Students Protest Turnitin.com 1038
StupidSexyFlanders writes "The Washington Post ran a story about students protesting their school's use of anti-plagiarism site Turnitin.com, which checks papers they've written against a database of 22 million other papers. From the article:
"Members of the new Committee for Students' Rights said they do not cheat or condone cheating. But they object to Turnitin's automatically adding their essays to the massive database, calling it an infringement of intellectual property rights."
Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?"
my school (Score:4, Interesting)
They win in my book.
Re:my school (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone (yes I live in backward Oklahoma, however Norman is somewhat educated) who was constantly in trouble for being different and difficult due to my overwhelming boredom with the monotonous teaching techniques used. I would frequently get in trouble for ignoring assignments, classwork, etc. to do what I wanted. The material taught in most High Schools could be learned by a student in 1/4 the time if the student is remotely intelligent.
My best High School teacher saw this. We would ad nauseaum go over Algebra and Trig in class. He would assign a significant amount of homework. However for those of us that understood the work, if our homework grade was less than our test grade, the test grade would replace it (if it were 90% or higher). I would call out my daily score of 0. Test day would come. I'd review the material in the book. I would make an A or B. Our homework was only 20% of our overall grade as well.
I've never seen a machine strip the creativity out of students faster than the Public School Systems of our country. Learning is a chore here, not an enjoyable endeavor for most. I would venture to guess that outside of the social aspect (learning how to interact with different people), public schools hinder our society more than assist it. It's time to scrap the system and start over.
Oh I had a college biology teacher that was similar (it was a pre-college course in high school). He'd give you modules to learn at your own pace. You did X number before 6 weeks you got Y for your grade. I'd do all my work the first 2 weeks, then read the next four. I learned 10x what I did in my first two biology courses and had 12 weeks of an 18 week semester to read books, do whatever. The teacher was always there if you had questions, it just wasn't spoon fed.
End of rant.
Re:my school (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was at school, good teachers would know if a parent or sibling had helped because they obversed and tended the growth of knowledge themselves, they did not leave it to a web application or 'virtual learning environment' (virtually learning=almost learning=not learning?).
Re:my school (Score:5, Funny)
You are suspended for three weeks, with pay.
Cool links. [blogspot.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Er... no, it is not. Most tests which make use of the concept of an "IQ score" do so by fitting it to a normal distribution, with a mean of 100, but the standard deviation is quite often different, which can cause the fraction of people (or, in other words, the corresponding percentile) who can obtain a given score to vary by orders of magnitude at the high end.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth, an ex-girlfriend of mine did the GED thing, and it really did affect the rest of her life as much as they warned her that it would. She had a hard time getting a good job and being taken seriously because she had a GED.
The only way I've heard of a GED working is if you follow it up by getting a college education.
Take from this what you will, but do consider your future as well as your present when making your decision
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I see that one of the courses that she missed was "Ethics"...
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Re:my school (Score:5, Insightful)
The school system as it stands right now is better than nothing, but it sucks for a lot of people. Unfortunately, them's the breaks. It's an issue that stems from overconcerned parents, underconcerned parents, lawsuits, slacker kids, genius kids, average kids, turn-of-the-century steel magnates, bad teachers, good teachers, shitty administrators, well-intentioned school boards... and it's had a looong time to evolve. All you can do is the best you can to make sure you come out with an education. "My algebra teacher sucked" isn't going to impress a college recruiter, or a job recruiter, for that matter.
If you're in math class and your teacher's droning on, try and work out some basic number theory stuff for yourself. Try to figure out the basic relationships in calculus before you get there. If you're really advanced try and come up with theorems and prove them. In history class, when the teacher brings up a famous person or an event, try to place it on a mental timeline. Think of who else was alive at the same time. Would they have known each other? How would they have interacted? What were the immediate and future causes and effects?
