<p>Interesting story. DS's high school, like many high schools and colleges, uses turnitin.com for sending papers to teachers and checking for plagarism. I'm not a fan of plagarism, so it seemed like a good idea to me. The story linked to above talks about the legal issues involved -- apparently every paper submitted through turnitin stays in their database and is used to check future papers against. Several students are arguing that this commercial use of their papers is a violation of their copyright in their papers.</p>
<p>Sure sounds like copyright infringement to me. Maybe I'll join the suit on behalf of my son...</p>
<p>I'm in agreeance, this year my school had a huge issue where many students were accused of plagiarism because of an error through turnitin.com, expulsion from the IB program follwed until the parents fought back, ended up that it was due to the characters being used. our school made a decision to investigate an issue of plagiarism more in depth from now on.</p>
<p>My daughter is supposed to submit papers to that, but because we have a mac and she uses appleworks- it doesn't seem to be able to see her paper.
She hasn't let me help her yet- I suspect because she doesn't want me to see her writing, not that she is "cheating" but because I can't help my self from making "helpful" comments about her work.</p>
<p>( She is very sensitive about that - from me anyway)</p>
<p>I realize some students might be very sophisticated about their sources, and I think it is very important to teach students how to cite correctly so that it isn't plagarism, which I think is where the emphasis should be , rather than spending time and money trying to "catch" students ( especially when you are using a 3rd party company to do so)
perhaps turnitin should be paying students, instead of requiring a fee to use their own papers!</p>
<p>This is a baloney lawsuit. </p>
<p>For one thing, what is the basis of damage claim?</p>
<p>Copyright law allows statutory damages. You don't have to prove actual damages.</p>
<p>Statutory damages are available only if the author registered the work with the Copyright Office, if I recall correctly. I doubt that's the case here.</p>
<p>Groove, I think the registration goes to willfulness, which increases the amount of the damages. But I don't think registration is a pre-requisite to statutory damages</p>
<p>
[quote]
c) Statutory Damages.—
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Groove, I think the registration goes to willfulness, which increases the amount of the damages. But I don't think registration is a pre-requisite to statutory damages</p>
<p>
[quote]
c) Statutory Damages.—
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>EDIT: I looked into it a bit more and there is some interplay with Section 412 that may make statutory damages unrecoverable for unpublished, unregistered works OR works that are published but not registered for three months after the publication. It all gets a bit confusing.</p>
<p>The news report said that the students registered the works--which suggests that this suit was set up--but there would still be trouble showing infringement, I think.</p>
<p>It seems to me that by registering under the terms of agreement and uploading the paper, there is implied consent that they will use it the way they do. I don't think it matters whether you're required to do this for a class - that's an issue to take up with the teacher - no one can physically force you do it. You could simply refuse and take the consequences. But I'm not a lawyer, I just don't see how this is a case when you knowlingly upload a paper to Turnitin. In this case I guess they argue that the papers were not supposed to be archived (although I didn't know that was an option). However they've been waging this battle under different terms since the beginning of the school year and this is the latest tactic. Before they were just arguing that uploading a paper under the regular terms of service was a violation of their intellectual property. Maybe, but I feel like if I choose to upload something to turnitin (whether I have consequences for not following through or not), then I'm giving consent to turnitin to use it under the terms of service (if the terms of the service are made clear.)</p>
<p>"I realize some students might be very sophisticated about their sources, and I think it is very important to teach students how to cite correctly so that it isn't plagarism, which I think is where the emphasis should be , rather than spending time and money trying to "catch" students "</p>
<p>When I taught college, I chaired our department's plagiarism committee. The situations that I saw weren't due to students not knowing how to cite sources. They were due to students willfully copying other people's work word for word.</p>
<p>Our department did an excellent job of teaching students how to cite sources, something that was included early in every course in the department. Unfortunately, some students preferred cheating over writing papers.</p>
<p>My wife is a HS English teacher and has used Turnitin. From what I read above the teachers can get their students to sign a permission slip from the students to solve the copywright issue, and they can use Turnitin as a highly sensitive but only moderately specific test I.e., if Turnitin sees no plagiarism there isn't any; if Turnitin suggests plagiarism these are the papers that should be scrutinized further. Turnitin is still a useful test.</p>
<p>I was never taught how to appropriately quote sources in high school, although I tried to learn it in community college, I have taken english 102, 3 times, and have given up trying to pass it,( not because I flunked- but because I never handed in my final paper because I wasn't satisfied with it) although I had written research papers for othe rclasses.</p>
<p>I don't have a problem with direct quotes, but when trying to paraphrase without changing the intent of the passage, but still referring to the author, I never could get it right IMO without making it even longer than the original quote ( which defeated the purpose of paraphrasing of course)</p>
<p>I worry that my D, who hasn't had the same background as other kids in her classes ( having both teachers in middle school who covered this and parents at home who could help) doesn't fully understand the differences.
