Students Settle With TurnItIn In Copyright Case

An anonymous reader writes "With the deadline for a Supreme Court appeal rapidly approaching, the students who sued TurnItIn.com for issues surrounding copyright infringement reached a settlement with the site's company on Friday. Now the search goes out for any student who has a paper which is being held by TurnItIn that they did not upload themselves. If your teacher uploaded a paper and ran a TurnItIn report without your permission, I bet the students' attorney would like to hear from you."

Comments

Who is really hurt by such services?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

If I choose to torpedo my own future by electing to use a paper uploaded to turnitin, the only one hurt is me.

Or is it?

How many people with tons of promise got turned down/away because of their inability to express themselves in some random test?

In the company of fellow nerds here on Slashdot, I have no qualms revealing this, but I sucked at written essays. But my intelligence isn't proved in some one-time essay. It's all about how I create real solutions for real problems. It's never about some random problem that some dumbfuck in some ivory tower created.

Choosing to bypass testing is the right answer, no matter what the question.

Hilarious

[wasmoke]

FTFA:
"The lawsuit filed against Turnitin's parent company, iParadigms LLC, seeks $150,000 for each of six papers written by the students....'This case is not about money, and we don't expect to get that.'"
Not about the money? ORLY? Do you honestly think these high school kids give two s**ts about their little papers?

Re:Talk to your professor, opt out

[dkf]

Exercise your rights. It's your paper. Remember, professors are people just like you. While they may believe you to be paranoid, they won't hold it against you if you voice your concerns with logic, passion, and conviction.

Also remember these things:

1. Your chances of making anything off any paper or code you write for a course (other than by using them to pass the course) are essentially nil. Almost all student work is really not very good by comparison with people doing it professionally; the additional experience shows. This doesn't apply to people in grad school, but they should be thinking for themselves anyway. It also doesn't apply to final year dissertations; they're sometimes interesting and worth taking further, if the student is willing to stick around.
2. You don't have the right to graduate. Your professors will definitely want you do so - we don't like people failing - but if you insist on being bone idle, utterly crap, or a cheat, why shouldn't you get found out and kicked out?

Yes, I do teach. No, most student work submitted for my course isn't reusable for anything, not even the really impressive stuff. Yes, I fail the lazy, the stupid and the cheats, and I do it without the slightest care in the world. And no, kicking up a fuss over this doesn't make me think more highly of you; it makes me more suspicious that you're trying to sneak work in twice. But if you're trying to learn, I'm on your side, even if you're having problems; an honest success (at whatever level is apt for your ability) is the best outcome possible.

(I also happen to work at a university that makes turning over copyright of submitted coursework a condition of acceptance as an undergraduate student. If you don't like it, there are other universities; piss off.)