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March 26, 2008, 08:58 AM ET
Academic Reaction to Court Decision About Plagiarism Detection Is Mixed
Education bloggers disagree over a federal judge’s decision holding that a commercial plagiarism-detection tool popular among professors does not violate the copyright of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays in the database that the company uses to check works for academic dishonesty. (See a free Chronicle article posted today.)
Georgia Harper, a copyright expert who is the scholarly-communications adviser for the University of Texas at Austin libraries, called the ruling a “relief” to many high-school and college administrators. The plagiarism-detection tool at issue in the case, Turnitin, is used at thousands of colleges and schools around the world.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, said he is “much less comfortable” with the ruling. “I object to the whole techno-fundamentalist process and mistrustful culture of ‘Turnitin,’” he wrote. “It undermines the relationship between student and professor and among students. There has to be a better way.”
Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, wrote on his blog that he is most troubled by the fact that in some cases students might be forced to use Turnitin. “This isn’t the biggest travesty in the world, but I’m not sure it’s fair either,” he said.
“This is a ruling of potentially large significance,” he added.
What do you think? —Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Student-Life, Teaching
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