A summary of criminal law, a summary of anatomy, an explanatory video of the stats course: this can be found on Wirenotes, a platform for exchanging notes and videos made for and by students. 50,000 documents are found there, which represents 10 million page views per year. It is an educational tool for the founders of this start-up which has existed since 2016, but also a commercial tool for many teachers.
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Asked about La Première, Élise Degrave, professor at UNamur, specializing in digital law, recalls that exchanging lessons or summaries before exams has been done for a long time, on paper or on Facebook afterwards: “We have always encouraged him and we continue to encourage him because it is very important that there is solidarity at the university. But the problem with Wirenotes is that it involves money. So concretely, there are students who pay to access videos that relate to the courses”.
“There are students who get paid to exploit the courses. And then there are there, behind the shareholders of Wirenotes who make money by exploiting the work of the students and the professors. What is surprising, c “It’s that we don’t give our consent for this. We are not even informed of this exploitation of our courses. And yet, this system fundamentally conflicts with very important values at the university, starting with: mutual aid must remain free. The fact that access to knowledge and access to educational tools must also remain open and free. The school fees are already expensive enough as it is. And then finally we do not steal the work of others and a fortiori you don’t make money from stolen work”.
“Wirenotes passes its responsibility on to the students”
According to her, this poses a danger for the students on a legal level, “because Wirenotes shifts its responsibility onto the students. So, to make a long story short, our courses are protected by so-called intellectual property rules, just like, for example, Stromae’s songs are protected by these rules, but these are rules that are complicated and therefore students don’t do not realize very well that when they post a summary on the Internet without the professor’s agreement, they are very often illegal. And yet, Wirenotes certainly knows that these rules are misunderstood by students, but they really seek out students with almost daily emails, or even sometimes by telephone, and they are sold dreams. One of my students showed me an email in which it was indicated: ‘Look if you make us 50 videos paid 40 euros per video before June, you will have 2000 euros for your holidays, it’s still great’ “.
“So there is really an incitement to fraud by Wirenotes towards students. And yet, Wirenotes, for its part, has foreseen everything since in its general conditions, it provides that it is in no way responsible for the violation of intellectual property on its platform. And so, in the event of a legal dispute, for example, the responsibility lies with the students, including the costs of the trial. However, such a trial could take place soon since Wirenotes itself has initiated the judicial maximum with the universities since they recently sent a formal notice by notary. And so the match is on”.
Students have the illusion that they can pass their year by downloading a summary that is made by someone from the course
Wirenotes considers itself to be an aid to success. “They present themselves as such, but from what I see, and I train about 1,000 students a year, and I see that it’s not a tool to help you succeed, it’s more of a tool to help failure. Because with this system of synthesis, of questions accessible massively and easily in a few clicks, the students have the illusion that they can pass their year by downloading like that a synthesis which is made by someone from the course. And these syntheses, I have reviewed several hundred. They are often of poor quality. It’s difficult to make a good summary and they are often full of mistakes.
“Besides, I see it here again in this exam session, there are loads of questions that are available on this platform. So many questions that students tend to go and study the questions rather than the course. And when ‘they arrive at the exam, they see that in the questions, there are similarities with the questions on Wirenotes, they don’t realize that it’s not the same question because we change our questions from year to year and therefore they answer questions from previous years. And they fail their exams. I even think that there is a link between the existence and the multiplication of this type of platform and the decrease in the level at university. It is also worrying on the pedagogical level”.