thing you know...

[TGK]

Why is it that this comes up so much and why is it that I have to explain it so often?

The "McDonald's Case" as it's called was only one in a series of cases in which courts had repeatedly ruled that McDonald's coffee was being served too hot.

The company had been ordered by the courts numerous times to serve coffee at a lower temperature but refused to do so. When this woman sued the court decided to actualy make the company take notice.

The huge judgement awarded against the McDonald's Corporation was largely a way for the court to punish McDonald's for its repeated failure to comply with previous decisions.

Now, does the stupid woman need the huge quantity of money? Of course not. Those funds would be better awarded to a burn unit at a local hospital or some other worthy cause. Unfortuantely the US legal system does not make provisions for judgements like that, and punitive damages must be awarded to a plaintiff.

The amount has to be huge because the McDonald's corporation isn't going to give a shit if you award $20,000. It needs to be a big enough judgement that the company has to declare it as an item on its SEC filings.

Of course the legal system shouldn't be the slot machine it is today. At the same time, billion dollar corporations should not be able to hold themselves above civil judgements by virtue of their excessive wealth.

Re:Wow next thing you know...

[Ryosen]

Specifically, that particular McDonald's had been cited numerous times and had several complaints, on record, for it's coffee. Lawsuits against McDonald's because you claim ignorance of the health consequences of eating their food 2-3 times a day are garbage, and were judged as such. This single case, however, was legitimate.

It was all fun and games until someone lost an eye.

Re:Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually most of the students probably don't get caught (officially at least) in the first place. I have been a GTA and a temporary lecturer in the sciences at a very large public university in Columbus Ohio and its branch campuses and I have run across plagiarism. As a GTA, I have brought it to the Professor's attention, but nothing was done. As a lecturer, I have strongly suspected it, but did not pursue it.

Why? Too much trouble and lack of University support. At the main campus, all suspected cases must be referred to Academic Affairs-it cannot be dealt with locally, an "F" just can't be given. Of course, no one bothers to tell us about the procedures (a couple sentence blurb about academic honesty versus an hour long session on harassment in GTA orientation-you can see where the priorities are...) As a GTA you quickly learn which rules are important in an organization and which aren't (or at least which to give lip service to-is it any wonder why a lot of students cheat?-if those in charge don't take cheating seriously, why should they...) As a lecturer it was easier to give the grade the students earned (which was poor-the take home test should have been an easy A) rather than make the effort to report a suspected case of plagiarism (which of course I would have to have researched how to do...). I suspect most students who plagiarize are not good students, at least in my experience.

The fact of the matter is that most Universities don't really care about academic honesty. Oh, they talk about its importance, but their actual actions to combat it speak volumes. It is not the most important item on their list unless they are receiving negative publicity about it...

Not Serious

[stephanruby]

The article doesn't say the student sued, it said the student is "to sue", and the article didn't interview anyone else on this story -- so I assume the student is entertaining his own little private fantasy and the paper published it just to get a rile out of us.

"A student who was booted off his degree course for plagiarism is to sue the university."

Re:That isn't his complaint.

[sql*kitten]

But they have taken all my money for three years and pulled me up the day before I finished. If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough.

But this is an English university. It doesn't make any money from tuition fees; in fact it'll barely break even. Universities here (generally) don't have endowments, they're funded by the taxpayer. The university had absolutely no motivation to "steal" his money.

Oh, and to put this into perspective, MIT charges something like USD 30,000/year tuition. An English university is allowed by law to charge no more than GBP 3,000, and that's only because the limit was recently raised. We aren't talking a huge pile of cash here.

He hasn't actually sued them yet

[Modulous]

The text says "has sued the university" whereas the actual article says "A student...is to sue the university" and other articles state "is planning to sue".

This seems to me that his legal action is very much in the formative stage, if it is anywhere at all. Good luck on finding a solicitor to take the case. Especially given that the university has made it perfectly clear what plagiarism is and the consequences thereof.

Most frivolous lawsuit stories are about lawsuits that where filed but never made it to court. I have a feeling this is going to be one of them.

tuition doesn't pay for a degree

[blitz487]

The student's argument only has merit if the University is selling the degree for the money. However, this is not the case. The money is for attending classes and for the educational services of the University. The money is NOT for grades or a degree. The student received the classes and the educational services, therefore the student was not deprived of anything he was entitled to for the tuition money spent. The degree is awarded for meeting the academic requirements of the University, not for paying tuition. The student, because he cheated, did not meet the academic requirements, and therefore is not entitled to a degree.

Re:The customer is always right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Though in the famous case we're talking about, the lady was a passenger in the car, and the car was stopped in the parking lot. The coffee spilled when she tried to open it to add creamer, and I believe it gave her second or third degree burns. She had to get a skin graft.

Defective cups, too

[spun]

To save money, McDonalds had reduced the amount of styrofoam used to make the coffee cups to the point that they were not stable without the lid attached. The woman removed the lid to put cream & suger in the coffee and the cup simply came apart in her lap.

This was entirely McDonald's fault, they deserved to be sued and they deserved to lose.

Re:You're full of shit

[belmolis]

the university was absolutely correct to penalize the author in question for his actions.

I don't think so, and I've been a university professor for 20 years. It's true that it isn't proper to turn in the same piece of work for two courses unless the instructors agree, but that isn't what this student did. To begin with, nothing in his post (and that's all the information we've got on this case) suggests that the internet post from which he copied had been submitted for credit. It's perfectly proper to use something you initially wrote for another purpose if you haven't already received course credit for it. For example, as a graduate student I once gave a paper in Japanese at a workshop, then translated it into English and submitted it for a course. The instructor had no problem with that, nor has anyone else, and since this was something a bit out of the ordinary, I've told the story a number of times.

Secondly, this guy only recycled ONE PARAGRAPH. That would be perfectly fine even if it came from something he had already used for a grade, assuming it was a normal paragraph and therefore only a fraction of the total content of the paper.