[Air-l] turnitin issue

Marj Kibby Marj.Kibby at newcastle.edu.au
Thu Mar 8 15:45:12 PST 2007


We had this response from students, in the early days of Turnitin use.
I'd like to know of any legal guidelines but my students were told that
it was a requirement that they conceded to Turnitin the right to store
their paper for the purpose of checking against other texts. No
violation of intellectual property rights, because they upload their own
paper and in doing so consent to its storage ...

If they were not prepared to do this, their paper could not be graded.

Cheers,
Marj



Dr Marjorie Kibby, 
Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture
Faculty of Education and Arts
The University of Newcastle,  Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia
Marj.Kibby at newcastle.edu.au
+61 2 49216604

>>> Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> 9/03/2007 10:37 am >>>
Dear AOIRers,

A colleague teaching another course has come across an issue with an
undergrad who refuses to hand in her term paper because the faculty
member's course requires that all papers also be submitted to
Turnitin.com.

The student claims that this violates her own intellectual property
because Turnitin reportedly keeps copies for future plagiarism
searches.

As a supposed ICT & society "expert," my colleague came to me for
advice.
My first thought was horsefeathers.

However, I am wondering if there is any precedent or case law on this
in
Canada or the US. (EU would be too different, I think.)

I am not interested in the ethics or the morality of Turnitin, but in
how
other situations have been resolved.

Thanks,
 Barry Wellman
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman 
        for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php 
 _____________________________________________________________________


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