Slashdot Mirror
Fair Use Affirmed In Turnitin Case
Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turnitin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, 'denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It could also be argued that if a student set up a service where they sold copies of their class work for other students to turn in as their own, and for educators to buy copies to identify those students attempting to copy, then Turnitin would be directly infringing on their copyright. The plagiarism in this case would not be illegal, since purchasers have been given permission by the author to claim credit for the work. Would Turnitin still be considered fair use?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
This is an example of a tool that is far too powerful for the people intended to use it and therefore distructive. I remember getting chewed out by a teacher because I had a 2% match on a 10 page paper. Things like "that is" "before that" ect. were interpreted as plagiarism because somebody on the face of the earth had written them before. Oh course the dumbass teacher saw the 2% and failed me on the paper, which I had to fight all the way to the top of the school, where thankfully somebody bothered to check it out and realize I was being burned at the stake. For my remaining years I was considered somebody to watch thanks to this service and the brain dead people who use it.