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."

Comments

Re:Why woudn't they want their work cataloged

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Well then, why don't you check the box that says: ( ) Please include me in your database.

And leave other people's papers alone, your feeling don't matter.

Though, on a related note... How does this service compare to Google's book searching thing? Didn't google argue that since they just archive the books for indexing purposes, it was ok. Though might be slightly different as those books were published and part of a library.