Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:21:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080911/0202322232.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080911/0202322232.shtml copyright infringement lawsuit against a test prep website. There are plenty of test prep operations out there, but GMAC's complaint here was that some of the users of the site were posting questions used on the exam that they had remembered. It's difficult to see why this is a particularly big deal. Most test prep consists of looking at old tests or samples questions and practicing on them. The fact that some live questions might also make it into the mix seems hardly likely to make much of a significant difference (and, if anything, suggests GMAC might want to have a much larger pool of questions to avoid this issue). It's also questionable whether it's infringement to repeat a single test question.

Furthermore, it's not clear why the website in question, Scoretop, should be held responsible for the actions of its users. You would think that it would be somewhat protected by the DMCA's safe harbors. However, GMAC not only won the copyright infringement lawsuit, but was also given access to Scoretop's logs. That seems ridiculous, and an invasion of the privacy of those who were simply signing up to do some test prep. And, now, to top it all off, GMAC has canceled the GMAT scores of 84 individuals who used the site and notified all the schools to which the scores had been sent.

Hopefully, the schools recognize that GMAC is overreacting and choose not to rescind any admissions -- but I'm sure some will probably do so. This seems pretty extreme for folks who were engaged in pretty standard test preparation. They weren't "stealing" the exam or anything, but among tons of other test prep questions, would get to see some "live" questions that might possibly show up on the exam. All around this seems like a highly questionable decision, both from the legal standpoint, and then GMAC's followup reaction.

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]]> seems-to-be-an-overreaction http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080911/0202322232 Mon, 7 Jul 2008 11:08:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080703/1737041595.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080703/1737041595.shtml
However, one website that did test preparation for the GMAT (needed for business school) not only was sued for copyright infringement because test takers passed on "live questions" to the site, but in winning the case, the creator of the GMAT, Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) got access to the all of the site's computers, logs and records: meaning that it's now threatening to go after those who used the site, potentially getting them kicked out of school or having their degrees revoked. It's one thing to go after obvious "cheaters" but this is very much a gray area. These students were simply doing test prep, trying to practice with various questions. It's not as if they had the actual test itself beforehand. Would they similarly go after a friend who had taken the test who then mentions a couple questions he remembers to someone else? Furthermore, it seems really questionable to use copyright for this purpose. The test prep site wasn't "competing" with GMAC. If anything, it was driving more business to GMAC by helping people get ready to take the GMAT.

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