I have reported that my copyright has been infringed and was advised that what has happened constitutes theft. Three of my final year essays have been uploaded by two people without my knowledge or consent. These essays are my intellectual property and copyright, not theirs!
I have also never used any homework or degree or dissertation help sites (in any sense, be it tutoring, writing, ideas, or anything else, including buying or selling essays) and object to someone uploading my work on such a site, or any other type of site for that matter. Course Hero does make it abundantly clear that the person uploading it must be the "copyright owner" or have the copyright owner's express permission to do so; the content "must be tagged to the correct course at the correct school"; they must abide by Course Hero's terms of use which detail various infringements users of their site must not commit in order to use their services. None of this has been abided by.
https://support.coursehero.com/hc/en-us/articles/236370408-What-content-can-I-upload-to-Course-Hero-
https://www.coursehero.com/terms-of-use/
These uploads of my essays commit many, various infringements of Course Hero's website so I expect these users to be barred from using or having any profiles on their website. I should not need to explicitly state on my academia website that I do not grant (and never have granted) permission to anyone to upload my work anywhere because it is obvious - any reputable site will make it clear that it infringes my intellectual property and copyright to use my work in any such way without my knowledge and express permission.
This infringement of my rights on Course Hero illustrates why I think it is completely unacceptable that Turnitin allows so-called instructors to upload students' work without the student's knowledge or obtaining their permission and consent first and that they allow universities to self-monitor who they allow access to students' Turnitin profiles. This leaves people's Turnitin profiles vulnerable to being targeted by anonymous users who can upload work that doesn't belong to them and infringe copyright owners' various rights. My university left my Turnitin profile open to a suspicious, anonymous Guildford-based IT services email account holder uploading whatever they wanted to my Turnitin account, leaving me to deal with the consequences and impact on me and my academic reputation. And this Course Hero issue demonstrates in practice that it's not just a hypothesis - someone is prepared to infringe my rights and abuse my academic work, thereby harassing me online through uploading my work, even where it goes against the website's terms of use.
All three essays bear my name and unique Researcher IDs, although they are not clearly displayed on the preview. It's also completely nonsensical, because the date, judging by their folder and their incorrect course code for my essays, gives the false, misleading impression that my 2012-13 essays were for a course run in Autumn 2020. This is clear for all to see because I put my essay submission date at the top of all my essays. Furthermore, the tutors marking my essays clearly do not match the course code, title, university that the uploaders have categorised them under so it makes my tutors look as though they taught me on a different degree and at a different university than they did!
One user of Course Hero, apparently from New York, uploaded two of my essays, one on Leibniz and preestablished harmony; the other on Marx on exploitation. How ironic, given that Course Hero's terms of use states that users must not "exploit" the work of others or Course Hero's services!
The other user of Course Hero, seemingly from Kenya, uploaded my Aristotle essay on the cosmos.
The legitimate versions of these are available to read on my academia profile and accompanying website:
https://libakaucky.academia.edu/research
https://www.academia.edu/37080341/_Leibniz_claims_that_his_doctrine_of_pre_established_harmony_provides_the_best_account_of_the_relation_between_mind_and_body_Is_he_right_essay_final_yr_4th_yr_Autumn_2012_BA_Philosophy_London_uni_4yr_part_time_Further_History_of_Philosophy_compulsory_module_Liba_Libuse_Kaucky
https://www.academia.edu/32844154/Does_Marx_think_exploitation_is_unjust_marked_essay_final_yr_4th_yr_Autumn_2012_BA_Philosophy_London_uni_4yr_part_time_political_module_chosen_specialisation_Liba_Libuse_Kaucky
https://www.academia.edu/37112050/_Can_Aristotle_s_claim_that_the_cosmos_is_finite_be_saved_from_Archytas_objection_essay_final_yr_4th_yr_Spring_2013_BA_Philosophy_London_uni_4yr_part_time_Further_History_of_Philosophy_compulsory_module_Liba_Libuse_Kaucky
Yet I discovered a preview of them (full access only for those who sign up as a student or educator, which I haven't) at the following links:
https://www.coursehero.com/file/79984860/Leibniz-claims-that-his-doctrine-of-prepdf/
I have never had any philosophy tutors ever, online or otherwise. The only philosophy tutors I have had were merely those allocated by an institution to teach/mark a course I was enrolled on ie. the tutor allocated on my A Level philosophy certificate; allocated tutorial tutors on my BA Philosophy degree.
I am appalled that sites which help students with their UG degree or PG degree (some even writing it all for them for a fee or selling them their old essays) are even allowed to exist. There are even sites providing PhD thesis writing services!😡 Perhaps the first thing students should learn at uni is academic integrity! No wonder many struggle to become researchers! People blame social media for all online problems but these sites are used by people in academic institutions! Of course, such suspicious and malicious activity can be conducted by fake accounts, but these need not only be committed by people completely outside of academia. Such malicious online activity wastes my time finding and dealing with it. 😡🤬 And is a highly unethical and dishonest practice, whether you are the person paying or using the service or the one writing or tutoring students through degrees! After all, these essays and theses are being formally submitted for a grade or part of coursework! So these students are passing off other people's work and / or ideas as their own. And mis-identifying, mis-attributing the author and brains behind their work. This has become more prolific during the pandemic according to a recent study conducted by Imperial College. No wonder students are rushing to the pub or putting their feet up! And perhaps why some school children don't want to sit any exams and prefer to do it all through coursework. There's no way of knowing how they would perform off-cold under invigilated exam conditions only. This would ensure they are capable of doing all the work themselves, including reading, understanding, thinking, planning and writing.
I took the exam option rather than coursework option for all my A Levels therefore, my grades were gained purely through invigilated, public exams. So it was obvious no tutor was helping me in any way with my A Level work. And I didn't get any overinflated grade predictions from teachers to artificially boost my exam performance because I was an independent candidate. This disadvantaged me because, although I attended Philip Allan conferences for students, my mother, despite being a teacher, couldn't attend the closed shop exam conferences for teachers in schools. Hence, I had to learn everything on the syllabus but teenagers at school do not. I'm appalled that there is such a system whereby teachers are predicting grades for public exams. This undermines the objectivity of the system because their subjective opinion compensates for potentially poor exam performances and may place markers under pressure to award higher grades than they believe they should.
Let's go through the basics:
Works (essays, dissertations etc) written by a student, especially if not a research student, are the copyright of that student author. If a student's work is to be made use of then permission must be obtained from that student. Their work must not be reproduced in any way whatsoever e.g. photocopied, scanned or distributed e.g. uploaded without express permission from that student/past student! The exceptions to this are written agreement to the contrary (which I have never given nor would I) or if the status of the individual is employee/employer (which mine was obviously not).
It, therefore, follows that if you are employed by an university or educational institution as a lecturer or affiliated to either, you cannot be an independent scholar unless your contract specifically states your research does not belong to that university. Otherwise, as soon as you are employed your research does belong to that university. If affiliated and using their resources then your research could belong to the university. I never asked to be affiliated to my former college nor was I informed I was, therefore, I wasn't! And I never used any of their resources e.g. library
Similarly, if you are funded, the research you undertake belongs to the funders. At one conference, I was chatting to a lecturer over breakfast and he suggested I try Templeton for funding. So I created a profile on Templeton but never applied for any funding, therefore, didn't receive any!
I also have never submitted any of my articles to a journal because I don't want some peer reviewer trying to change what I've written. Peer review makes no sense. The article should be all my work not the result of rewriting it so it no longer represents what I think but rather reflects someone else's opinion, bias or point of view.
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