[DMCA-Activists] Student Wins Battle Against Turnitin.com

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/21/ctv.plagiarism/index.html


Student wins battle against plagiarism-detection requirement

By Emanuella Grinberg
Court TV
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Posted: 4:02 PM EST (2102 GMT)


(Court TV) -- After refusing to submit his class work to a
plagiarism-detection Web site, a 19-year-old sophomore has become the first
college student to challenge university policy on the issue  -- and win. 

The senate committee at McGill University in Montreal sided last Thursday
with sophomore Jesse Rosenfeld, who argued that he should not be required to
submit his essays to Turnitin.com, a Web site that verifies originality by
comparing documents to thousands of others. 

Though the ruling was a boon to student organizations across Canada and the
United States who have protested use of the plagiarism-detection site,
Turnitin.com insists it is in compliance with all related copyright laws. 

The conflict began in October, when Rosenfeld refused to hand in essays for
his international development studies class through the Web site. He
received failing grades for his assignments. 

Rosenfeld filed an appeal with the university senate committee. Afterward,
his professor "reluctantly" agreed to grade his papers without submitting
them through the online plagiarism-detection program  -- giving him Bs and
Cs for his work. 

Rosenfeld said he had "an ethical and political problem" with the
university's policy of submitting student work to Turnitin.com. 

"I was having to prove I didn't plagiarize even before my paper was looked
at by my professor," Rosenfeld said, according to the Globe and Mail. 

Rosenfeld wasn't the only one concerned. Several on-campus groups have
voiced opposition to the site, and the national body representing all
Canadian student organizations, the Canadian Federation of Students,
recently took up a policy position against it. 

"Of the 20 Canadian universities currently using the site, not one consulted
with students in the decision-making process when signing on with
Turnitin.com," said Ian Boyko, national chairman of the CFS. "That in itself
shows a lack of respect for students' rights." 

Boyko also believes universities should not be permitted to turn over essays
to sites like Turnitin.com, which h e said makes money off students' work
without their consent. 

"The student is the author of the work, and deserves to be part of the
decision as to where his work goes," Boyko said. 

John Barrie, founder and president of Turnitin.com, said such accusations
are groundless and made without due diligence. 

"This is the first time since our inception in 1998, since millions of
papers have gone through our site, that this issue has come up," Barrie
said. "We are following the letter of the law, and not one of the 3,000
universities who use our service would have signed contracts with us if we
weren't." 

Because student work exists in Turnitin.com's database solely as digital
fingerprints and not as collections of essays, Barrie disputes accusations
that the company makes unfair use of students work. 

"The value to our company is not in the collection of words and characters
in an essay, but in the series of numbers derived from the essay once we
transform those words and characters into digital fingerprints," Barrie
said. "In short, the value to us is not derived from the student's actual
work." 

Barrie says in this way, Turnitin.com does not violate students' copyrights
to their work, adding that students retain control over their copy. 

"We don't harm the free-market value of the work  -- a student can take
their Macbeth essay to the market and make millions," he said. 

But, according to CFS, sites like Turnitin.com present an even broader
political issue. 

"We see the use of sites like Turnitin.com as means of cutting corners,"
Boyko said. "We think they are a poor substitute for trained individuals." 

A former professor who launched the site after students complained of the
proliferation of plagiarism because of the Internet, Barrie sees little
merit in that argument. 

"Human beings can't detect plagiarism," he said, and referred to a Rutgers
University study that found 40 percent of students polled admitted they
plagiarized at least once. 

"Unless you apply a digital solution, it's impossible. We have 13
seven-foot, computer racks to determine if a student has lifted one line in
an essay from the Internet."


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