What is Digg?138 Comments
- incaseyoucare, on 10/12/2007, -2/+81I'm required to use turnitin.com for some classes and had just assumed it was part of the universities online program. Realizing that I'm turning in my papers to a commercial company that is making a profit off of them kind of changes how I feel about it.
I dont know if this is a recent change but if you want to view a paper that turnitin.com claims you plagiarized, this message is displayed:
"Because submitted papers remain the intellectual property of their authors, instructors, and respective institutions, we are unable to show you the content of this paper at this time.
If you would still like to view this paper, your instructor may be able to request permission to view the paper from the instructor to whom the paper was originally submitted." - PATSCRU, on 10/12/2007, -7/+63yeah, what's even more amazing is that they really do have a case, simply by registering the copyright to their papers.
however, this would not fly at most private schools or universities, as most of them have contracts that stipulate that the copyrights to any works by students and some professors at those schools are owned by the schools. Effectively, they own everything you do and can do whatever they wish, including publishing it, so i'm sure they are totally OK with your papers being on turnitin. Check your schools student or teacher agreements.... - cyssero, on 04/18/2009, -2/+55The last paragraph really summed it up for me (FTA):
"Typically, if you quote something for education purposes, scholarship or news reports, that's considered fair use," Beckerman-Rodau said. "But it seems like Turnitin is a commercial use. They turn around and sell this service, and it's expensive. And the service only works because they get these papers."
I couldn't exactly see where they were going with this, but that summed it up very well. The service is useless unless it archives students works. The kids should be entitled to some sort of royalty if their work is earning this company thousands of dollars. You could argue this is all a search engine does, but a search engine points a user in the right direction so the person who actually hosts the webpage can get some hits and ad revenue. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+54Are the students studying to be lawyers?
- natey3, on 10/12/2007, -3/+39Someone I know had a horrible experience with one of these. They used some loose paraphrasing in 1% of their paper, and got called a major plagiarizer because the sentence used a high percentage of the same words of another sentence (although in a completely different order which changed the meaning) The idiotic professors don't give a crap about the facts, if so and so computer system says you cheated you did, and if it says your clean you are. Dumbing down of America starting with the educators, go technology!
- fifalover, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32I first heard of this type of service a few years ago in college. In fact, in an ethics class no less! That teacher didn't use it for this same reason the kids are suing, but told us that approximately 50% of the faculty did use it. The first thing that came to my mind was this copyright issue. The teachers are sending this company papers that they check, and in turn, add to their database so they can check future papers. Seems like an easy win. Good for them.
- nukem996, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28We had a discussion on this in my English class and one of the things my English professor and I agreed on is that Turnitin could actually make it easier to plagiarize. If a student changes the wording of the essay they stole to get it by turnitin(most of the time you have an unlimited amount of times to submit it) it could trick most professors. Many of them just trust turnitin unless they themselves recognize the paper is done by someone else.
Personally I hope they win and turnitin is shutdown. I hate being treated like a criminal and going through the process of proving I'm innocent, luckily most professors at my college don't use it. - vaga222, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23The main problem with Turnitin (which I have used on various occasions) is:
1. Most institutions do not inform you about it (www.dundee.ac.uk doesn't)
2. Any work created by UK undergrade students is automatically their own work and copyrighted
I'm not sure how it works in the US but I think they might have a good case. - aoe2bug, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16They should try to get this class-action status. I live(d) in Fairfax County and I never wanted my papers to be a part of Turnitin, but it didn't occur to me to actually do anything.
Good kids.. - mikelieman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18@junkyarddawg,
Well, back in the day, the teacher knew how you wrote things, and if you turned in work that didn't sound like yours, in their professional opinion, they'd grill you about your sources, background material, etc.
