Plagiarism Battle

Please do not take any of our content and reproduce them – on any platform, forum or group. If you copy the content from the 2IIM Questionbank, we will fight with all avenues possible. We will

1. Report the matter to the webmaster,
2. File DMCA notices – initially with Google, later legally
3. File Youtube Copyright Violation Reports. You can read 2IIM's YouTube retraction policy here.
4. Pass the word around on Quora (like we did here, here, and here), Youtube ( check our video on how we create content here and here), Facebook etc stating clearly that either the individual or the company has cheated.
5. We will take screen shots, provide the links on our website with your name on it and distribute this. If you are a college student, we will send this to your college. If you are employed, we will send this to your company.
6. There are a few other tactics that we have lined up that we are loathe to share at the moment

Why do we take this so seriously? - I am worried as an entrepreneur
IP protection laws in India are lax. This is not really new information, but relevant nonetheless. Content worth nearly 40% of a CAT Course have been taken from 2IIM and re-created in Unacademy (among other places). You can take it for granted that I will fight this battle with all the resources I have and on all fronts that I can think of.

My concerns are for most parts as an entrepreneur. I have a far lesser role in preventing copyright violation or plagiarism per se on the platform. But I think India needs to rethink laws on privacy and IP - and so I am keen to chip in to that conversation as well.

Why do we say we will give this info out on FB, Quora etc?

Put simply – this is because social media matters.

I am the affected party, and I am seriously skeptical of these forum-based models. Call me a cynic, but I believe that all forums are created with a clear awareness that there will be some pilfered content that slips through. There are 25 websites & blogs that each have at least 100 of 2IIM questions illegally hosted. Most of them will say “This was posted by some user. We will look into this”. What is not from 2IIM is from Indiabix, Ascent Education, Wizako or Algebra or other such sources. I want to be able to clearly place it on record that 2IIM raised these issues clearly, unequivocally and with overwhelming evidence on Feb 2018. I cannot employ a legal firm for this, but I know Quora and Facebook track all updates. I don’t want any of forum merchant to say they did not know about this.

We reserve the right to continue to use all fronts
To reiterate some facts - more than 200 questions were taken from our website and videos were made out of these on a single platform. There are 25 other websites that regularly host our content. There are likely nearly 8000+ instances of 2IIM content on other websites (If we include Facebook, Youtube and blogs the number will be far higher) This is an egregious fault that has already occurred. This is widespread, has been going on for a while, and there has been no system that was in place to prevent this.

This is not a few ‘Educators’; there are folks with 75000 followers in the Unacademy system who have taken our content. There is an Educator who has created more than 60 videos with 2IIM questions.

Any collateral damage that a few may suffer because of our actions is miniscule. Put differently, I don’t give a tiny rats behind what happens as collateral damage to Educators in this discussion. You made your bed, now sleep on it. If some Educators lose credibility, it will be solely because they chose to take content that was not theirs.

The fight back begins here. In some form at least
I have had enough instances of being riled up by some folks copying content, so I am instituting a set of tactics that we at 2IIM are going to follow. Those of you who worry about similar issues should read this seriously.

DMCA notices and Youtube Copyright Violation Reports matter.
Thus far I have always reached out to channel owners, blog runners, content distributors and pointed out to them that they are hosting some copyrighted content. DMCA notifications can be made to get a page de-indexed. Youtube now takes copyright violations seriously - three strikes and the channel is put on hold for 3 months. I am going to file a series of Youtube Copyright violations over the next few days/weeks/months, so those of you who have our content should probably do something about it pronto. No more warnings to owners; from now on I will just file copyright violation reports. I plan to employ people to do this and I plan to ask for a price to withdraw any copyright violation report in order fund this recruitment.

Naming and Shaming is also an option
I am considering creating pages on 2IIM website where I plan to put Educators name, links to social pages, and screenshots of copied content. Some of the folks who have copied our content are either B-School grads or NIT grads. Almost all employers these days google every name that they recruit. So, now let me see if you continue to be flippant about plagiarism.

If you have copied 2IIM content, you can take it for granted that some form of timer has already begun. So far, I have been inordinately kind to folks who have stolen content. I have even reached out to a few to talk sense into them. But very few have apologized and taken down the content. Funnily enough, a few said Sorry but did not take down the content.

I was thinking that my hands were tied because the legal options were unappealing. But I think if I start naming folks with violation-details and taking down Youtube channels, the game might get to be a little bit more even. I am tired of folks feigning ignorance with me.

Some battles are worth fighting. For us at 2IIM, we have taken this decision that we are going to fight this IP protection battle. We have had a lot of people telling us that “Kuch nahin hone wala hai. You do your thing and forget about this.” Well, nothing might come out of it, but I will sleep well at night knowing I threw the kitchen sink at it. For that alone, this battle is worthwhile.