billso.com

The Associated Press reports that the Fuqua School of Business is punishing 34 full-time MBA students who cheated on a take-home final exam and other assignments.

The school posts its honor code in all classrooms and on the web.

Nine Duke students will be expelled. That decision will cost each expelled student US$50,000 in tuition, books, and laptop computer fees. Duke University did not release the students’ names or the name of the professor who gave the exam because of FERPA requirements.

The students can appeal the university’s decision before May 17. All students were allowed to finish their current courses.

I haven’t been able to determine if Duke faculty use TurnItIn.com to check student assignments.

Here are two posts from Boing Boing and an article from Newsweek that describe what may happen n May 15 if the US Congress doesn’t act soon.

The short story: the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) wants to collect royalties for every recorded song played on Internet radio stations. The old rates were calculated on each Internet station’s revenue if the station was a small operation.

The new royalty rates are on a per-song, per-listener basis, and are high enough to drive most of the small and independent Internet radio sites out of business on May 15. On that day, stations will be retroactively charged for the royalties owed since January 1, 2006.

Approximately 72 million Americans listen to an internet radio station each month.