Turnitin.com: Copyright Infringement?

The web is continuing to change the way in which we view intellectual property. Infringements of copyrights and violations of privacy are far harder to define than they once were. With so much content “out there,” lines become blurred as to what is acceptable use, and even if something is being used inappropriately, it becomes difficult to find a manner in which to stop the misuse.

Copyright infringement issues have been raised by students over Turnitin.com, an online anti-plagiarism service for educational institutions. iParadigm, the maker of the service, however, has achieved a hero’s status in the minds of many educators. To them, Turnitin is a long overdue weapon in the fight to protect the integrity of academics in our copy and paste culture. Teachers simply have their students upload completed essays and papers to the site and within moments, Turnitin will scan the document and produce an originality report that shows whether or not parts (or all parts) of a piece have been borrowed from another source. The service now allows teachers the GradeMark option to even grade the papers on the site, making the transaction paperless.

The backgrounder on the Turnitin.com website explains the system in this manner:

“At the heart of Tunitin’s easy-to-use service is iParadigms’ proprietary and complex document source analysis technology. This technology creates unique digital “fingerprints” of each text document, including those submitted through the Turnitin plagiarism prevention system; these finger prints are then compared with the fingerprints of other data in iParadigms’ databases. The system locates and catalogs information from other sources likely to be used for plagiarism, searching billions of Internet pages, millions of student papers, and commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals. Comparison of new submissions against this database ensures that papers can never be sold, recycled, or traded among students from different years, in other classes or other institutions.”

On the surface, Turnitin sounds like a handy tool for teachers to catch cheaters and discourage plagiarism. An overwhelming number of educators agree on its utility and the service has been adopted by over 6,000 institutions in 90 countries, including Harvard and Georgetown universities [1]. However, there has been an international outcry over the role of student papers in this system.

As the backgrounder alludes to, Turnitin contracts with an institution and then student papers are uploaded and archived as these “fingerprints” or copies. These works are kept indefinitely in the database and add to the effectiveness of the tool. The database boasts over 22 million student papers and claims to archive 100,000 student papers a day [1, 6].

Four students, two from McLean High School and two from Desert Vista High School in Arizona, filed suit in 2007 in Virginia against Turnitin for archiving six essays that the students had obtained copyright registrations for [1]. At these schools, students must agree to iParadigms’ terms or fail the assignment, or risk expulsion [6]. The lawsuit seeks $900,000, $150,000 for each of the six papers. One of the students even requested that Turnitin not archive a particular essay, and they did anyway.

The real question is if whether taking essays, converting them to electronic files, and then keeping them in the online database is “fair use” or not.

According to the United States Copyright Office, fair use of copyrighted material depends on:

- “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes”

- “the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole”

- “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work” [7].

The Purpose

Most of the time, using copyrighted works in a non-profit educational setting is considered appropriate. While Turnitin may argue that they are for educational pursuits, the company is certainly not a nonprofit. A subscription for unlimited use of Turnitin services for a mid-sized college or university runs about $5,000 [2].

Nature of Copyrighted Work

Facts cannot be copyrighted, but original and creative works can be, and that type of work constitutes a large part of what Turnitin is receiving from students. The student’s essays constitute copyrightable material and they were able to obtain a copyright already in this case.

Substantiality of Use

Typically, if only an excerpt of a piece is used, or a part substantially less than the whole, then it is considered fair use. In this case, Turnitin copies the entire work to the archives and scans new student documents with the entire copied/archived work.

Effects on the Potential Market

While it is not clear how or if the students were planning on profiting from their essays, Turnitin argues that the work is only archived for the digital fingerprint which does not threaten marketability. The work is not copied, displayed or published in its entirety from the database [4].

Ultimately, on March 2008 the district judge threw out the case, ruling that the school systems should deal with the issue, not iParadigm [4]. In a press release on the Turnitin site, it explains that the judge sees the use of the documents to be fair and that such use “provides a substantial public benefit through the network of institutions using Turnitin.”

Turnitin simply adds “a further purpose or different character” to the works and works of this “transformative” nature are not in violation.

In April 2008 the students appealed the judgment.

Beyond the McLean and Desert Vista high schools, students believe that iTurnitin taking their work without permission and profiting from it is inherently wrong.

In other countries, students don’t like that they have to upload their work to this website. Many universities are going to a “guilty-until-proven-innocent policy” where all students must have their work vetted by Turnitin first [2].

Trustworthy students worldwide seem to be the ones made to be uncomfortable – Maggie Woodley of Ryerson University in Toronto said “I’m an honest student, but I don’t like the way they’re using my paper. They’re keeping my work for their own purposes and I have no choice” [2].

Another student, Jesse Rosenfeld, from McGill University in Montreal is fighting McGill’s use of Turnitin. He received a zero when he refused to turn in an assignment via the site. “I’m supposed to hand in my paper to a private company, which is then entered into a database, which the company in turn profits from,” explained Rosenfeld. “I’m indirectly helping a private company make a profit off my paper” [2].

Students in Australia, specifically at the University of Melbourne, are demanding a form of compensation against risk of commercial gain by Turnitin [5]. The administration there is negotiating with Turnitin to have the students’ assignments purged every few years from the database, instead of holding on to them forever.

In a very different attack on Turnitin, students in London who do plagiarize have simply figured out a way to outsmart the system; they are adding symbols to their words, making them immune to scans because the copied text is no longer similar enough to the original work [3]. Students add $$**@ and accents onto words that the program cannot detect.

While iParadigm was able to escape from a copyright infringement charge this time, I wonder if they will be so lucky in the future. It sounds like institutions will need to rethink their usage of what they considered to be a benign online tool that ended up being a smoldering hot button among students for the past six years.

[1] TechNews – “McLean Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service; Plaintiffs Say Company’s Database of Term Papers, Essays Violates Copyright Laws” by Maria Glod, Washington Post Staff Writer, 3/29/07

[2] National Post – “Presumed Plagiarists: An American company is making money helping universities detect non-original assignments. Students who object to the practice want turnitint.com to bear the cost of a test case in the courts” by Sara Schmidt, 12/10/2003

[3] The Guardian – “Education: Crib sheet: Who are you calling a %*@*!* cheat?”by Jessica Shepherd, 6/3/08

[4] The Washington Post – “Virginia Briefing: Students Appealing Dismissal of Plagiarism Suit”, Associated Press, 4/24/08

[5] The Australian – “Plagiarism Risk Irks Students” by Jim Buckell, 03/17/04

[6] TechWeb – “Students Sue Turnitin Anti-Plagiarism Service for Copyright Infringement” 4/3/07

[7] United States Copyright Office – “Fair Use” http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

The “originality” image is from turnitin.com, while the logo image is from the Cal State Fullerton web site.