[Air-l] turnitin issue

[Douglas Eyman]

burkx006 at umn.edu wrote:
> On Mar 12 2007, Charlie Lowe wrote:

> 
> It is not clear that the hash is a derivative work. Tasini and several 
> other cases suggest that it is not a "copy" under the statute, that is, 
> that it is not a fixation of the students' work of authorship. US courts 
> are divided on whether a derivative work needs to be a copy or not.
> 
> My guess is that it is not a derivative work because it does not 
> incorporate the students' original expression.

This is an interesting question in this particular case (interesting to me 
anyway :) because what you are saying is that the hash itself does not 
incorporate th students' original expression. The problem that I have with this 
logic is separating the hash function from the output of the system.

If I put this into turnitin.com:

Perhaps the most obvious theory that hypertext embodies and makes explicit is 
Julia Kristeva's (1986) notions of intertextuality: Kristeva, influenced by the 
work of Bakhtin, charts a three-dimensional textual space whose three 
"coordinates of dialogue" are the writing subject, the addressee (or ideal 
reader), and exterior texts; she describes this textual space as intersecting 
planes which have horizontal and vertical axes ...

The result I get is this:


Perhaps the most obvious theory that hypertext embodies and makes explicit is 
Julia Kristeva's (1986) notions of intertextuality: Kristeva, influenced by the 
work of Bakhtin, charts a three-dimensional textual space whose three 
"coordinates of dialogue" are the writing subject, the addressee (or ideal 
reader), and exterior texts; she describes this textual space as intersecting 
planes which have horizontal and vertical axes ...

with a notice that all of the text matches. Well, huh, looks like exactly the 
original expression to me. I should note that this chunk of text is from an 
essay I published in an online journal in 1996, so the text itself is a lot more 
public than a student paper. But nonetheless, I hold the copyright to this text 
and I certainly was never asked permission for its inclusion in the turnitin.com 
database (although I can see how this would in fact be considered fair use -- 
the point here is that the output of the hash matches the input (the students' 
papers, or in this case, the works scraped from the web). So only if the system 
isn't actually used will you be able to claim that the storage function does not 
represent a derivative work. (If I put the whole essay I wrote in, I get the 
whole essay back out as matching...and it's in the same order/structure as the 
original).

Of course, now I want to go review Tasini and see how whether the storage and 
output have been conflated or are seen as separate functions...

Doug