[Air-l] turnitin issue

[burkx006 at umn.edu]

On Mar 12 2007, Denise N. Rall wrote:

>Dear Aoir-ers -
>
>What's in the hash?  I assumed it was a very partial
>sketch of the paper, including things like the title,
>the first paragraph (perhaps) some keywords and the
>bibliography.

No -- it's an alphanumeric string created from the text according to a 
specific algorithm -- think of it as a condensation of the values of the 
symbols in the text (kind of like Hebrew Gematria, if you are 
Kabbalistically inclined).

>How would this breach the student's copyright if they
>have copied the paper to begin with????

I would tend to be more concerned about the copyright of the students who 
weren't plagiarizing.

But, even plagiarized papers may have sections of original authorship, and 
the original selection and arrangement of unoriginal material can also 
qualify for copyright.

Just because it's plagiarized doesn't mean there isn't originality for 
purposes of copyright. Those are separate questions. DLB

-- 
Dan L. Burk
Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN  55455
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