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Fair Use Affirmed In Turnitin Case

Posted by timothy on from the sensing-sensibility dept.

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.'"

6 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Plagiarism takes yet another hit by Random+BedHead+Ed · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is extremely bad news for lazy students everywhere. Won't someone please think of the plagiarists? :)

    1. Re:Plagiarism takes yet another hit by pwizard2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not so much laziness that I'm concerned about. Students who plagarize deserve to be punished. The real issue is that if Turnitin can make a profit of of other people's work under fair use, then that basically means that students have no IP right and that students are guilty until proven innocent. Back when I was a student, I saw the use of turnitin as a major lack of respect towards me, and I refused to submit my work to it on principle. Since I had never done anything wrong in regards to plagarism, most of my instructors understood and didn't hold it against me.

      --
      "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
    2. Re:Plagiarism takes yet another hit by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey I found 3 references so it must be true that this is extremely bad news for lazy students everywhere.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    3. Re:Plagiarism takes yet another hit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the instructor is reading my paper with the intent of 'diff'-ing it against previous works, no matter what the mechanism, then the trust has already been destroyed. The paper should be read for content, clarity, etc., and if, during that process, something jumps out as familiar or unusual for a certain student's typical work, then there's grounds for further investigation.

      By analogy: Let's say girls have cheated on me in the past, and I decided that I would really prefer that didn't occur again, so I'm now regularly searching my new girlfriend's e-mail/phone for incriminating messages. I'd say our relationship is already in a sad state, and it barely even matters if she's actually cheating or not. The trust was broken long before I logged on---and not because of anything she did. That's TurnItIn.

      On the other hand, if I just grab her phone to make a call and find a risque incoming text, then I might have a reason for further exploration now, but prior to this incident, I believed her to be faithful/innocent and our relationship was better. Could I have lessened this heartache if I had taken the hypervigilant/assumed-cheater route? To some extent, but you can see how this approach destroys any hope of a trust-based relationship, even in the case where my girlfriend is trustworthy.

      I've chosen an emotionally-charged scenario (love) to illustrate the point; the trust between student and teachers serves a more subtle purpose. And yes, I'm arguing that it's okay to let a few crooks slip through if grabbing them all means implicitly accusing everyone. I just don't buy that you gain a whole lot by going to all this effort to catch plagiarists (they tend to catch themselves eventually). But you do lose something . . . something that's about as hard to put into words as it is important.

  2. Plagiarism takes yet another hit by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is extremely bad news for lazy students everywhere. Won't someone please think of the plagiarists? :)

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  3. My experience with Turnitin.com by WiiVault · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.