British publishing and education assessment company Pearson Education is suing American-based education company Chegg for copyright infringement. Because of this, your favorite place to buy cheap textbooks and take practice tests and quizzes may change.
Early last week, Publishers Weekly reported the lawsuit between the two education companies. The copyright infringement specifically involves Chegg’s “Chegg Study” service—an additional subscription where students can receive and answer homework questions at the end of their study sessions. According to Pearson, the questions were copied directly from material by Pearson Education. Attorneys for Pearson state that “the majority” of Chegg’s roughly $644 million in total revenue in 2020 came from its sales of answers through Chegg Study.” So if Chegg is making their money off of copied material, this is a huge problem.
Allegedly, Chegg relies on freelancers to create the questions and answers for their study service. Even though Chegg may not and cannot be responsible for all of its freelancers, they are responsible for the work they publish on their website. The lawsuit lists that at least 150 Pearson textbooks were infringed upon, which may not even be the final number with how much material needs to be searched through. Any kind of copyright infringement or plagiarized material is serious business and should not be taken lately. After all, these are two well-established education companies, and weren’t we all taught in school not to steal another person’s work?
In case you missed it, a UK judge is doling out classic literature as the punishment for white supremacy. Read more about this absurd sentencing here.
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