Caveats: NONE
1. The reference to the Google vs Perfect 10 case is particularly
chilling here. This case and the recent ruling essentially mean you
have no recourse to Turnitin's use of your work and they do not need to
remove it from their database. In general, because they will only
display snippets of your work (to highlight another's plagiarism) I
believe they would argue that it is fair use regardless of your desire
to opt-out. Google displays snippets of your work with links and caches
the entire page (displaying advertisements beside it and profiting
commercially). Turnitin believes they are essentially doing the same
thing.
2. It does not matter if the material is formally copyrighted because
they claim fair use. These students even went so far as to attach
disclaimers to their work, however the click-through agreement they must
acknowledge when submitting the work specifically prevents modification
of the agreement, so again, it is useless.
3. Schools, especially private schools, can compel students to submit
all works to Turnitin electronically or face incomplete grades,
suspension, and expulsion. However, it should be noted that Turnitin
does allow individual teachers to exclude student work from being held
in the database.
___________________________________
Jason Johnson - Program Director
Web Services Branch - Walter Reed Army Medical Center Ingenium (ISO
9001:2000 certified)
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Greg Kearney
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 11:00 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Turnitin Ruled Fair Use (UNCLASSIFIED)
Interesting except that turnitin.com also scrapes the sites of non-=20
students, myself included, and uses my copyrighted works which do =20
indeed have commercial value for their enterprise. So I have two =20
questions:
1. Does this apply to non-student works such as my own? Works that do =20
have commercial value? I have never been a party to a contact with =20
turnitin. I have told turn it in to remove my works from their =20
database or pay me for their use but I have no real way of knowing if =20
they ever did so. They have never paid me for them that is for sure.
2. What is the status if the student were to secure an explicit =20
copyright registration over a paper before turning it in to the =20
teacher? That is to say they submitted it to the copyright office of =20
the Library of Congress and noted it on the paper as a copyrighted =20
work and that reuse or redistribution to others was an explicit =20
violation of the right?
3. The ultimate solution to this problem is to hand in hand written =20
papers.
Greg
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED=20
Caveats: NONE
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