[Air-l] turnitin issue

[Charlie Lowe]

Doug got me thinking when he said,

"If you put in a substantive amount of the "plagiarized text," the hash 
that is stored is output as identical to the original work that has been 
collected by the company."

If the hash is substantive enough to prove plagiarism, then it seems the 
defense that it's not the original text will fail. I would bet that a 
128 bit rate MP3 has less of the original data of any wav file than that 
hash, and no one would use that argument for saying that an MP3 is not 
copyright infringement.

Besides, the hash is a derivative work if it is not a complete version 
of the original, and the students have clear rights of both ownership 
and preparation of derivative works. That is, unless the hash is a 
parody ;-)

Charlie Lowe
Department of Writing
Grand Valley State University