2008 Woodie Awards
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Turnitin.com finally blasted
Adam Chance
Issue date: 4/5/07 Section: Opinion
You have probably used the service Turnitin.com. It is a plagiarism detection program that analyzes documents and spits out a judgment as to whether the paper has been copy and pasted. It has been required for most of my classes since I first came here a few years ago.
I had to do a short paper on plagiarism once. In the paper I suggested Turnitin.com was one class-action suit from disappearing. My rationale was given enough time and similar assignments across colleges, eventually two people will type the same paragraph independent of one other.
It seems I was almost right. Two California high school students have filed suit against Turnitin.com claiming copyright violations. They are seeking $900,000 in damages.
"All of these kids are essentially straight-A students, and they have no interest in plagiarizing," said Robert A. Vanderhye, a McLean attorney representing the students pro bono. "The problem with [Turnitin.com] is the archiving of the documents. They are violating a right these students have to be in control of their own property."
I have seen plagiarists at all levels here. From 101 classes to surprisingly even at the 400 level. Professors are not immune either. There are a handful of famous offenders including "Band of Brothers" author Stephen Ambrose.
The students do bring up an interesting point, one I had not thought of. Copyright is a big deal in academia. I have gotten several syllabi that mention all lectures and notes are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission.
Turnitin.com archives your paper every time you submit one. It then checks it against other papers and the Internet and draws attention to any paragraphs similar to other papers in its database. Turnitin.com charges for this service. So indirectly they are making money off of your work.
Trust is another issue. How do we know our hard work is not being sold to an unscrupulous Web site? If not now, what about when the company goes out of business? In my experience, this service has been required by most of my classes. USM probably pays a good bit of money for the privilege of using the service.
This brings up some ethical questions. It's not as bad as requiring students to purchase books you wrote, but still. Professors survived before this service, plagiarists were caught.
I had to do a short paper on plagiarism once. In the paper I suggested Turnitin.com was one class-action suit from disappearing. My rationale was given enough time and similar assignments across colleges, eventually two people will type the same paragraph independent of one other.
It seems I was almost right. Two California high school students have filed suit against Turnitin.com claiming copyright violations. They are seeking $900,000 in damages.
"All of these kids are essentially straight-A students, and they have no interest in plagiarizing," said Robert A. Vanderhye, a McLean attorney representing the students pro bono. "The problem with [Turnitin.com] is the archiving of the documents. They are violating a right these students have to be in control of their own property."
I have seen plagiarists at all levels here. From 101 classes to surprisingly even at the 400 level. Professors are not immune either. There are a handful of famous offenders including "Band of Brothers" author Stephen Ambrose.
The students do bring up an interesting point, one I had not thought of. Copyright is a big deal in academia. I have gotten several syllabi that mention all lectures and notes are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission.
Turnitin.com archives your paper every time you submit one. It then checks it against other papers and the Internet and draws attention to any paragraphs similar to other papers in its database. Turnitin.com charges for this service. So indirectly they are making money off of your work.
Trust is another issue. How do we know our hard work is not being sold to an unscrupulous Web site? If not now, what about when the company goes out of business? In my experience, this service has been required by most of my classes. USM probably pays a good bit of money for the privilege of using the service.
This brings up some ethical questions. It's not as bad as requiring students to purchase books you wrote, but still. Professors survived before this service, plagiarists were caught.
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Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 4
Mark McCrohon
posted 4/05/07 @ 3:20 AM CST
I have developed a plagiarism detection tool called DOC Cop that is on the web at: www.doccop.com
DOC Cop does NOT take copyright or ownership of material submitted for investigation and does NOT retain material beyond the time it takes to generate your report. (Continued…)
Markesha
posted 4/05/07 @ 11:30 AM CST
Could you please give me more information on this topics or some sources where I can find this information. I'm interested in writing a paper on this. (Continued…)
Daniel
posted 4/08/07 @ 11:10 PM CST
its a Virginia based school, not California.
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