But everyone's always looking for the "Magic Bullet", aren't they... - KibibyteBrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13While I think they have a case, its a shame they aren't public high school students. High School students have the strongest case being it would seem outside the powers of the state to force citizens to surrender copyrights in public funded programs. Colleges do have policies that force students to do so, however equally dubious, that turnitin can use in their court arsenal. But it would be almost impossible to get a judge to buy into the idea that high school students should be forced to surrender their rights when they are already pretty much forced to be somewhere by the state to begin with.
- macirish, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Someday, the cheater and the student who didn't are going to be in competition for something important - maybe a major contract, maybe a court case, maybe an important piece of legislation.
At that point in time, the student who did the work, sweated it out and learned...is going to run over the cheater like a steamroller.
The cheater will curse the universe and blame his bad luck - and threaten a lawsuit....and if he does he'll go looking for a good lawyer, one who didn't get through school by cheating. - Moly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I haven't been in high school for a long time, but I copyrighted every paper I wrote from my freshman year on - that was 25 years ago. Man am I old. I did it because I didn't want teachers using my papers in textbooks they would work on later. Yes, where I was going to high school, the teachers wrote textbooks. I received objections in College and Grad school, to the practice, but I ignored the criticism - what were they going to do? Interestingly, the only teachers/profs/etc that didn't object where the ones that didn't write texts.
- mikelieman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14@junkyarddawg,
The audience is ONE, turnitin.com.
And if they don't like the terms, they can certify they have no copies of the copyrighted material, and move along their merry way.
Free Enterprise, ain't it great? - theonesteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10There are longer-term effects of cheating just that once. At the time of the actual cheating, it demoralizes honest students who realize their hard work will get the same (or possibly worse) grade as the cheater's. At a higher level, it trashes the quality of future courses for honest students - we all know that everything's taught to the level of the slowest/stupidest student in the course. Guess who that is? Often it's the people who cheated in prior courses and prerequisites and therefore don't understand the material.
Some people say if a cheater and an honest student are in direct competition for a job, the honest person will win out because he learned while the other guy didn't. Unfortunately this isn't true. In the real world, the cheaters get through interviews the same way they got through courses in school - they lie or otherwise falsify their capabilities. Everyone in the work force has seen coworkers who don't have a clue what they're doing. Everyone's heard of executives who are great talkers but stupid as hell when it comes to actually implementing things.
Think about it. If all cheaters were denied professional engagements, companies would be in a huge bind for lack of workers. Look around you: your immediate superior may be one of them. - chingy1788, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12@Achalemoipa
when 22 million students start suing, I'm going to get together a team of top notch engineers, then build and plan an entire mission to go terraform a planet and live on that planet while Earth gets over run by idiots who really should have failed the exam but got qualified through cheating - FunkyPits, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10This if funny mostly because I am sure if any of us came up with competing business with similar business model they would try to sue the bejebus out of us. Way to go kids only problem I see with it is the schools still choose to use the service, and this will probably just cause a rate hike which means tax dollars blown so they can bust a few people a year cheating on their paper.
- mikelieman, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16
"You know, it's not so outlandish to think that I might sell my essay to a lower year student..."
If a teacher knows so little about a particular students ability and skill in the subject material, that they cannot judge the work to be original, then they are not doing their job.
Services like this, in addition to whatever other criticisms, hide a gross lack of ability or inclination to do their jobs by the teachers, themselves.
I like the "Free Market" solution. Students name their price for their work to be included in their proprietary, commercial database, and if they do not care to meet your terms, than they simply must not have any copies of your work.
If turnitin is a VIABLE business model, then they'll PAY for the tools ( student's essays ) they use. Unless the student's release under the GPL. Which is possible, I guess... - drmangrum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Well, there's a flip side to that coin too. The cheater will have learned there is usually a quick solution to a problem and if your morals don't get in the way, you can do what you want. For a contract, the cheater will use creative accounting to fudge numbers. For a court case, the cheater will use some kind of ***** tactic. Assuming they don't get caught, the world always rewards the liar and the cheat.
- Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@mikelieman: Yeah, right! You're not even going to get paid $10K for a minor article in a national newspaper, much less when an essay just goes into a database and isn't published at all (*and* you retain the rights, so you can sell the essay again if you want to).
The type of use and the size of the audience affects the payment and you're not selling the RIGHTS or giving the database exclusive use. - mbrutsch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9If Google Books charges you thousands of dollars to access those books, then your comparison might be valid. This company is making a *huge* profit on the complete works of others without holding the rights to those works.
- KiLLB0T, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The last paragraph doesn't sum it up well at all:
"Typically, if you quote something for education purposes, scholarship or news reports, that's considered fair use," Beckerman-Rodau said. "But it seems like Turnitin is a commercial use. They turn around and sell this service, and it's expensive. And the service only works because they get these papers."
Turnitin isn't "quoting" the papers, they are anonymously comparing it to other papers. I'm sure if they did flag something as cheating they can't release the paper, but only inform the person submitting it (instructor) who will deal with it.
It's similar to gmail checks the content of your emails and creates the advertisements you see in it, but they can't release any of this information, they keep it anonymous. - Cerebral, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Just a couple of thoughts on this... First of all teachers (after High School) have no idea about their students (save for specialized classes) and I have first hand proof of this. My wife was taking a class and failed her first paper to turn in. I wrote each paper since the first, with a different writing style, and the teacher didn't even realize that she went from getting a horrible 40 or 50 to 90s on papers.
Secondly all that this case will change is that TII will end up making everyone who uses their service have students (probably Universities will do this up front) sign over all of their work or at least use of it to TII. Then it will be one of those things where it will be that if you want an education then you must comply etc.
I think that these students may win and it will be like Youtube where they will pull these papers and who ever else asks but the thing is how can this be PROVED? It is not like you can search their database for yourself for your paper. Also I think that if schools are going to use things like this then these sites should have a service where the students can pre-check their papers for any inconsistencies etc.
Also another thing that can be done in schools is if teachers required students to turn in rough drafts (starting with day 2 of the paper) throughout the process and grade the final based upon not only the content of the work but also the transformation from beginning to end. Just a thought. - Swampthing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8FRESH PERSPECTIVE FROM SOMEONE WHO LIVES NEAR THE AREA: McLean, VA is probably the most wealthy area of Northern Virginia. It's full of senators, doctors, lawyers, actors, etc. Houses (or estates as they call them in McLean) cover acres with tennis courts, iron gates, and stables running 2-5 million dollars. And most of them clog Route 193 outside the Langley High School for a couple miles every morning just so they can be dropped off at school by their parents in their Mercedes. The parking lot is so full of expensive cars, it looks like a high expense dealership...
Now let's get back to the story... who do you think is REALLY suing for $900,000? The rich parents. You can bet these spoiled little brats ran home crying to their over-litigious parents with bulging wallets and asked what can we do, what can we do! Daddy and Mommy said "Don't worry, we'll sue the piss out of them for you dear..." - humbled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8From someone who went to school one district over from McLean:
Ding ding ding, 100% on the money. You did make one mistake - they don't get dropped off in Mercedes and BMWs, that's what the students drive themselves.
I should also note that Langley really is the super-wealthy district - McLean is definitely upper-middle class, but the super rich people go to Langley High, whereas McLean is merely regular rich people. ;) - cambrown99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7This is what happens when you do business in a city (McLean) where at least 40% of the adult population are lawyers.
- mikelieman, on 10/12/2007, -14/+20Bzzt.
MINIMUM licensing fee for use is closer to $ 10,000.
$30.00 doesn't even cover parking for the meeting at the attorney's office to sign the licensing agrement.
