Turnitin? No, Cut-it-out!
(The following is a commentary performed by me for “The Collective,” a show on Comet Radio, the radio station for Mayville State University.)
Students,
You remember that term paper you wrote last semester? You know, that 10-page exegesis on “Finnegan’s Wake,” or your examination of the Algerian War of Independence? Well depending on what class you had, far more than just your professor got that paper. If your professor uses a specific anti-plagiarism service, a small corporation in San Francisco currently keeps your feminist analysis of “Macbeth” in a large database of all submitted student papers. And what’s worse? They’re making money from this.
The company is “iParadigms,” and their anti-plagiarism service is called “Turnitin.” The premise behind this is simple enough. Turnitin maintains a large collection of works, from the internet, books, periodicals, and other academic papers. When your professor uses Turnitin, the company compares your paper to everything in its database. If the same phrases show up in your work and another author’s, your paper is flagged for possible plagiarism. Schools and universities can then subscribe for Turnitin’s services to discourage students from plagiarism. These subscriptions aren’t cheap; they can cost large universities up to $10,000 a year. Mayville State pays $1600 for its trial subscription, a subscription currently under discussion by our Technology Planning Committee. Turnitin bills itself as “the internet’s most widely used and trusted resource for preventing the spread of internet plagiarism.” By the way, I got that quote from the “About Us” section of their website, Turnitin.com.
If that was all Turnitin did, there wouldn’t be a problem. Both students and instructors agree that plagiarism is a problem in schools and campuses. I know I don’t like putting in hours of research into a paper, only to receive the same grade as a student with no conscience and access to Google. And I’m sure professors hate wasting valuable time personally checking individual sources to spot plagiarism themselves.
But Turnitin goes a step further, and this is where the controversy comes in. Turnitin adds to its database every single paper it receives. In other words, if your professor submits your paper to Turnitin, Turnitin keeps that paper, and compares all future papers to it. So, the more people use Turnitin, the bigger its database gets, and on and on. They are the only anti-plagiarism service that retains all its selections, and it is for that reason it can boast the biggest database, and get the most clients and make the most money.
What this means to you—the student—is alarming. To make this very simple, Turnitin takes your papers, copies them to a database, and makes money by charging other people to use them. This blatantly violates the copyright you have on your work. You are the author; you created this paper—and now a company can take your paper from you, make money off it, and provide you with no compensation.
So, at what point does the cure become worse than the disease? Plagiarism is wrong because you are taking someone else’s work without his permission and benefiting from it. Yet, does Turnitin do anything substantially different? Turnitin profits off your work the same way the plagiarist profits off the real author’s work. Mayville State student
More important than the immorality of Turnitin is its potential illegality. The legal quandary concerns Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property encompasses the products that are created by the mind—books, articles, and, of course, student papers. The paper you write is your Intellectual Property. You own it the same way you own your car; they are both forms of property, and they are both protected by law. In the case of Intellectual Property, your property is protected by a copyright, as the law gives all authors a copyright to every work they write. Intellectual Property, incidentally, is a big reason why plagiarism is such a serious crime: You are taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own. You are stealing his Intellectual Property. Well, Turnitin steals yours.
Turnitin challenges this, of course. They claim that they are not infringing on copyrights, because their services fall under the “Fair Use” exception in Copyright Law. The “Fair Use” part of the copyright law is what allows teachers to, for example, do things like hand out photocopied articles to their students. “Fair use” allows people to use copyrighted material without getting the author’s permission in certain narrowly defined situations—you can’t use a copyrighted material just for personal profit. “Fair use”of a copyrighted material must, to quote Wikipedia, “stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public.” It does not cover things like photocopying Stephen King books and selling them for money.
Lawyers consider Turnitin’s “Fair Use” claims laughable. University of Minnesota law professor Dan L. Burk calls it “baloney,” because Turnitin is a commercial enterprise and they are violating copyrights just to make money. Several campuses around the country are dropping their Turnitin subscriptions based on legal concerns, including the University of Cal-Berkely and the University of Kansas earlier this week.
So what can we do about it here in Mayville? As I said, several of our professors on campus, including (John Doe) in the English department and (Jane Roe) in CIS, use Turnitin. The easiest way to get them to stop is, quite simply, just ask them. Your professors did not get their jobs through obstinacy or close-mindedness; they got their jobs because they’re intelligent and willing to change course in the face of new evidence. So students, do some independent research, and respectfully approach your professors with the facts about Turnitin. Tell your professors that you are uncomfortable with allowing a third party to profit off your work, or that you’re worried about privacy concerns. Argue that Turnitin is immoral. The case against Turnitin is strong, and it’s very possible that your professor will simply agree to stop using it if enough student’s express concern.
If that doesn’t work, we are left with a simple act of civil disobedience: abject refusal to use Turnitin. If your professor says your paper will be submitted to—and permanently held by—Turnitin, refuse to turn it in. You won’t be the first to protest like this. In 2004, a student at McGill University in Montreal refused to submit his papers through Turnitin. After a prolonged legal battle, the university senate determined that his papers were to be graded without Turnitin.
Turnitin is a product of obvious immorality and at best dubious legality. The professors who use it are blatantly ignoring their students’ right to the Intellectual Property they create at college. Mayville State University’s stated mission is “to guide and educate students so they may enhance their lives.” By allowing its professors to give their students’ intellectual property to a for-profit third party, Mayville State has failed in this regard.
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