English is sort of a lost cause if you're not simply reading in class, because you will always be saddled with dimwits who will lower the level of discourse, and the class is all about the discussion. But you can still play the mental game of placing it historically, figuring out themes, contrasting it with other works, all that sorta stuff.
Actually it's sorta sad, one of the classes I think that high school really could use is some kinda philosophy, but it's absent in most curricula. I'm guessing because of the parental complaint or even lawsuit factor if people started discussing gay rights, morality through religion, civil disobedience, etc. But those are the things everyone can get a handle on, because they're basic issues to human existence. And they also might challenge some preconceptions, which is what school is really all about, after all.
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Re:my school (Score:5, Insightful)
The school I'm sure will make the ethical argument that if they are not cheating, they should have no reason to object to this service. However the best case these students have (although IANAL) is that this service is profiting from retention of their papers and in fact would not be able to be in business if they were not allowed to keep copies of student papers.
I've seen some people post in this story saying "but they're not DIRECTLY profiting from the student's work". The hell they aren't! Their service 100% relies on the ability to use existing students' work to compare against. How is that not directly profiting? They are incorporating the students' work into their product/service. And the students receive no compensation.
What MIGHT be acceptable is if the students had an option (very important, they should in no way be forced) to sell a license to this service to use their works and were paid an agreed upon annual fee for its use. Yes, it would cost the service an assload of money...as it should if they are profiting from copyrighted works.
Re:my school (Score:5, Informative)
It's just like music composition. People with similar music education backgrounds end up producing similar music. That's just how it is. Are you seriously going to argue that the standard educational texts HAVEN'T been mined for every bloody original idea they contain a thousand times over?
gross disrespect (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire problem with these systems is they represent a gross distrust of alot of innocent students. If 25% or thereabouts cheat, it means 75% do not. And that 75% are entirely entitled to be pissed off at there essays being kept in some stupid anti-student database.
I would of never dreamed of doing this shit to my students back in my university days.
Respect is a 2 way street. If you want to get it from your students, you got to respect them first, otherwise you simply dont deserve it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
And you expect them to do this without alegbra or critical reading skills? Yes our education system is a sad mess, but the idea of a common broad-based education is still sound, both as a launching platform for later academic specialization and as a cultural common ground for our society.
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem here is that the company is permenantly keeping it, and I'd be pretty smarted about that as well, but then on the flip side of the coin for the company and the school, the more copies they have, the more likely (in their view) it is that they will catch those who for example, are using their older brothers essays to go through or using work taken from old pupils. It's a tough situation to gauge, but the students have a strong point on the IP there. That being said, why not just add Wikipedia to the database and catch 99.9% of students, heh. Juding from teachers I know, Wikipedia is the bane of their existance when it comes to schoolwork.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yes, that's just the point. Without retaining the papers their database of papers would be empty. What good would FDDB be if they automatically purged every entry?
KFG
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Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, this is the general response, and I personally would say the same. But I think there are two key issues here that really differentiate this comparison.
#1: When artists release songs/videos/movies, they are very conspicuously distributing them to a very large audience, of their own free will. When musicians release a song, they do that because they created a (presumably) great work of art, and they want the world to hear it (and also hopefully make some money off of it). I have several friends in bands, and when I ask them what got them into their music, they never reply "because I want to make a profit". They want the world to enjoy their music; I don't want the world to enjoy the paper I just wrote for my class. I do not want to distribute that paper. I wrote it probably because I had to, and I want to turn it in to the professor/TA and get it back.
#2: When people pirate music, they probably do it because they enjoy it (but don't want to pay for it). If I just wrote a song, and a million punk kids download it for free, at least they are doing so BECAUSE THEY WANT TO LISTEN TO MY SONG. Sure, I will be pissed that they undermined my work by not buying it. But not very pissed. At least they appreciate my art. Turnitin? They are not illegally making a copy of my paper because they want to read it, or enjoy it, or exercise the social value of it. They are taking it for the specific purpose of getting other students in trouble.
