Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Victoria Loisi -
Number of replies: 22

Hello all!

I´m just starting to develop the click courses for our actual brick ones, so... I have a LOT to learn about how to manage an online course.approve

When I asked the teachers to bring me the material that they used in their own classes, some told me that they were worried because of the possibility of some people to steal their work...

Is there a way that I can almost assure them that their class material will not be able for stealing??

What do you think? How did you do on our own courses?

Victoria

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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by N Hansen -
Tell them to read this article...and then see what they think. 
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In reply to N Hansen

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Drew Buddie -
Great article - very sobering advice for all of us, I think!
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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Enrique Castro -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Hi Victoria,
    As the link quoted by N Hansen indicates, there is NO technical way to avoid that materials presented in a Web page could be "stolen". The whole internet is build in the concept of offering the material for anyone to use it.

If you want to protect your materials and prevent others to use them without permission, that's a legal affair, not technical.

You should put prominent copyright notices on your materials, write everywhere that they are reserved etc. This will prevent honest people from stealing them. But be prepared to actually enforce in court you copyright claim if you detect somesone is using  your material without permission. That's the  only way.

- Enrique Castro -
 
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In reply to Enrique Castro

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Victoria Loisi -

Thanks both of you, guys!

I thought that there were no good news on that point ... wink

When I send some stuff by email, I use the Acrobat program, to avoid people from copying, allowing them only to see and print the material. It is not a good solution anyway...

I think that teachers will have to understand...

(I already sended them by email that good article from KarlKore.com, thanks!!)

Victoria

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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Peter Sereinigg -

Online and Trust is something you cant split up

Acrobat is usefull but not secure, although you use the secure functions there ... you may eliminate that security with a view clicks ...

Security most of the time bothers the majority of your students ...

What may happen with my material - other teaches may use it ... if they are unable to write their own papers, are to lazy or dont work in networks for paper exchange - forget them ...

Peter

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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Amy Groshek -

Victoria,

Instructors can restrict access to their courses using the enrollment key. That prevents most "just browsing the 'net" folks from getting in. Students could of course still "steal" material, but if that happened in one of my courses, I'd consider it a sign that I was actually teaching well.

There has been some discussion about this at Alaska Pacific University. Some instructors want totally unrestricted access to courses, and consider their CMS site an advertisement of their teaching ability. Others haven't quite figured out the whole concept yet. It tries my patience, frankly. One of the hardest things about my job is convincing faculty they're not talking fountains of information but facilitators of process--which seems to be the heart of the confusion, at least here. But the enrollment key can placate the masses, for now, and in a few months, you'll have some instructors that love Moodle and stand behind you.

Onward,

Amy

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In reply to Amy Groshek

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by N Hansen -
Amy-Your remarks remind me of something one of my colleagues said to me when I told him how I noticed that an Egyptian government website had stolen an exhibition catalog he had written off my institute's website and posted it on their own. He wasn't bothered and said, "If imitiation is the highest form of flattery, then what is plagiarism?" Nonetheless, the institute itself wasn't amused and made sure it was removed.

In any case, I think with the way things are going these days with access to so many sources of information being so easy, I think that you are right in that teachers will have no choice but to transition themselves more towards being facilitators.
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In reply to N Hansen

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
I have been posting material on the web since 1996 and have had some time to think about "stealing" of material. As soon as you allow any other person to access your material, whatever the technology there is a chance the ideas will be re-used and not attributed to you. This counts from the era of writing on goat skin parchment to the era of the web and bit-torrent. The only difference technology makes is that it is easier.

The chief benefit of the modern personal computer is not that it computes (adds up numbers) but that it can make instant perfect digital copies. If you place material on the web people will be able to make perfect almost instant digital copies, so long as it somehow appears on their computer screen.

Unfortunatly there are many people who have not understood the implications of this. To illustrate the absurdity of this I have needed to get exam assignments from one of the UK exam boards. Part of the assignments included deliberatly mis-spelt text the students need to correct. The exam board provides the material via pdf files that have copy/paste disabled.

So I go through the absurd pantomime of either
re-typing the material and preserving the errors or, doing screen captures and running the text through OCR software.

To illustrate another peculiarity of plagiarism I have created many hundreds of mock exam questions which are available through a web interface. This could mean my material can be copied and re-attributed to  another  person. My main defense is to use naming conventions that could only be attributed to me.

Thus if someone on the other side of the world creates sample questions that are the same text and include variables with the names of my family, my ancestors, and the towns where I grew up it is fairly obvious that they have used my material.  Attempting to sue someone on the other side of the world may be difficult task, but undermining their credibility and illustrating their dishonesty is then quite easy.

