Turnitin and Student Intellectual Property
The issue of student ownership of the copyright in their work and the ability to control what's done with it by universities has once again reared its ugly head. In summary, a group of students upset about the use of automatic plagiarism detection systems have tried to lay a trap to catch out their University and Turnitin. They have registered the copyright of their work (more on this below) and then submitted it for assessment with the proviso that it not be retained in the Turnitin database. Unsurprisingly, this trap succeeded and they are now suiing for copyright violation with a claim for damages of $150,000 per instance.
I should point at right now that I have an interest in this discussion. I have recommended the use of Turnitin at VUW and we use it to detect and to deter plagiarism.
This case is worth noting as it hilites the widespread lack of understanding about copyright, especially amongst the readers of Slashdot. The most important misunderstanding, despite the opinions of many academics, student work is normally fully protected under copyright law, to the extent that it is an original, non-infringing work. Registration is not a requirement for a work to get copyright protection. Under US law it does, however, grant certain useful benefits:
- Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.
- Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin.
- If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
- If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
The usefulness of these to the students laying the trap is fairly obvious, but they didn't need registration to have ownership.
By default, students are entitled to the full protection of their work, even if it is submitted for assessment. Some universities in the US get around this whole area by demanding full ownership of everything submitted for assessment. Personally I think that claiming full ownership is lazy and/or greedy. That said, the act of submitting a work for assessment implies that certain things need to be done to assess the work - copies are likely to be made, especially if an electronic submission is made. If student's don't want to lose everything as a condition of assessment they have to accept that certain things are going to happen to their work.
One particular aspect of the case particularly annoys me. The father of one of the students is quoted as saying "My son's major objection is that he does not cheat, and this assumes he does". My response - get over it and stop being so precious. Plagiarism is a major problem at almost every level of the education system. Students find it so easy to search for information online and copy it that its hardly surprising that some of them stray from the strict requirements of institutions. Checking for plagiarism in all cases is in fact much fairer than the alternative.
Many academics and students assume that certain groups plagiarise more than others - stupid people, asians - different races of all types, people who have poor english skills. The evidence in fact, is that plagiarism by high achieving white students from wealthy homes occurs frequently - it just doesn't get caught as often as many teachers assume they'll do well and are not surprised when they do. Its the students who perform "surprisingly" well that are penalised - the different ones, who perhaps are trying that little bit harder than the prejudices of their teacher. These students are subject to a higher standard of scrutiny, so unsurprisingly more of them are caught. Systems like Turnitin are genuinely equitable - everyone is treated exactly the same.
Naturally, Turnitin (or any other detection tool) won't stop plagiarism by itself. For a start, it doesn't detect plagiarism - it just compares text and hilites similarity. A human teacher is always the person who makes the decison about plagiarism - and from the examples I've seen its usually not hard to spot when it happens. Lets be clear here, we are not talking about a few words or quotes, these systems help academics catch people copying substantial portions or entire works in order to present them as their own work. Its dishonest, it destroys trust between students and with staff and it ultimately devalues everyone's qualifications. It also happens a lot. Every serious examination of the extent of plagiarism I have ever seen suggests that as many of 10% of all assignments submitted are plagiarised - literally thousands of items per year at an average university.
Detection systems must be complemented with range of other university activities linke clear policies, education programmes, honor codes, and well designed assessments, but none of these is entirely fullproof. Detection systems are a valuable way of making sure that academics can focus on the few problematic cases rather than having to carefully compare every paper they have ever had submitted for marking with every book and website on the topic.
Far from laying stupid traps like they did, these students should be grateful that their university is trying to protect the value of their degrees, not grandstanding. I very much hope they lose the case and end up paying costs.
Thankfully, I actually think they will lose on the face of the facts presented. Clearly they knew that the assessed work was going to be submitted to Turnitin. They also well understood that the work was going to end up in the Turnitin archive. Writing a note inside the work to say that this was not allowed is clearly not going to attract the attention of the university or Turnitin as neither will be reading the work prior to its submission - something they will have known. Its well established in law that you cannot bind people with contracts or conditions without telling them and confirming they understand. By submitting the work for assessment they must have known what would happen and therefore must accept liability for the entirely obvious consequences.
Finally, they have not lost any significant value. Turnitin keeps papers in its database to match against future submissions. A match will only occur if one of several things happens:
- Their work was plagiarised against another work which is later plagiarised by another student (yes this happens often) or which is added to the Turnitin database;
- Their work is plagiaised by another student without their knowledge;
- They sell their work to a term paper for financial gain and it is then plagiarised by another student;
- They submit their own work again for credit in another course.
This last one is the only one that I have any sympathy for - English academics regard it as plagiarism, I think its evidence of intelligence on their part and laziness on the part of the academics setting assessments.
Only if one of these things happens will their work be revealed by Turnitin to the academic submitting the subsequent assignment. There is no way to "browse" the Turnitin database and using their originality report for any purpose other than to detect plagiarism is a breach of the license.
I don't know what these students were trying to do when they laid this trap. I very much doubt they really believe that their actions are to the benefit of students generally. However I repeat, I hope they lose and I hope that their misguided attempt to assist plagiarists fails and costs them dearly - the consequences to all of us trying to protect the integrity of education if they succeed are potentially far more costly.