Perhaps if lucky, a couple slashdotters will open their eyes to IP and realize that they are not liberating the world by using bittorrent and kazaa, but this is clearly a different issue. At least Kazaa and similar are redistributing the artwork with the intent of end-user consumption. Turnitin is just a gigantic slap in the face to every author and artist in the world.
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
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You could have at least checked the home page of turnitin.com before making an unfounded (and wrong) assumption.
You wrote:
However:
(from the turnitin home page [turnitin.com]
You can easily make a fair use argument, it's being used purely for educational, non-profit purposes. An
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
Just to nit-pick use does not fall within the realm of copyright. The me, you, the janitor, and Barbara Bush can all read these papers without violating copyright. What we can not do is make copies of the papers.
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Good nit-pick. You're right.
Which leads me to this interesting thought - since turnitin never even LOOKS at the paper, just copies it without authorization, it seems to me that what the students should do is this:
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I liked the idea, but think there's a problem with who is violating the copyright. I looked through Turnitin's license agreement and related material - it looks like implied student consent attained from the teacher & institution is their argument, and in fact, they assume this consent has been attained in their contract with the institution. If not, they'll turn a legal argument against the teacher and school district. Be prepared to sue your coll
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Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
You're comparing apples and zebras, my friend.
In a professional setting, a "work for hire" is what you're talking about... You're being paid to code for XYZ Corporation, therefore whatever work you produce for them on their time, they own copyright to. You refer to occasions where your employer might own YOUR code too, but that is legally gray, and generally based on how restrictive an employment contract/non-compete agreement you sign. Unless you sign that, your code is your code, as long as you produced it on your own time.
Compare this with a University setting. You are paying them, not the other way around. Clearly not a work-for-hire situation. You are producing written (or coded) works for your own personal development and education. The professor MAY have the right to compare your document to a database to see if you're cheating or not, but I can't see any legitimate situation where some third-party would have the right to store and use that document. You haven't signed any contract giving the university or your professor copyright over your work, so that wouldn't seem to apply either.
This is different, of course, if you're working in some sort of grad. assistant or research role to produce work for somebody else. In THAT circumstance, work-for-hire might apply to things you actually write "for-hire." But it certainly wouldn't give your employer blanket control of everything you produce while employed there.
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I'm sure there's already lots of case law on who owns the content produced by students. Schools use that kind of content all the time - from grad students, it's the lifeblood of their system. There's got to already be lots of precedent establishing which rights are retained by the students, and which aren't. Maybe it isn't fa
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This happened to a friend of mine. She withdrew from a English 101 class one semester and retried it under a different teacher the next semester. She started turning in papers for which she got an A previously to this professor and when he returned them a month later, she was informed that she would fail the class and it would go on her permanent record.
She even showed that it was her own work and the t
Re:Very well put - There has been no infringement (Score:5, Interesting)
I carefully read the Turnitin terms and conditions when I signed up for the account. I was particularly concerned that I might be forced to agree to terms that grant them a license to my work, although arguably if I was forced to enter the agreement in order to take a college course, the agreement might not be legally binding. However, there were no such terms in the agreement. The agreement primarily said that I would not make improper use of Turnitin's intellectual property, something that I have no interest in doing.
Every paper I submit to Turnitin contains the statement "Copyright 2006 Eric Smith. All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be stored in a database or electronic retrieval system without explicit written permission of the author."
After the course is over, and I have received my degree from the college (expected in December), I plan to send a registered letter to Turnitin demanding that they delete my papers from the database and provide some evidence that they have done so. I expect to either get no response, or a response stating that they will not comply. At that point I'll consider legal action.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Please explain this "laugh test". I am reasonably certain that if Dreamworks SKG sued someone for unlawfully copying a DVD of "Shrek", the court wouldn't immediately dismiss the suit with prejudice.
