Another way to prevent cheating

I read with great interest Toni Feder’s report on efforts by the teaching community to prevent cheating (Physics Today, August 2022, page 25 ). I would like to point out what I believe is an opportunity for learning institutions to act against predatory sites that host stolen test materials.

A safe harbor provision in the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) protects such sites if they don’t know that they are hosting copyrighted material. According to the law, the sites can lose that protection if the copyright owner notifies them of the infringement. That requires a serious effort from the affected party to find the materials at the sites and notify the hosts. In my case, I have stopped doing that for a simple reason: Even if the materials are removed, they are usually back up in a matter of days as other students repost them.

But OCILLA also indicates that the sites may be liable if there are red flags that they ignored. Students often upload their problems in the form of screenshots or pictures, which advanced sites make searchable by scanning the text. That means that the next time a similar picture is uploaded, the sites have the technology to detect material that the instructor has already flagged as copyrighted. By accepting the material a second time, they may be violating the red-flag criterion.

I hope that colleges and universities explore that legal route as a way to reduce the unbearable levels of cheating that has put online education in serious trouble.