Students Sue Turnitin.com
March 30, 2007
In an interesting (and ironic) case, four high school students are suing an anti-plagiarism site, citing copyright violations. The service provided by Turnitin.com, which instructors or schools can purchase, checks students' papers against a database of academic papers and journals to see if the student plagiarized from any of the sources in the database. In the process, the papers being checked are then added to the database. This is where the lawsuit lies. The company is, in effect, copying students' papers and then using them to make a profit. Copyright law, especially when it comes to fair use, can be a somewhat cloudy legal area. I'm interested to see how this turns out. From: Washington Post (published March 29, 2007)