With reasonable retainers being on the order of $ 7,500 bucks just to begin? I wouldn't consider it MYSELF for less than 35k. - PATSCRU, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@mikelieman,
unless you're talking about mass publishing and distribution, most licensing fees for uses do not approach that...remember that every piece of software you buy comes with a limited use license. - randf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ mac
you sound like you've watched too many movies where the good guy always wins in the end.
in the movie version, the non-cheater loses to the cheater/resume padder in the interview on monday, again on tuesday, again on wednesday, etc. by thursday takes a low paying job but can live with his conscience. but by friday, the cheater's new boss realizes he's hired a cheater and gives the cheater the boot. in the slo-mo montage (accompanied with painful inspiring music) that follows, the boss rushes around town to find the non cheater flipping burgers, apologizes profuesly and begs the non-cheater to come to work on monday, and offers him the company car and a big bonus for his trouble.
in reality, the non-cheater loses the job to the cheater on monday, to another one on tuesday, another one on wednesday, thursday, friday....etc.
in the real world, there are no inspiring video montages that save the day. bad things frequently happen to good people. - lucid270, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8@Junkyarddawg
"perhaps 10 years ago? Take your own advice: grow the ***** up"
At least don't contradict your own comment please? Saying he's too old to know how things are and then telling him to grow up? Also, I'm pretty sure most of my english teachers could tell the level and quality of my writing, but of course high school was 6 years ago for me. - Matt2k, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I'm not quite sure how, logistically, this is different from a search engine or google's book excerpts. They aren't COPYing the material and redistributing it, are they? Copyright is just that, the right for an author to prevent copying and redistribution. Would it violate copyright for your teacher to keep all submitted papers and compare them manually?
Please avoid any hippy feel-good bleeding heart answers invovling "good" vs "evil" companies. Just imagine the parties involved are anonymous entities and swap them out. How is it legally any different. - hererightnow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ironic. I'm in law school and they use turnitin to vet our essays.
I wonder if they'll still use it if the lawsuit succeeds. - trghpy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hey you dumb asses!
Plagurism checkers are the easiest way to find sources for your paper, just cite all the flagged lines.
Ever since I started using the plagurism checker I've never had to seek those damn needed citations. - Hecks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@ColinM
When the teacher looks at the plagiarism report on turnitin, he/she sees the text as captured from the submitted PDF, not the PDF itself. So no it wouldn't work. - lowerlogic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I don't plagarize and I don't think my school is doing this, but if it were, it would really suck if the software mistaked something I wrote for something someone else wrote just because by chance we used some of the same words in a sentence (like idioms, common expressions, quotes, etc). But just in case false positives do start happening I have a plan:
Before an extended length of time, we will need to utilize ecentric words in order to eschew being erroneously accused of the unpardonable action labeled plagarism. :P - jonnyq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's because the company makes money off the copyrighted work. There goes your fair use. If it was a non-profit organization, then MAYBE this would fly, but since it's being used commercially, that nullifies it.
- Aggaman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Turnitin exists because of the internet. Before the internet, it took quite a bit of effort to cheat. Now students can buy papers online, or copy from other online sources. The effort required to cheat has been substantially lowered, thus more people are doing it. Hence, measures need to be taken.
- aoe2bug, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12RTFA, these are straight A students.
- TKardinal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There seem to be a lot of people who don't understand the headline...
It's a HIGH SCHOOL. Specifically, a PUBLIC high school. There is no "tuition" involved here, people. - leejae, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I'd rather have it implemented. There's so many students that don't do their own work and still get full credit for it. While others work their asses off and still get the same grade.
- aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I never saw anything like this. Then again, I don't see how copying a paper off the web would have helped me in my Analog and Digital Circuit Approximations class.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I don't plagiarize either, I don't think my school is doing this, but if it were, it would really suck if the software mistook something I wrote for something someone else wrote just because by chance we used some of the same words in a sentence (like common expressions, idioms, quotes, etc). But just in case false positives do start happening I have a plan:
Before an extended length of time, we will need to utilize eccentric words in order to eschew being erroneously accused of the unpardonable action labeled plagiarism. :P
Of course copying the same spelling errors is a sure fire way to get caught! I think I beat the system! - otheruser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@mike
Consider this:
Art History 1380, a class required by every single undergraduate degree-plan (all students must take it). There are approximately 200 students in each lecture per semester.Now, every semester, students are expected to submit a 8 page research paper on a certain work of pre-selected art. So that's approximately 1600 pages to analyze and grade.
