09.24.06
TurnItIn.com — Genius Plagiarism Prevention or Legal Trainwreck.
Many people, especially students, have heard of, and even experienced, TurnItIn.com. I came across the site while in college, and while I never had to use it myself, I knew many professors that required their students submit all assignments via the site. I've had my concerns and doubts regarding this site... The idea of a third party collecting and holding my data doesn't seem right. We live in a world where privacy is becoming more and more important... but student privacy is going out the door. What if an employee is perusing the database one day and finds a document they like and think will go places... They change the submission information... submit a notice back to the students professor that the work was copied. The employee attaches their own name to the document and submits it to a magazine for publication... While they my not have happened yet... there's no reason why it couldn't happen.
I worked on a 3rd party data storage solution once for written materials. The idea was that in order to maintain the users privacy only an encrypted copy, that the 3rd party couldn't open, was stored. This is obviously not the case with TurnItIn.com as they are making comparisons against your work.
Should a student be forced to submit their work because a percentage of them may cheat... Isn't this like requiring everyone submit their fingerprints and DNA because some people commit crimes? I'm sure that various privacy foundations would have issues with that and as a follow up to this I'm contacting both the EFF and PRC to find out their thoughts on TurnItIn.com and it's violation of students privacy... Especially the schools forcing students to make use of it.
I'm not the only one with concerns on this subject, recently a group of high school students from McLean High School in Fairfax County, Virginia formed the Committee for Students' Rights and collected more than 1100 signatures protesting the use of TurnItIn.com at their school. This story was carried by the Washington Post. I love the part that says "Fairfax school and Turnitin officials said lawyers for the company and various universities have concluded that the paper-checking system does not violate student rights." Of course Turnitin's lawyers don't think it violates students rights... if they said it did, they'd be out of a job.
I'll keep you up to date with responses I get from the EFF and PRC and once again I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this issue.
Peace,
HT
J_K9 said,
September 24, 2006 at 3:57 pm
I agree entirely - I haven’t got a problem with my work being checked for plagiarism, as long as it’s done by people I trust (my teachers). However, when it’s done by a third party, especially one which MAY have a ‘grey’-type licence, I refuse to send it to them… Or, rather, I would refuse to do so - luckily, our school doesn’t use that kind of system. Our teachers check our work by themselves.
Good points, though. If they ever propose this kind of thing at our school, I’ll take a few points from this
Tyler Reguly said,
September 24, 2006 at 4:09 pm
It’s glad to see some places aren’t adopting this yet… To me this is a way for teachers/professors to become even lazier…
Another issue I have with this is the “verification” process… We all know computers don’t make mistakes… users make mistakes.. programmers make mistakes… How can we be sure that the verification process is entirely accurate… What if someone makes a change and suddenly if you use 10% of the same words you’ve copied the document… You could be discredited and shamed at your school.. and even if the glitch is fixed, who’s to say your reputation will ever be the same.. especially if it were published online… it could ruin your entire life.
What happens if the coders of the site have missed flaws… I post a document for “peer review” and it contains an xss which the server doesn’t properly eliminate… suddenly I have plenty of private information from your computer… or I use SQL Injection to dump their database.. I now have every document they have stored… and much worse… your personal details with your school shared with them when they signed you up… There are plenty of concerns among these sites.. I would feel violated in using it.
J_K9 said,
September 25, 2006 at 1:59 am
Aye - who is to say that these ‘anti-cheat verification’ apps (or whatever you want to call them) are foolproof, and as sophisticated as they may claim to be? And what is classified as “cheating”.. For example, if I used the statements “this plant’s rate of photosynthesis decreases as” and “from this we can deduce that” in my document, and both those statements happened to be on another page about a similar thing (it’s not like they’re uncommon in these types of articles/documents), would I be crossed off as a cheat, and my work destroyed? Or, if this were used to verify GCSE coursework electronically, would I be disqualified from ALL my GCSEs because a piece of software claims that I have plagiarised, when, in fact, I haven’t?
“What happens if the coders of the site have missed flaws… I post a document for “peer review” and it contains an xss which the server doesn’t properly eliminate… suddenly I have plenty of private information from your computer… or I use SQL Injection to dump their database.. ”
That is another frightening issue.. And I’m sure that one of these sites has a flaw on some page or other..
Tyler Reguly said,
September 25, 2006 at 10:03 am
This article received mention @ http://keithtipton.powerblogs.com/posts/1159157907.shtml. Keith didn’t agree with my comparison of requiring submissions to TurnItIn.com to the mass collection of DNA and Fingerprint evidence.
This was my response… which I believe should also appear here to clear up this issue for any future readers.
To address the issue… Forensic Linguistics (or Stylistics as it’s more commonly being refered to) is very real and used quite often… High Schools, Colleges and Universities are helping amass a large database of individual writing styles. Given government ability to subpoena records… TurnItIn.com is building a forensic database not unlike a fingerprint or DNA database. While this forensic science may not be leading the way right now, it does exist and that’s what causes a concern regarding privacy.
Tyler Reguly said,
October 5, 2006 at 7:49 pm
As I mentioned… I contacted both PRC and EFF for comments on this… I’ve yet to hear back from the EFF, however I did hear back from PRC… It seems that they don’t see this as a privacy issue, but an IP issue… Their comment is attached below:
—–
Dear Tyler,
Thank you for contacting the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse about
TurnItIn.com. The best people to ask for comment on this would be
intellectual property attorneys. Since this is not our area of
expertise, we will be unable to offer a comment.
I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.
Sincerely,
Patricia
Consumer Advocate
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
3100 Fifth Avenue, Suite B
San Diego, CA 92103-5839
phone: (619) 298-3396
FAX: (619) 298-5681
http://www.privacyrights.org