Digital Rights Fraud Policy

Oxbridge Notes has a zero-tolerance approach to digital rights fraud and we track and prosecute digital rights infringers by using a set of advanced tracking technologies built into our notes files.

The usual criminal fine for sending the notes to a friend is in line with movie and MP3 infringement laws and you can expect a fine of about £1,800 per module. Furthermore, you, as the original copyright infringer, will be liable for additional damages if the person you forward notes to sent those notes on to another person - and if that person sent those notes onto a third party these fines can add up surprisingly quickly.

Students with intentions to go into the legal profession should be extra cautious about copyright infringement since a conviction of digital rights theft usually bars a person from every working as a lawyer - meaning your legal education was wasted.

Digital Stenography

In the past we only watermarked our documents with background photos containing the text:

Property of Oxbridge Notes. This document is licensed for sole use of [email protected]".

The problem with these watermarks was that an IT-savvy criminal could remove them by painstakingly going through each document. With the watermark removed they could circulate the notes document amongst their friends.

To combat this type of fraud we now use digital stenography techniques to place invisible watermarks that are almost impossible to remove, let alone detect in the documents. If we discover that the documents we sold you turned up on another person's computer we can decode these digital watermarks and we will have incriminating information about the original leaker of said documents, providing decisive evidence for a prosecution with heavy financial penalties. Digital stenography is also detectable within print-outs of our files.

Read more about how digital stenography techniques work.

Tracking Pixels

How does Oxbridge Notes know when a user passes our documents to a friend who did not purchase the notes? We use a technology called tracking pixels that automatically notifies our servers every time a document is viewed. This pixel sends us the original purchaser's email address (hidden by the digital watermark) and a package of information about the person currently reading the document - including their IP address (which can be used to trace their home address), and further information about their computer. If, for example, one document had been circulated to five PCs connecting to the internet at separate IP addresses we will detect this anomaly and have strong evidence to launch a criminal investigation against the original purchaser.

Read more about how tracking pixels work.