Cheating Services and Copyright

[kniedzw]

So, in my daily web-browsing, I found this Washington Post article linked from Slashdot. The short form is that a few high school students are suing Turnitin for copyright infringement, and I think they have a legitimate argument

Comments

[novalis]

Checking for plagiarism is fair use. The copies are the minimum necessary to perform the check. So it's possible that under Kelly v Arribasoft or Sega v Accolade, Turnitin would also be considered fair use.

[kniedzw]

I don't buy that checking for plagiarism is fair use. It's a for-profit service, and they're keeping an entire copy of an otherwise copyrighted work on their servers.

Care to expand on your assertion that it's fair use?

[novalis]

I see it as a form of criticism, actually

[kniedzw]

Interesting take on the situation. I hadn't thought of it as criticism, though I'm not sure that the analogy would hold under close scrutiny. I'd have to mull it over for a while.

I think my own hope that Turnitin takes a hit here is rooted in my dislike of the rise of Simson Garfinkel's "Database Nation," paired with my disconnect from the current academic climate. I think the students certainly have what might amount to a valid argument, though the ultimate public good should be what decides this situation.

I am somewhat taken aback at the presumption of guilt inherent in requiring all students to submit their papers to Turnitin, and at the very least, I think there should be alternate methods by which a student can prove that they have not plagiarized a work that they are submitting for a grade. One that does not have a prohibitive cost in terms of time, money, or effort.On the other hand, the entire work must be available in Turnitin's database in its original form in order for manual checks to corroborate machine review.
...

[unforth]

I think they have a pretty legit argument, too. Sounds like the company is going well beyond what constitutes fair use...

[ratmmjess]

I teach Turnitin to faculty here, and have for about five years now.

I've been waiting since the beginning to see what would happen if some students decided to sue for copyright infringement.

Of course, what's really going on here is that the students want to cheat and want to prevent professors from checking up on them. Nonetheless, and IANAL, I think the students might well have a case. On the other hand, there's this and this.

On the gripping hand, there's the question about what the university's Student Handbook/Student Guidelines requires of the students. I am only a private citizen, but students who attend this school are contractually obligated (and it says this in the school's Student Guidelines) to present their i.d.s to me when I ask them to. If they don't, they can be expelled. Are the suing students required by their school's Student Handbook to submit to plagiarism prevention of this sort?

I'll be *very* interested to see how this shakes out.

[kniedzw]

I don't entirely buy the argument in the Duke link that the only market being compromised is the research paper market. Specifically, rights for the paper's use in plagiarism databases could be at stake, and while such rights would be de facto fairly cheap, it's a valuation that could be calculated based on Turnitin's own revenues and assessment of their own database's value and size.

More to the point, I take issue that personal information, let alone copyrighted material, has been made so broadly available to the public sector. There are certainly some benefits to society, but I wonder at what cost to the individuals?

As an aside, the implication in the linked article is that these students don't want to cheat or facilitate cheating per se. Rather, they object to their work being used by a for-profit enterprise in a fashion that they do not construe as fair use. Mind you, these are all minors, so it'd be rather difficult to fact-check the lawyer's claims. ...but the overwhelming attitude of "us versus them" that I've seen

[novalis]

Specifically, rights for the paper's use in plagiarism databases could be at stake

This is a bit circular. If the fourth fair use factor is read this way, it will always cut against fair use, since if fair use is not found, one could always sell the rights to the particular use.

[kniedzw]

Circular or no, it's a valid argument. It might not be a particularly compelling one, but it's valid. :)

[ratmmjess]

From the article:

"Kevin Wade, that plaintiff's father, said he thinks schools should focus on teaching students cheating is wrong"

Dear sir: fuck off. WTF do you think we do? Students don't listen when we tell them cheating is wrong. That's why we have to use things like Turnitin to catch them.

God, I hate people.

[kniedzw]

Well, on that, at least, I agree with you 100%. He might as well tell schools that they should focus on teaching, rather than grading.

[bluegargantua]

I can see a couple of counter-arguments

[kniedzw]

All valid points. That said....

1. Most universities' policies are blurry in the area of copyright assignation at present, and this is a battle that has waged back and forth for years now, across multiple bits of technology, albeit mostly with faculty. Moreover, you can't say that public high schools that are using Turnitin have the same policies, and we are talking about high schools, at least in this case.
2. Well, yes, but there still is a value. ...and what if that database were to be sold? Its value would arguably be higher in the hands of a different owner, and I'm not sure if I want the legality of a database to be dependent on its stated purpose.
3. A definite point, but it misses the point that you should be able to opt out of this service.

...but you do hit some big points there that I can certainly see. We'll see how this pans out, I guess.