Here’s the scenario: a high school hires an anti-cheating company to compile papers to check for plagiarism. Two students don’t like said company compiling their papers and file a copyright violation suit against them. World burns.
FAIRFAX, Va. (Washington Post) — Two McLean High School students have launched a court challenge against a California company hired by their school to catch cheaters, claiming the anti-plagiarism service violates copyright laws.
The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, seeks $900,000 in damages from the for-profit service known as Turnitin. The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database.
Who knew that student papers’ had copyright protection? We wouldn’t want some powerful Hollywood director getting their hands on one and turning it into a big budget motion picture. “Coming this summer, plants are hungry and it’s feeding time. ‘The Journey of Photosynthesis.’ Rated R.”
There’s just something very ironic about someone suing an anti-plagiarism company on charges of potential plagiarism. It’s like suing a flavored fat manufacturing company for making you fat or suing a reckless driving school for teaching you how to get arrested for reckless driving.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Seth // Apr 12, 2007 at 12:37 am
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement… If Turnitin is using copyrighted materials that they do not own for profit, then they are violating copyright laws. You can’t use someone else’s copyrighted work to make money for yourself in any case!
2 Xeron // May 1, 2007 at 10:02 am
Student’s papers aren’t copyrighted. Besides, they’re not making money by puplishing said paper, so theres no harm.
3 No Man // Jun 17, 2007 at 5:09 pm
That is incorrect. First, all creative effort, including student papers, has copyright protection. If you write a short story in English class, the teacher can’t sell it. Second, the anti-cheating sites recieve large amounts of revenue from school systems and advertisers.
4 Henry // Dec 22, 2007 at 5:59 am
Thank God! Turnitin caused me to waste hours of time on work that I simply could have copied from my friends. They had it coming.
5 Crest // Dec 23, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Are you freaking kidding me? I’ve heard of people not wanting their papers copied off of, but this is rediculous.
6 Yale // Jun 12, 2009 at 7:06 pm
No, I’m pretty sure TurnItIn is exercising fair use of the student’s copyright because
1. no economic loss to student
2. nature of use, preventing plagiarism, is justifiable
7 Thamios // Jul 18, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Or suing McDonalds for making you fat
Or suing Starbucks cause you can’t hold on to your cup
Or suing McDonalds (again) because you’re too stupid to realize that “Warning: Contents are HOT!” means that the contents in the cup are incredibly hot.
Oh wait. Those have all happened.
8 Lord Ashes // Jul 20, 2009 at 11:24 pm
“…because
1. no economic loss to student”
Technically this is not true. What if the student wishes to perform a similar service as TurnItIn but only against his own papers. Then TurnItIn is taking revenue from the student.
9 Robert the Bobbert // Nov 17, 2010 at 2:29 pm
“We wouldn’t want some powerful Hollywood director getting their hands on one and turning it into a big budget motion picture…”
Isn’t that the premise of Big Fat Liar?
Leave a Comment