Copyright infringement, requesting the award of statutory damages. Actual damages are not a requirement.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It implies a presumption of guilt of ALL students whom are subjected to the search and have their works appropriated.
I'm also not convinced that the notion of implied copyright should be twisted to prevent students from contributing to a system that prevents cheating.
Well, I'm not convinced that current copyright law "promote[s] the progress of science an
What's wrong with using old papers?! (Score:4, Interesting)
I had an interesting conversation with this about one of the senior staff members in our electronics department. He was of the mindset that plagurism really didn't matter if you structure the question in such a way that it need to show understanding. As long as the request is sufficiently targetted that you can't wholesale copy another paper, then what's the real problem if you find a paragraph in another person's paper that fits perfectly with what you need. (although in those cases why not just cite it as a source).
Engineering may be unique because papers usually need to show a deep understanding, and a professor who knows and works with you should be able to quickly see if it's not your work.
I can see how it would be a much bigger problem in something like English Lit.
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Setting aside what may be the student's true motivation, I think this is the real issue.
I wouldn't have any problem with u
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I don't see the students having a very strong IP claim at all.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is totally different from employment where you (presumably) have options, aren't legally obligated to work, and can quit if you disagree with the policies.
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I think this is very different. In the work environment all the work you do belongs to the company you do it for. I believe school projects can be treated the same
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Not all are hypocrites I'm sure (Score:2)
Pick any large group of people protesting about "protecting my rights."
Some will have the moral high ground. Others will be secretly, or not-so-secretly, violating other's rights.
It's just the nature of humanity and the law of statistics applied to large numbers.
It does not matter if they are concerned (Score:3, Insightful)
Their work. Their IP. It is so then protected and nobody can copy it without their agreement.
But now I bet that in the admission rules it will be written that "student give fully and eternally the right to the school to copy and dsitribute any essay they give back for a notation, for any usage. "
It did not say that. (Score:2)
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But now I bet that in the admission rules it will be written that "student give fully and eternally the right to the school to copy and dsitribute any essay they give back for a notation, for any usage. "
With the way things are going, it wouldn't surprise me.
Fair Use doesn't cover making complete copies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
WFT?
OF COURSE you own any original work you submit. Copyright is automatic. This is not "work for hire" in any sense of the word, not at the high school level, and certainly not at the university level (turnitin.com also infringes university students' copyrights).
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Re:It does not matter if they are concerned (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we are seeing the start of a new legal debate: what rights do minors have or not have, and who can take them away? If some 17 year old comes up with the next great business idea while sitting in his computer programming class in high school, does the school have legal rights to the idea? Does his parents since they are legally responsible for him? Or, since the school is a public school, does the State/Federal government have first rights? In an age where IP rights can mean the difference between just another computer program and a billion dollar empire, questions like these are going to be asked more often.
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Curious, what's the difference between the written essay and the recorded song?
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If the paper database does not disclose the substance except in the event to flag another newer paper as plagarism, then I don't see the harm. In effect if you are saying that the students I
No they don't (Score:3, Informative)
Uhm... no.
You write it. It is yours. Schools do not have the right to republish your works until you give them that permission. It could easily be argued that sending your essays and whatnot to turnitin.com, the school is copying your work, and therefore violating copyright law.
I don't know how that argument would fly in court, as I am neither a lawyer nor a pilot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Boxes make excellent storage units. Furthermore, complying with law and giving my work to a for profit organization are two entirely different things.
No problem with that, since those databases are not used to steal your work. They are actually used to make sure no other student will cheat by stealing your work! Would you be happy if this happeend:
You write a paper for a course
5 years later you try to
IP rights are the least of it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You might also start to wonder if the kids weren't starting to catch on to the pure bullshit factor of most assignments these days.
KFG
Re:IP rights are the least of it (Score:5, Informative)
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A system that compared ideas would be fairly useless: how many different ideas can a school paper on an assigned topic have? Let's face it, most school papers are all about regurgitating someone else's ideas in your own words.
