Students Settle With TurnItIn In Copyright Case 208
An anonymous reader writes "With the deadline for a Supreme Court appeal rapidly approaching, the students who sued TurnItIn.com for issues surrounding copyright infringement reached a settlement with the site's company on Friday. Now the search goes out for any student who has a paper which is being held by TurnItIn that they did not upload themselves. If your teacher uploaded a paper and ran a TurnItIn report without your permission, I bet the students' attorney would like to hear from you."
how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk to your professor, opt out (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, each professor that I had that used this service specifically mentioned it the first day and it was written in the syllabus. I brought up an objection with each professor and they had no issue with me opting out and them presumably just googling various sentences in my papers. It wasn't an issue, the professors agreed with me when I voiced my objections about the privacy, copyright ownership, data retention, presumption of innocence, etc. The only reason that they used it was because the department head dictated it.
Exercise your rights. It's your paper. Remember, professors are people just like you. While they may believe you to be paranoid, they won't hold it against you if you voice your concerns with logic, passion, and conviction.
But is this REALLY copyright infringement? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a way it's too bad that this didn't go to trial. Back when I was working in the Academic sector there was occasionally firestorms between students and faculty about this subject.
The major university I worked for (which will remain unnamed obviously) had it in the student contract (or code or bylaws or whatever) that the copyright of anything turned in by a student was owned by the university. I am guessing many universities do the same thing.
So it would have been interesting to see if that sort of fine print clause in a student agreement with a state institution would of held up. If it does I would think that the student didn't really have a case.
I had an issue similar to this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who is really hurt by such services? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Ok, just file a complaint. I'm sure that semi-literate guy did something wrong enough to slap them down."
I love how the Americans think that suing everybody is the best solution for every problem.
That illness has a self-perpetuating nature, as does all aspects or expressions of "us against them." To sum it up, when you find yourself born and raised in an environment in which most recipients of most legitimate complaints are insensate and unreceptive, the "force of the law" nature of legal remedies become the only undeniable way to call attention to even the slightest injustice. All it really should take is for a person to stand up, with understanding, and call out those things which need to be addressed, to shine a light upon them and remove the shadows of excuses and other utilitarian purposes under which they are sheltered. By comparison, what we have now is not an underlying acknowledgement of human dignity or a celebration of harmony, but the primitive desire to avoid punishment.
It's such a precious thing, such an exquisite privilege, to put the lie to this pattern by nothing other than your living example of a higher order.
Re:Talk to your professor, opt out (Score:3, Interesting)
You do not have to, and should not have to, opt out of your creative works being infringed.
You are absolutely right. This should be an opt in service with waiver or contract, unfortunately that's not the case. Complaining about it isn't going to fix it unless you can provide pressure to the people higher up in the food chain or by legal means. I was, however, a poor college student so I could only fight my own battles.
If the department dictated that the professor should take your laptop, sell it on eBay, and give the money to some third party corporation, would you see the professor as having done no wrong? This corporation is building its cashflow on your creative work, without license. If they want to come to you and negotiate a deal to use your creative work in their business model, fine. Until then, it is yours.
The main problem with this is, like another poster put it, every school has bylaws/student contracts/whatever o specifically say that they can do whatever they want with your work. While I completely and totally disagree with this, unless it's overturned in court or changed, it will continue to be the "law of the land." If they had provisions in said contract that you signed to take your possessions, then there's nothing you can do about it except challenge it.
I am not a revolutionary. I cared about my own work and acted to protect it, if everyone else cared as much then this wouldn't be a problem. This corporation is making money on others work, not mine. It is not my fault that the system is flawed, it is my problem though. It is not my problem that others do not see it our way, though it maybe my fault for not speaking out. At the end of the day, I can only act to protect myself, the fact that others are so apathetic or obedient to the system there isn't much I can do given time and money constraints. Though if someone organized a protest or petition drive to overturn this, I would certainly support it.
Did they copy or distribute? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems like they ought to be suing the teacher for distributing and/or reproducing the paper, not the company. As I understand it, the company merely received the copies and stored them. Or does the company allow other teachers to download potentially similar papers if there is a match flagged? Its the same argument about downloading music not being the issue, but rather allowing others to download it from you.
Use judo (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of fighting a big company yourself, just direct the weight of a big company to do itself in.
1. Write a paper. A really, really good paper. A research paper.
2. Get it accepted by a big journal. A really, really big journal like Nature.
3. Now somehow get this sucker added to Turn-it-in's database. Maybe you wrote the paper as a thesis and the prof needs to check it. Whatever.
4. Let the journal know that Turn-it-in has your paper. The paper to which they hold exclusive rights.
5. Pop some popcorn and sit back and let Nature do a little "Hulk Smash!".
6. The End.
(of course there would be several key problems in carrying out such a plan, but it would be delightfully amusing if you could pull it off)
Re:I had an issue similar to this. (Score:3, Interesting)
The revenge of the geeks. Students now have to shrink wrap their essays with an EULA saying that by opening you have agreed to the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Use license.
I do hope you included the attribution required clause!