I haven't seen her use any footnotes, just bibliographies, so I think she could use some more guidance</p>
<p>150k per paper that high schoolers wrote? I don't even think universities pay PhD students over 10k for their thesis.</p>
<p>Hmm, let me see, students can either agree to be violated, or they can CHOOSE to get an "F" on every paper or "find another school." Great options, eh! </p>
<p>This is a classic case of undue influence to coerce students into involuntarily ceding their intellectual property rights--under duress--to a profiteering, corporate giant. The corporate giant (Turnitin) prospers to the tune of $20,000,000-$100,000,000 (John Barrie, founder of Turnitin, recently admitted that Turnitin's business DOUBLES every 12 months) in revenue per year off the backs of MINORS, while the students do not get a PENNY in compensation for their time, resources, or intellectual documents that Turnitin monetizes without students' uncoerced permission. What Turnitin and the school are doing to the MINORS is nothing short of indentured servitude!</p>
<p>Yes, the students properly registered their copyrights with the Copyright Office long before filing suit. The papers also included disclaimers warning Turnitin not to index the papers. Turnitin blatantly ignored the disclaimers, and now Turnitin will pay, both literally and figuratively. </p>
<p>Turnitin also commits copyright infringement by emailing students' intellectual property to third parties. Proof, you ask? Go to the following URL to read about a professor's first-hand experiment with the Turnitin system. The results of the experiment provide undeniable proof that Turnitin emails complete, word-for-word copies of students' papers to third parties around the world (without students' permission): </p>
<p><a href="http://www.mikesmit.com/page.php?id=23%5B/url%5D">http://www.mikesmit.com/page.php?id=23</a></p>
<p>The arguments in post #16 are a fine literary expression of whining (original, I hope ;) ) but they don't convince me that the students have any LEGAL case against efforts to ensure that school grades are based on legitimate work. A rationale counterargument is that any effort a school makes to ensure that school grades are not based on cheating enhances the value of those grades for all students, and further vouchsafes the originality of the student works, which can still be licensed for any other purpose that copyright holders can license works for. There is no impairment of the economic value of the school paper, an ENHANCEMENT of the value of the student's course grade, and an enhancement of the school's reputation. That sounds like a win-win situation to me.</p>
<p>First of all, thansk for the insult right out of the gate. Typical. </p>
<p>Clearly, you no little about the case. The students are not suing the school! The students are not suggesting that the school should refrain from vetting for plagiarism. What the kids ARE saying is that the school has NO RIGHT to blatantly usurp their intellectual property rights by using undue influence to force them to hand over their papers to be monetized by a huge corporation, while they don't get a PENNY.</p>
<p>I'm sure the court papers will have more to say about this.</p>
<p>I don't even understand why they need to keep a database of every student's papers. It's unlikely that a student from Florida would get a hold of a student in Washington to share a paper for an assignment on similar topic. IMO, searching the internet would suffice.</p>
<p>These lawsuits are nuts too. 900K worth of damages? Did Turnitin make a 900k profit on 6 papers from high school students?</p>