Students file lawsuit against Turnitin.com
Two students at McLean High School in Mclean, Virginia and two high school students in Arizona have filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court in Virginia against Turnitin.com, a company that many school districts and schools have hired to help them combat plagiarism in the Internet age. The lawsuit alleges that the company is violating the high school students’ rights under U.S. copyright law. The students are required by their schools to submit some essays to the Web-based service, which compares the documents against a massive internal database and other sources to look for signs of plagiarism. It then places the student works in an electronic archive. “Our clients have no problem … submitting documents for review,” says Robert A. Vanderhye, the attorney representing the students pro bono. he adds. “But when it comes to archiving, it raises a number of very serious issues, the first of which is copyright infringement.” John M. Barrie, the founder and chief executive officer of iParadigms, disagrees. “The use that we make of the students’ papers comes under the ‘fair use’ clause of the U.S. Copyright Act,” he says. The company also argues that the students, before submitting their papers, clicked “I agree” to contractual terms that release iParadigms from any liability.
The legal action comes amid widespread concern among educators on how to address plagiarism as students can, with minimal effort, access a wealth of information and writing on the Internet and present it as their own work or without proper citation of sources. A study released last fall by the Josephson Institute of Ethics found that among more than 36,000 high school students surveyed, 60% said they had cheated on a test in the past year and one in three said they had used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment. Donald L. McCabe, a professor at Rutgers University’s Newark, N.J., campus who studies plagiarism, reports that his own survey data of about 18,000 high schoolers over the past several years has shown troubling results, with about 60% of students admitting to some plagiarism. Mr. McCabe says schools seem to take the problem of plagiarism seriously, but “a lot of them aren’t sure what to do.” The best approach, he argues, is to promote academic integrity to students. “I still think there’s a place for Turnitin.com, but I’m opposed to its widespread use,” he says. “To me that says to students, ‘I can’t trust any one of you.’”
Each of the four students involved in the lawsuit obtained copyrights for academic papers they submitted to the Turnitin site, according to court papers, and the suit argues that the company’s conduct infringes those protections. The plaintiffs seek $900,000 in damages from iParadigms. Beyond objecting to the practice of archiving, the complaint asserts the company “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.” But Mr. Barrie insists that student work is protected. “Only the student and their teacher will ever see this,” he says. “The papers remain in the database.” In its motion to dismiss the case, iParadigms focuses its argument on the fact that the students who are suing agreed to release the company from liability. “Instead of pursuing this school matter through the proper channels, plaintiffs have instead concocted a purported copyright claim,” the motion says.
Education Week
By Erik W. Robelen
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: Background on the dispute, as well as a copy of the legal complaint filed by the plaintiffs in the suit, are below. See also the company’s website.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Virginia Turnitin dispute]
[Legal complaint in Turnitin lawsuit]
[Turnitin.com]