Piracy vs. stealing
 

Sixteen year-old Steve Geluso was failed by his English teacher for choosing to distinguish piracy from stealing in an essay.

"Geluso, an 'A' student, recently completed an in-class exit exam for his Language Arts class. The goal of the exit exam was to write a comparative essay on a topic of the student's choice. Being a student who enjoys a challenge, he wrote an essay contrasting piracy with stealing.

"His teacher failed him, saying there was no difference between the two and that he was "splitting hairs". Other teachers who read his essay said that he did well from an organizational and technical standpoint, but because his teacher felt that there was no difference between piracy and stealing, she gave him an 'F' because she disapproved of the content of his essay.

You can read it all at: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/11/piracy_vs_stealing_t.html

While it does seem like splitting hairs, he did make a few spelling & grammatical errors ('effect'/'affect', his tense shifts quite a bit, etc.). It certainly was not an easy read. I'll admit that, if I were the instructor, I would take points off for the topic selection, too. The distinctions the author draws between defining piracy and thievery seem a bit more opinion-based rather than factual (especially his retarded equations). Strictly speaking (disregarding monetary value), both are just other terms used in place of stealing. Now that I've read it even more thoroughly, it's probably deserving of a lower grade: grammatical errors (despite what his other teachers said), spelling errors, hypothetical comparison and theoretical musing rather than using solid factual information (other than referencing Wilco lol). It's like he was trying to use a paper as a soapbox, and he just picked the wrong comparison. D+

It doesn't mean anything if he's an honors student. I remember many classmates in my honors classes when i was 16 (sophomore in HS), and just b/c they were in the classes doesn't mean they were always good writers. He seems to make the case that piracy is alright. It's not. Honestly, I agree with the instructor's assessment.

Well, I wouldn't have given him anything higher than a C just on the grammar, sentence structure and spelling problems throughout. Subject/verb disagreement was a big problem.

If the point of the exercise was to show comparison, he didn't do a very good job. He didn't really provide anything factual to back up his premise. In the end, the artist is still losing what little cut he would get if a person downloaded rather than bought his album. I have my own opinions about piracy, but they wouldn't cloud the fact that this kid just did a piss-poor job on the technical aspects of the exercise.

lol that's exactly what i was trying to say... just not so succinctly, i suppose