Now, professors, unlike high-school teachers, teach far more than one class. The same professor also teaches a handful of upper level, more complex, writing-oriented Art History courses, in which more lengthy papers are assigned, more frequently. Professors also conduct research, give guest-lectures, work on projects, and so on.
Now, can you sit there are tell me that you expect your professor to read through 1600 pages of materials from an entry-level course, and identify who is plagiarizing? Of course not.
In fact, the grading of most entry-level course papers are sent to graduate students. It's only in higher level courses that professors begin to individually grade student papers. No one is denying that Turnitin is a valuable service, its just that the way in which they handle the material that bothers people. - sonstone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I saw this in action for the first time yesterday, and I thought it was amazing. I think it would be a real shame if they weren't able to work out some way of keeping this service, even if it was through a non profit organization or something. My girlfriend teaches English for a college in CA. She showed me the results of running her last batch of papers through the service and it was amazing how much copying goes on. Sure, she can notice some of the more obvious bits of plagiarism like copying from a professional source; but like someone mentioned earlier, it's harder to spot work copied from another student.
Yeah, you can argue that they are screwing themselves later on; but that also means they are a drain on the system. I think it would be much better if they learned their lesson early on.... - lazyeyesam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@vaga222
I'd have to disagree with you there. I'm pretty sure that UK students don't own copyright on their own work. I believe that the work you submit to your university belongs to them. Authors are accredited with the work, but in the end it is the university that "owns" it. - arkan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7No, because none is a contraction for 'not one.'
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Hi5, and amen. You're the only one in this topic making a lick of sense.
So what, if the cheaters cheat? Guess what? Ten years from now, when they can't compete in the working environment, they're going to realize they paid 40k for a college education, could have spent it all on beer and hookers instead, and learned exactly the same amount: zero. - phort99, on 10/12/2007, -9/+12This seems like a bit of an oversight on the company's part... They should have a system where they actually obtain permission from the copyright owners (students) before using their papers in this way. Some may argue that only cheaters are the ones who could benefit from not having this system, but what if a malicious student hacked the database? I sure wouldn't want somebody stealing my thesis and getting rich off my ideas. Copyright, technically defined, is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of your creations, meaning that only the copyright holder has the ability to use the work in most common ways unless he/she waives those rights, which is what this system requires. Students who don't want their papers entered into some database shouldn't be to hard to spot for plagiarism anyway; just look for sudden changes in writing style. If they're good enough writers (with enough time) to blend their plagiarism into their own writing, then there's really no reason for them to be plagiarizing in the first place. I don't even want to start on the inevitable inaccuracies of new technology like this, either. Since plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author, just using similar wording about a similar topic could start false alarms.
I plagiarized part of my comment, but it shouldn't be to hard to find from where. In fact, the company that runs this service would get further preventing plagiarism by using the source from which I plagiarized, since no copyrights are owned for its information. By the way, if you haven't figured out from where by now, you fail the internet. Turn in your modem(s) at the front desk and be out of here by 4:30. - drmangrum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Other than the copyright infringement, I can see another issue with the program. High school students don't exactly have a huge variety of topics to write about. For the most part, they read the same books, they study the same historical events, and the same scientific theories. It's completely believable that two students could write essentially the same paper and both be original works. Honestly, when writing a paper about Lord of the Flies, how different can the topics be? With their limited experience, how varied will the writing styles be?
In most cases, it's easy to spot a phony. Teachers should rely more on knowing how a student would cheat and what sources they use. If they have to, limit their sources to the students school library. - diulei, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Although we'd love to believe in karma because it makes us feel better, I just don't think that's the reality.
Plenty of people cheat their way through school, work, and life, and are successful. -
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