Why Would LSAC Release the Test to Those Who Took it? Forum

[Diiizzzzoooo]

I don't understand. What is stopping anyone from making them available on the web? Is this a recent implementation? I was pretty shocked to see that I could download the whole test from December.

[Diiizzzzoooo]

Just to clarify, because 4 people have already PM'd me, when I logged into LSAC to view my score, one of the .pdf links was a download of the entire test from December. I did NOT get it online, nor do I know of any links to websites or networks that have it. I was just wondering why LSAC does this, because it seems counterintuitive considering their strict warnings against reproduction of test materials.

[Sandro]

I don't understand. What is stopping anyone from making them available on the web? Is this a recent implementation? I was pretty shocked to see that I could download the whole test from December.

They will be available to buy soon, and who really wants to go around distributing LSAT tests ? That wouldnt look to good getting caught, considering most people who take the LSAT want to go to law school...

[joebloe]

LSAC makes a fortune off licensing the old PTs to prep companies and sales of prep books. Evidently this income is much more than the cost of making new test questions.

And aggressive copyright enforcement is going to work a lot better with the "future lawyers" population given what a serious black mark the phrase, "unlawfully appropriated copyrighted test materials" is from a C&F perspective.

[Diiizzzzoooo]

I don't understand. What is stopping anyone from making them available on the web? Is this a recent implementation? I was pretty shocked to see that I could download the whole test from December.

They will be available to buy soon, and who really wants to go around distributing LSAT tests ? That wouldnt look to good getting caught, considering most people who take the LSAT want to go to law school...

Whether or not anyone wants to distribute LSAT tests doesn't matter. The point is they can. Plus, it isn't exactly a high-risk proposition to upload a .pdf file on the internet.

[joebloe]

I don't understand. What is stopping anyone from making them available on the web? Is this a recent implementation? I was pretty shocked to see that I could download the whole test from December.

They will be available to buy soon, and who really wants to go around distributing LSAT tests ? That wouldnt look to good getting caught, considering most people who take the LSAT want to go to law school...

Whether or not anyone wants to distribute LSAT tests doesn't matter. The point is they can. Plus, it isn't exactly a high-risk proposition to upload a .pdf file on the internet.

Are you serious? I totally wouldn't put it past LSAC to digitally watermark every PDF with your LSAC number or some encoded version of it.

[KevinP]

LSAC will be selling the preptests soon anyway. They simply offer it as a convenience because the test is disclosed as par the agreement when you pay to take the test.

I don't understand. What is stopping anyone from making them available on the web?

Nothing. That's why there are a lot of pretests already available on the internet and most of them were photo-scanned. LSAC isn't stupid, anyone willing to distribute the materials via pdfs can just as well photo-scan the materials and post them online. LSAC trying to stop pirating by not disclosing the test materials would be just as foolish as the RIAA implementing copyright protection mechanisms.

Is this a recent implementation? I was pretty shocked to see that I could download the whole test from December.

No.

[Diiizzzzoooo]

Are you serious? I totally wouldn't put it past LSAC to digitally watermark every PDF with your LSAC number or some encoded version of it.

I thought it would be fairly obvious that I was talking about scanning a simple page of black and white text.

[KevinP]

Are you serious? I totally wouldn't put it past LSAC to digitally watermark every PDF with your LSAC number or some encoded version of it.

Interesting, I'm on a Unix machine so I ran the strings command on the PDF and it seems to contain an encrypted ID at the very bottom. I don't know enough about the PDF format to say whether this an internal PDF mechanism, a unique ID to the tests, or a unique ID to the PDF file itself (hence tracing the file back to the LSAC account). I strongly suspect it is unique to the PDF file though.

[Pleasye]

I don't understand. What is stopping anyone from making them available on the web? Is this a recent implementation? I was pretty shocked to see that I could download the whole test from December.

They're going to sell them soon so people will have access and the ability to illegally give them out on the internet anyway.

This is not a recent implementation at all.

[fosterp]

lsac is a non profit so squeezing every penny of earnings isn't exactly a top priority. Yes they make it easy to distribute copyrighted materials, and yes its not hard to find these on the internet. But is it such a problem that lsac is no longer making enough money through other sources to cover the cost of running the organizations? Probably not.

When you compare the problem of a whole lot of test takers being really annoyed that they cannot review the test that essentially determines how their career may play out to the problem of easily being able to illegally distribute the test (something that will probably happen ANYWAY regardless of how easy it is), the former probably outweighs the latter.