With the growing problem of plagiarism in today's internet savvy society, professors and teachers around the country are looking for a way to put a stop to it. The invention of TurnItIn takes students papers and puts it in a huge database where it compares the papers to each other to look for anything that is too closely resembling another. Along with this, it searches online articles to make sure nothing is taken word for word from it.
Students have recently filed a copyright violation suit against TurnItIn saying that it is copyright infringement. The students say that since their paper has to be sent to a third party, this violates copyright. The way it works, if another student's paper is very similar to a previous paper turned in to TurnItIn, then TurnItIn sends that professor the other student's paper so they can make their own judgement.
I definitely understand the need for a way to protect against plagiarism which is undoubtedly a huge problem in schools today, however I don't think this is a fair way to go about it. These particular students lost this suit, however, I would not be surprised to see it come back up again because I think the students had a strong case of copyright infringement.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3722
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