Intellectual property (Score:2)
Has precedent ever been set in a case involving a homework as IP?
Does a student work become school property or is some right ceded to the school (say, the right to publish or the like)? Is there a lawyer in the room?
Re: (Score:2)
Also some universities have you sign away all rights to school work as a condition of enrollment. Since this is a high school would not apply.
There have been some potential lawsuits dealing with things such as poety, photos, etc that have enforced this.
However, I would guess that the s
Quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's an interesting thought, but it brings to mind a quote I heard years ago: "Do you know what they call a medical student who graduates with the lowest passing grade in his class? They call him a doctor."
Groups can properly contradict themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
At the moment I don't have anything popular enough to make a point with, but the creative projects [vendettachristmas.com]
I have worked on [lisasleftovers.com] I've made freely available. I'd like to think that if I ever had a big hit song or movie that I'd release it into the public domain after a few years, maybe 14 like the founders allowed. Maybe sooner if I could do so financially.
Cheers.
maybe sooner if I could do so financially... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Turnitin are doing it for profit, and that is generally considered more serious.
I'm sure there are lots of people who think that infringing copyright for profit is a bad thing, but are quite happy with the idea of not for profit sharing of ideas. Although some people may disagree with the details of this particular opinion, it is a perfectly logical stance for someone to take, and there is no question of double standards.
Law of Big Numbers (Score:2)
Property of University (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How is this different from Gracenote (Score:2)
Come on now... (Score:2)
it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?
Oh come on now. It's not really necessary to put a stupid question after each post. Obviously the fact that a sizable percentage are dishonest in no way suggests that there is not a single one who is not.
The main issue here seems to be that the company keeps assignments indefinitely. By the time that becomes an issue, cheaters have already
FERPA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
irrelevant (Score:2)
Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?"
Irrelevant.
"There is a high likelyhood that you might do A, therefore we must assume you also do B."
This kind of tagline at the end of the post is unnecesary and silly. The fact that I go 10 miles per hour over the speed limit occasionally is no cause for my car to be impounded and searched for cocaine. Two wrongs neve
Breakin' the Law (Score:2)
Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students download copyrighted material from the Internet. Do you think any of them are concerned about IP rights then?"
I see.
So we should only enforce the law when it is to the benefit of large corporations (Microsoft, IBM, Sony), politicians, media cartels (RIAA, MPAA, BPI) but not when the rights of individuals are infringed?
As others have pointed out, false positives can ruin an otherwise honest student's prospects. After all, the
"Doth Protest Too Much" - WS (Score:2)
This database is a lot like a registry of music performances, comparing against "cover" versions found in the wild. Except that the right to cover a song ca
Cracking down on the business of plagiarism (Score:2)
Let's face it . . . there is a MASSIVE business in selling papers to students. Many are lazy and don't feel like doing their own work, hence there's a large, viable market for such a gig. As an example, when I attended a very large state university and lived in off-campus housing, there was a very well-known (in the area) lady whose sole, full-time occupation was selling papers out of her house (we'd first thought she was a drug dealer with the amount of traffic going to / from the house at all hours of d
A couple hypotheticals: (Score:5, Insightful)
self-plagarism (Score:4, Informative)
Re:self-plagarism (Score:4, Insightful)
I never heard of ANYONE getting in trouble for doing so.
If you retook a class, you could resubmit the homework.
The only reason for teachers to want to stop "self plagiarism" is because it would demonstrate how lazy and inconsistent they are about grading.
