Students Sue Anti-Plagiarism Service 713
jazzbazzfazz writes "It seems that some students in Virginia are not happy with the anti-plagiarism service Turnitin. The company checks prose submitted by its customers for signs that it has been copied in whole or part by comparing it to a large database of works that it maintains. Trouble is, it also adds the submitted prose to its files and stores it for use by the company in future scans, which the students feel is illegal use of their copyrighted materials. I think they've got an excellent case, especially since they seem to have prepared for this eventuality: they're A-students, never been accused of plagiarism, and they formally copyrighted their papers prior to their submission to Turnitin."
that system is pretty flawed. (Score:5, Informative)
Totally agree (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Uh... no. (Score:4, Informative)
Now, around here it IS fairly common for clauses specifying ownership of IP to be present for faculty and research staff, but not for students.
Re:Where is your homework ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Formally copyrighted? (Score:5, Informative)
Going nowhere fast? (Score:1, Informative)
Here's the relevant section of the Turnitin usage terms:
"Your License to Us: Unless otherwise indicated in this Site, including our Privacy Policy or in connection with one of our services, any communications or material of any kind that you e-mail, post, or transmit through the Site (excluding personally identifiable information of students and any papers submitted to the Site), including, questions, comments, suggestions, and other data and information (your "Communications") will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary. You grant iParadigms a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable license to reproduce, transmit, display, disclose, and otherwise use your Communications on the Site or elsewhere for our business purposes. We are free to use any ideas, concepts, techniques, know-how in your Communications for any purpose, including, but not limited to, the development and use of products and services based on the Communications. [bold & italic emphasis mine]
The bold part is what will kill the suit (assuming it predates the filing of the suit), but the italic part is pretty scary too: if your submission is something involving an invention, you just granted Turnitin an unlimited license to use your idea for any purpose.
Horrible system (Score:5, Informative)
To make matters worse a large number of professors are starting to use this and treat it like the gospel. I know several students accused now of plagiarism, falsely, because of this system.
I am lucky this semester and have 2 professors who realize this and in a move to stop plagiarism have taken other actions, such as asking us to turn in all of our rough drafts and print/copy out our sources and attach it all to our final work, something you can still cheat on but are much less likely too.
Personally I don't know anyone who has ever cheated on a paper. I suppose with some of the fluff classes and electives some may have because those classes are a low priority, but by and large plagiarism is no where near as big a problem as these people make it out to be. High school maybe, but not in higher education.
Re:Where is your homework ? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Uh... no. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Formally copyrighted? (Score:5, Informative)
If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
Re:Formally copyrighted? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Going nowhere fast? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uh... no. (Score:3, Informative)
You cannot even be party to a contract until you achieve majority.
Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
As to the bit in the story blurb about them formally copyrighting their papers prior to submission to Turnitin, that isn't at all clear to me from scanning the article. What is much more probable is that the students formally registered their copyrights prior to filing the lawsuit, which is a requirement for suing on a copyright in the U.S. (Your work is automatically protected by copyright law, even without a copyright notice these days, but in order to sue for infringement you have to register your copyright.)
Re:Why woudn't they want their work cataloged (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Say what?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Terms of Service (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Informative)
The 'harm' is violation of 17 USC 106(1) - their exclusive right to copy their works. You don't have to hurt the owner financially to violate copyright law - financial impact is part of damages, not part of guilt.
As far as damages, copyright violation doesn't have to involve actual monetary damages, there are also statutory damages for where the actual damages are not significant (see 17 USC 504(c)).
Turnitin.com Facts - Here's the TRUTH (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.essayfraud.org/turnitin_john_barrie.ht
If you can STILL support Turnitin after reading the facts, you probably need psychological intervention.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Formally copyrighted? (Score:3, Informative)
Excerpt from Copyright office basics: [copyright.gov]
Re:Horrible system (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, like every tool, turnitin.com can be used incorrectly. But likewise mistakes can be made without turnitin.com. It happens sometimes that a student gets accused of plagiarism because the paper looks too good. For instance, if the student was slacking on earlier papers--or just less good at that part of the course--and then hands in a really good paper, the professor is likely to be quite suspicious. If the professor relies more on turnitin.com, then there may be fewer accusations based simply on the paper looking too good. (The downside of that is that some plagiarized papers well get through.)
As for frequency, I catch about one plagiarist per one hundred students. I suspect there are probably one or two there that I don't catch.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:3, Informative)
I know that some universities put a claim on most of your school-related IP creation hidden in the recesses of a document that you never sign. I'll be interested to see that challenged, since when you join a university you're typically agreeing to abide by their student handbook, but you DON'T typically see the IP statement.
Re:Probably not fair use. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Terms of Service (Score:3, Informative)
For public school, you can't choose whether to attend or compare policies between schools. In this case it is the government stealing intellectual property of its citizens. I applaud the kids for standing up to it.
Who wants PROOF about Turnitin's thievery? (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.essayfraud.org/turnitin_john_barrie.ht
If you can STILL support Turnitin after reading the facts, you probably need psychological intervention.
Re:First Post (Score:2, Informative)
Re:First Post (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Formally copyrighted? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How did the studies define cheating? (Score:3, Informative)
McCabe and Trevino (1993) apparently listed twelve cheating behaviors. The only behavior I'd call less than obviously cheat is that "copying a few sentences of material from a published source and not footnoting them." The rest are all things like copying an exam, plagiarism, getting access to an exam before it's administered, etc.
Oh, and the study ONLY covers college careers. No high school or below is included in the questions.
They find that overall, 78% of students reported at least one incident of one of those behaviors in college. (At honor-code schools it was 58% and at non-honor code schools it was 82%.) Cheating on exams is 52% overall, 31% at honor-code schools and 60% elsewhere. Copied homework assignments (which I'd personally lump in WITH plagiarism) are 42%, 25%, and 50% respectively. Plagiarism is 48%, 31%, and 57%.
There are other studies cited in the first chapter of the above-mentioned book if anyone is curious. The McCabe and Trevino study just seems to be the best-performed and the most reported in the book.
Re:Uh... no. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Government can't take your property? (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, given that sort of SCOTUS ruling, receiving a grade may be considered just compensation. I'd call that sort of thing extortion myself, but hey I'm just a student. What do I know.