Appeal favouring iParadigms held
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Just over a year ago the suit against Turnitin.com reached its first decision. The appeal has just been released and analyzed by the folks of Ars Technica.
First off I’m pleased that the legal decision is OCR’d this time so I can copy and paste pieces more easily. The appeal reaffirms that turnitin.com’s use was transformative even though it did not modify the copies, and also fair use. Among other things the legal decision spells out why the ability of a third party to download full papers by searching for a common phrase was not considered.
Plaintiffs also alleged that the Turnitin system offends copyright law because it “may send a full and complete copy of a student’s unpublished manuscript to an iParadigms client anywhere in the world upon request of the client, and without the student’s permission.” J.A. 22. Plaintiffs, however, have not produced any evidence to demonstrate that this occurredwith respect to the plaintiffs’ works at issue here. Accordingly, we confine our review of the copyright issues to iParadigms’ practice of archiving documents.
There’s no evidence that the described copyright infringement occurred so it won’t be considered. I expected it wasn’t considered because that would be the downloader’s fault, not the service’s.
See the Ars Technica article or my previous post for a more detailed analysis.
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3 Comments to “Appeal favouring iParadigms held”
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I understand the ruling and don’t really have a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is “TurnItIn required students to enter into a ‘binding agreement’ when they uploaded papers to the site”.
As a student I don’t usually have a choice to not accept the agreement once my professor decides they want to use TurnItIn. I know that this aspect is outside the scope of this case, but it’s something that needs to be looked at as well. If I’m not comfortable with the Terms of Use of something, I should be able to opt out without repercussions.
I’m glad I had professors in school who gave me a choice.
I have a similar view. The student union at UofT got us the right to say no and I wish it was the same at all schools. I believe it’s something that the CFS should tackle.
There is a minor problem with the current arrangement in that the alternative to TurnItIn is determined by the professor. In CSC300 the semester before I took it, the professor decided that a student who refused turnitin had to write his entire essay under supervision. Well, he did, and after that the professor dropped turnitin altogether.
The CFS should, but they won’t. At least, it’ll take a back seat to eliminating tuition fees outright. And since that’ll never happen, they’ll never move on to stuff that actually could be accomplished.