High schoolers turn in plagiarism screeners for copyright infringement

By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica
Mar. 31, 2007

Four students from Arizona and Virginia have filed suit against plagiarism detection system Turnitin.com, arguing that the service engages in massive copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed this week in a Virginia federal court, claims that the infringement is willful and that Turnitin's parent company iParadigms owes $150,000 for every violation.

Turnitin gives school districts an automated tool to search for instances of plagiarism. Students are generally required to submit their work to the site before receiving a grade on it, and the service returns an "Originality Report" on each paper. At Virginia's McLean High School, which two of the plaintiffs attend, students have no choice: failure to submit a paper through Turnitin results in a 0.

Judging by their lawsuit, students don't think much of this system. "The Turnitin system is capable of detecting only the most ignorant or lazy attempts of plagiarism by students without significant monetary resources," says the court filing, "and is ineffective if a plagiarist does anything aside from virtually exactly copying another's work, or obtains his or her paper from a pay web site."

But what bothers them most is the fact that Turnitin archives submitted work in order to build up its database. These student papers are then used to look for plagiarism in future submissions. The students allege that this is copyright infringement. Turnitin has known for years that this would be a sensitive issue, and in 2002 commissioned an opinion (PDF) from law firm Foley & Lardner. The group concluded that the use of the papers constituted fair use, but admitted that "the archival of a submitted work is perhaps the most legally sensitive aspect of the TURNITIN system." The lawyers argue that because the text is not displayed or distributed to anyone, it can hardly be called "infringement."

The students disagree, of course, and allege that parent company iParadigms "may send a full and complete copy of a student's unpublished manuscript to an iParadigms client anywhere in the world upon request of the client, and without the student's permission."

After the McLean school adopted the system, a group of offended students banded together and hired a lawyer to send Turnitin a letter in September 2006. The letter generated a strong response: Turnitin filed for a "declaratory judgment" from a federal judge in California, looking for a ruling that its service was legal. In that case, filed in early December, the company claimed once again that it was protected by the fair use exemption, and that it was actually protectng student copyrights. "Rather than infringing intellectual property rights, iParadigms is trying to protect copyright interests by students and other authors by preventing plagiarism of the very student papers that Turnitin receives," the company wrote.

iParadigms abruptly pulled the case without explanation two weeks later; according to the new filing from the students, this only occurred after the company was contacted by a Washington Post reporter.

The case is now in the hands of another federal court on the other side of the country, and it will center on papers from the four students involved. That means that "DBQ1: Ancient Greek Contributions," "What Lies Beyond the Horizon," "Under a Pear Tree," and "Day is Weary"—student papers with little monetary value—could eventually cost iParadigms $600,000 should the company be found guilty. If the students prevail, the company's current business model would be substantially damaged, and a vigorous fair use defense is expected.