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Student Fights University Over Plagiarism-Detector

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the can't-fight-the-man dept.

(Maly) writes "CBC is reporting that MCGill University has lost a fight to have students first turn papers over to an anti-cheating website before handing them in to professors. The student refused to hand in three assignments to the service, received a zero on those assignments, then fought the ruling. The story doesn't have many specifics, such as the venue of the fight (court or some internal university tribunal), but it is an interesting case. As a recent graduate of the social sciences, I find that practice appalling. The student is right to refuse, as he gets no compensation from the service for making money off his original work (assuming it was original!!). Although I don't like the idea, and I'm glad I never went through it, I suppose its analogue would be mandatory drug tests in sports."

4 of 949 comments (clear)

  1. their crawler by Neophytus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's been poking about a few times, and at least it appears to obey robots.txt and use anti-hammer tricks unlike another IP rights company (albeit tagged to another market altogether) cyveillance who use false user agents to hide their activity, don't look for robots.txt and can sometimes hammer your entire website off the web if you have a low cap (say daily rather than monthly). Kudos to people who build polite bots. Have they been crawling your site?

  2. Re:As a professor.... by PrionPryon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I disagree with your second statement. Two points, one a niggling one and another that is less so. a) The system doesn't work against paper mills because the output of a paper mill is new content, that's why it is a mill. b) Students have a decent arguement in saying that they own the material within a paper they write (an original one) and the fact that the system indexes their content if it is deemed legitimate (assuming there is no option to opt out) means the company is bolstering its product without due compensation. The papers i write are my property. They are given to a professor for a grade but even the professor does not have a right to show it as an example without my permission. Reproduction without prior consent, and due compensation, is listed in the cover of most (scientific) journals.

  3. copyright issue: the company keeps the essays by dankelley · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I am a professor and I certainly am in favour of catching cheaters. But I have a question. Do these students sign a copyright form permitting the company to archive the essays? And, if so, surely the form would not hold up in court, since it would have been coerced. (Sign this form or fail this course.)

    Why might students not want their essays stored in a company database?

    1. Good writers might fear that their ideas, or even their words, could be stolen (by all sorts of low-life: disgruntled/underpaid company members, malicious/political hackers, underpaid/jealous professors, ...).
    2. Bad writers who are otherwise on a fast track to success might not want folks ever to see their bad writing. Imagine a presidential candidate who wrote total drivel in his undergraduate years ... how hard would it be for an opponent to get that drivel and publish it?

    Sure, the company could claim the storage was secure against hackers, and they could claim that no employee would ever sell the essays, but any /.er knows that such claims would be hard to trust.

    There are probably technological solutions to this problem, involving encryption keys. Folks on /. might have some good ideas on that. For example, how much would it cost, 30 years from now, for a presidential campaign to buy CPU time to break a key that is secure today?

    PS. I noticed that the original posting had just one source, and so if folks would like to read more, they might like to check out the Globe and Mail newspaper website for more discussion, including of students' thoughts.

  4. Web Usage Stats by velkr0 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I have never actually had to use Turn-It-In at my university, the University of Western Ontario, even tough it is used there. However, many instructors still requested electronic copies be sent to them.
    Last term the instructor wanted a electronic copy of everyone's essays since it allowed him to read the papers on his laptop during trips (he was a part time instructor, who travelled a lot)

    Anyway, one day I determined he submitted the papers to Turn-It-In, simply by reviewing my usage on my web site, and noticed many hits from Turn-It-In's crawler. I figured it was picking up on my name, which was included in the header of every page on my essay and which is heavily plastered on my web site.

    This made me feel like a criminal!! Mainly since I was not told about submitting the paper to Turn-It-In. I never would use someone else's work with out citing it and didn't have much to fear, but just the idea of missing one or two footnotes, was enough to get the nerves going. If I personally had to submit the papers and I was fully aware of the process, I would have ensured every source was cited.
    These kids at McGill should have nothing to fear and should not be concerned about the originality of their work, especially if they ARE informed about the process before hand.

    Moral of the story.
    • Have a web site.
    • Review your stats.
    • and never trust your instructors.