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First, let me say, I understand these students' feelings of mistrust. But let me offer another perspective. I teach at a small institution with about 2000 active students on my campus. We moved to using Turnitin because of rampant problems with plagiarism. I have had students give me exactly the same paper in two different terms and claim they were both original. These were not isolated cases either, it happened all the time. These students often either failed the course, or worse, got expelled. Since we ha
Re:A couple hypotheticals: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A couple hypotheticals: (nope)... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're saying is that in a school, I should be required to waste my time repeating the same work that I'd done and that I'd already proven to understand, for the sake of some professor/teacher ego, so that they know that I was forced to spend xx additional hours of my life to make them happy. I'm sorry, but at this stage in my life, if I were to go back and take another class, and a professor attempted that kind of sanctimonious bullshit on me, they would be talking to my lawyer within that day.
My work is my work, and if I choose to reuse it in a similar situation, this not only demonstrates that I understood the assignment, but that I recognized that I had already done the assignment. It is a mark of intelligence to recognize this.
What about privacy? (Score:2)
Only works if essay is submitted electronically (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, if you're actually going to go through the trouble of writing it out by hand, you're probably not plagiarizing either. But at least it would help to protect your IP.
College owns the IP? (Score:2)
Not that I necessarily disagree with these students; if I write something insightful during my college career, I would like
a sizable percentage of these (Score:2)
Wrong, wrong, wrong ! It always raises my blood pressure above the skies when I see [regarding any topic] that the analysts/writers/etc. start by saying most of the people are criminals anyway so it doesn't matter. Stupid and outrageous assumption. Why couldn't a student raise his/her voice when (s)he feels _any_ of his/her rights might be violated or just simply not taken into consideration ? Why should anybody feel like living in a goddamn' prison ?
No, I'm not a student who'd
Let's try this on the **AA folks (Score:4, Funny)
Copyright Notices? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, if its good enough for the NBA, NFL, etc for protecting their works then it should suffice for a student paper, right?
The school owns it anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The school owns it anyway -- NOT! (Score:5, Informative)
What might be possible is that you grant a license to the university that allows the university to do whatever it likes with your papers, but you still own the copyright.
Check out section 204 of the copuright code [copyright.gov]
Probably the university owns the physical copy of the paper that you turned in, but not the underlying copyrights.
Oh, but it IS profiting off of the IP (Score:5, Insightful)
See, the thing is, they are selling this service to other schools and institutions. The service they are selling relies on the IP, and as a result, they are making money off of IP which they acquired from students without their consent. That's the problem.
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Not to say that there isn't case law covering the student-teacher case, but the basic jist is that the students do automatically have copyrights on whatever original papers they write.
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If I was to take a copy of a peice of work from an "artist" and just keep a copy I bet
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You don't teach programming, do you? What's going on here is the software manufacturer has an algorithm that performs a comparison and assigns based upon that comparison a value of the likelihood that this essay was copied. Without the algorithm, the database of papers would be useless for quick comparison. Without the database, the algorithm would be useless for anything at all. Each is u
Re:IANAIPL, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're teaching at the college level? No wonder there's such miseducation and cluelessness about.
The moment you write a sentence, take a photo, paint a picture, or create any other kind of copyrightable work, you already own the copyright under law. You created it, it is copyright by you, and if anyone uses it without permission afterward and you can prove that you created it first, you have a court case.
Registration of copyright does nothing but offer one way to demonstrate this proof--by registering your newly created item immediately with a government agency, they have a record that as of date X/Y/Z you had already called this thing into existence and claimed it to be yours.
More to the point, at the college level a student's work isn't just classwork, but potentially the basis for a career in ideas. It is morally indefensible to force them to cede rights to these ideas before they are prepared to publish on their own accord. It could seriously compromise a career if the clearinghouse was sloppy with security or if it made mistakes in misidentifying plagiarism (for example, even clerical errors--my paper #234533 was reported to be plagiarized, but that's actually because some other kid's paper ended up overwriting mine at #234533 due to a filesystem or programming error). I as graduate student working on a Ph.D. absolutely wouldn't consider attending such an institution.
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I think it's a good question on the part of the submitter. Why should students be upset about their IP rights when many/most of them aren't at all concerned about the IP rights of their favorite bands? And yes, it is hypocritical.
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