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Students Sue Anti-Plagiarism Service
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."
Last year a big group of people submitted rough drafts to our instructor, they were all run through the system. Then, we submitted our final papers, they were run through the system too, but the second time the class had 30 students that were shown to plagiarize. It really needs work, I understand what they are doing, but the implementation steps on a lot of toes.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
This really pisses me off. I did all that work and it gets submitted, without prior consent sometimes, to a database for a company to make a profit off of while I get nothing in return? Of course, it all depends on the university as well. For example, I'm doing a year abroad. It shocked me that before coming to this university, we had to basically sign over copyright to the university for anything we created while students here. Essentially, every single project or paper I have turned in for a grade to this university now belongs to them. I raised the issue with the director of the program and she looked at me as if I was some sort of freak because I actually like retaining the rights to any content I create, giving it out as I see fit.
Not like that at any school I've been to.
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.
It was copyrighted the day you fixed it to a tangible medium.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It ususally means having registered it with the government. The usual terminology is "registered copyright" rather than "formally", but other coverage makes it clear what they did.
As an English major (I type poorly so excuse typos) I can tell you first hand that Turnitin is horrid. Previous posts have talked about how submitting a draft and then your final shows your final as being plagiarized. But it's worse than that. It hits on common word usage, simple three word statements, hell even cliche statements that may be 2 words long, it marks them.
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.
...and they formally copyrighted their papers prior to their submission to Turnitin. What exactly does that mean? I was under the impression that the mere act of creating the work rendered it "copyrighted".From http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#cr:
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.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - Carl Sagan
Huh? The bold part is irrelevant to the lawsuit. The students are protesting the use of their papers not random communication with iParadigms. As such, the terms of service seem to clearly exclude student papers from the all-encompassing rights grab of the rest of the paragraph.
The problem with that is that the students aren't submitting anything to Turnitin - they aren't the "you" in the Turnitin usage terms and they are not party to those terms. The school and teachers are doing that. The students probably didn't give the school or teachers a license to do that, I'm guessing.
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.)
Have you ever actually used the service, or are you talking out of your ass?! As a high-school Senior who's been required to use this since my Sophomore year, I know how it works, and it's nothing like that: the teacher only checks the marked paper (e.g. what sections TurnItIn thinks are plagarized); the student is the one that submits the paper, through their account, to the service. Usually, said submitting is a requirement to actually receive any credit for the paper. (To see one of your papers marked up like that is actually really cool, though quite infuriating that they're using my work for massive profit. Not sure if it's illegal, or even if it should be, but annoying nonetheless.)
Omnes stulti sunt.
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)).
Maybe where you live, but not in the US. Go here for a collection of University policies on ownership of copyrights. You'll find few, if any, claim student works.
put the what in the where?
But follow your own link. You DO have to register your copyright to sue, and in order to receive statutory (as opposed to compensatory) damages, the registration must be within three months of publication, or prior to the infringement of the work.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.