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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Keith Heinrich -

I have a development tool that builds streaming content in a proprietry format. The only way to steal it it by making screen shots one screen at a time.

I figure anything posted to the internet is a candidate for exploitation by the unscrupulous anyway, but this may slow down or deter the opportunistic.

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In reply to Keith Heinrich

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Timothy Takemoto -
When you say proprietary do you mean expensive?
Tim
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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Keith Heinrich -

The initial investment is modest compared to lost revenue from stolen IP. However your assessment of 'expensive' is probably correct in the context of Moodle and its exceptional value., particularly the value of the community.

I will not go further other than to observe again retty much anthing on the internet is really fair game for those determined to steal it.

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In reply to Amy Groshek

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Rob Keeney -
"...they're not talking fountains of information but facilitators of process..."

That's a great quote! May I quote you on that? smile
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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Dave Bethany -

Well, you can take the MIT Open CourseWare example...post everything and make it freely available to anyone and everyone. What MIT makes clear is that just because you have the content doesn't mean you are getting an MIT education, the professor is what makes the difference.

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

Dave

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In reply to Dave Bethany

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Erlyn Baack -
Another professor at MIT, Philip Greenspun, has a "hall of shame" page identifying those who have used his photos without permission.  It's also called a "list of weasels" page at http://philip.greenspun.com/copyright/hall-of-shame.html .
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In reply to Erlyn Baack

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Ger Tielemans -

It is about fairness: but, what about the privacy of the two men in the gay parade and their portrait-rights?

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In reply to Dave Bethany

Re: Is possible to avoid the "steal" of material in an online course?

by Ger Tielemans -

I like the MIT statement, but after looking in several courses I have my doubts about "post anything..."

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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Using HTML code to stop theft.

by Kit Sadgrove -

If you paste your course material into Moodle as HTML, you can add code to:

1. Stop the reader from using the mouse to highlight text and copy it.

2. Add code to stop right clicking to copy images.

There is a lively page on this at http://www.brownielocks.com/stopcopying.html

Kit

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In reply to Kit Sadgrove

Re: Using HTML code to stop theft.

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
The following is some text from that link

"Here is some text. Try to highlight and copy this text. Also, do a right click  to try and take the button below. 
You will see our sample No Right Click warning pop-up button."

I copied and pasted the above text by the rather cunning and underhand technique of selecting the text, clicking my right mouse button and choosing the copy button. I received no warning and I then pasted it into this forum. 

I know that may seem a little underhand, technical and sneaky so I tried hitting control C and then Ctrol P to copy and paste. That also worked without a problem.

As I hinted earlier, if you don't want your material copied, do not put it on a web page.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Using HTML code to stop theft.

by Ger Tielemans -

I did read this in the newspaper this morning, (c) de Volkskrant

original website: pilots.nl

Attachment vraag014.jpg
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: Using HTML code to stop theft.

by Ger Tielemans -

and this is the stolen website, only the names are changed:

  • some of the pictures on the website are from Amsterdam.
  • Sdu on the voting machine is a Dutch publisher.
  • Douwe Egberts on the coffee machine is the leading Dutch Coffee brand. 
  • They even have stolen the Urban Design Awards 2005! (Amsterdam)

Pilots.NL did monitor their visitors traffic.. Is this a joke or are they really that stupid?

Attachment vraag015.jpg
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: Using HTML code to stop theft.

by Victoria Loisi -

I think that every of us are right in a certain way.

I understand that people should be flattered because someone is copying his work (surely it happens because the ... um... copier (?) thinks it is very good material), but I don´t want people using my material wthout my knowledge and most of all, without saying who did write it...

Some teachers asked me that if there were a way to avoid copying, because they don´t want to see their web material printed in a book and sold with another one´s name in it. (that´s the real reason of my original question)

The world is moving in another way now. MIT´s example (and a lot of other ones) tell us so. Hollywood Movies are being copied all around the world, and nobody can´t do anything about it. I love MIT initiative, because there´s my only way to get to that material. Open Source is not only the future, but it is our today already, and the nombers are growing by the second.

The thing is... some people don´t get used to it yet. wink

Anyway, the HTML protection it is a good idea too, but as you´ve already said... there´s always a way to copy any material. The only thing that we can do about it, is try and make it more difficult... wink

Sorry about my terrible english (an awful spanglish...)

Regards!

Victoria

Buenos Aires - Argentina

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In reply to Victoria Loisi

Re: Using HTML code to stop theft.

by satishchandra gore -
Hello
I amy add my two penny worth.
A proprietary system that instantly identifies papers containing unoriginal material and acts as a powerful deterrent to stop student plagiarism before it starts.
I thought this can prevet that stealing!!
satish gore
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