The Peak

Why are we still turning it in?

By Chen Shen

A quick Google search for “Turnitin” in The Peak’s online archive turns up almost a dozen published articles from October of 2001 to July of 2007, touching upon the subject of Turnitin.com. Not a single word of approval could be found within these pages; it was rare to even find a neutral stance. Indeed, some are quite detailed in what is wrong with Turnitin [“Dude, where’s my intellectual property?” January 30, 2006]. But despite negative reception, use of the service has only increased since SFU first subscribed in 2002. With almost two whole departments — Philosophy and Political Science — using it, we should ask ourselves: why are we still surrendering rights that even university policy affirms?

On intellectual property and privacy rights

In order to explore the problems with Turnitin, we must first establish exactly what rights a student has. I will be focusing on two in specific: copyright and privacy rights. The Copyright Act grants the author of a work the “sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form whatever.” Use of the work by any other person must either be approved by the author, or meet the criteria of fair use. The definition of a work is very broad, and includes “every original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work.” Furthermore, an original work has been interpreted as “the product of an author’s exercise of skill and judgment.” I don’t doubt that some students exercise neither skill nor judgment in completing assignments, but the majority do, and it is what is expected. It seems rather clear that students do indeed own the copyright to their own works.

But what about university policy? The Intellectual Property Policy states that the university acknowledges your ownership of IP, but only if you have a written agreement with your professor. It may well be interpreted to imply that otherwise the student does not own the IP, but such an interpretation would be wholly inconsistent with the explicit affirmation that “the full ownership of IP and all rights pertaining to ownership are vested in the Creator.” What the university does retain is a “royalty-free perpetual right to use for scholarly, academic, and other non-commercial purposes all IP created through use of University resources.”

With regards to privacy, perhaps the most relevant document is the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and the issue we are most concerned with the U.S. Patriot Act. In 2004, the Privacy Commissioner of B.C. reported on exactly this. In an investigation into the impact of public sector outsourcing on the privacy of British Columbians, he posed two questions: can the U.S. access our personal information, and if yes, does this violate our rights under the FOIPPA. It was concluded that not only was it possible for U.S. authorities to gain access to private information of Canadians held by a U.S. company, but that there was a real risk of this happening. It was also concluded that this is indeed contrary to the protections afforded by the FOIPPA.

The university itself places a heavy emphasis on the proper handling of private information. To summarize in one sentence, it will collect only such information necessary to operate the institution, and use the information only to carry out the purpose for which it was collected.

On Turnitin.com

Turnitin is a plagiarism prevention service made available to educational institutions on a subscription basis. It is operated by iParadigms LLC, which was founded in 1996 by a group of UC Berkeley researchers led by John Barrie, who invented the technology behind Turnitin. The service has thousands of customers worldwide, including most universities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Turnitin compares a student-submitted paper against other works already in its database and generates an originality report which is provided to the professor. The report includes an overall similarity index — a percentage of “plagiarized” work — as well as highlighting the segments that match other sources. It is also possible to access the original sources.

As far as the concept goes, it’s a well-intended service designed to mitigate the problem of plagiarism. However the implementation is, to put mildly, far from ideal. Turnitin’s copying right

With over six thousand clients, one can’t help but wonder what is so attractive about Turnitin. The answer lies in the vast size of its database. Not only does Turnitin archive information available from the public, it also archives over 40 million student papers. Turnitin archives every paper ever submitted to the service, so as to compare future submissions against. But this ability alone isn’t enough.

The knowledge that a paper may have been plagiarized is useless to a professor unless the alleged source is accessible, in order for the professor to verify the automated analysis. Accordingly, Turnitin provides this access, but it first asks the professor of the source paper’s author whether to release the work.

Here we find two major problems: first, Turnitin has no right to archive, and thereby reproduce, the work of the student, especially given that the purpose is for profit; and second, a professor does not own any student’s copyright, and therefore has no right to grant sublicenses to a student’s work.

Two defences could be found within Turnitin’s Canadian Legal Document. The first is that Turnitin only makes a “fingerprint” of submissions, and does not contain the actual contents of the work. This claim is easily refuted by the fact that Turnitin provides full-text copies of all works within its database on request. The second defense relies upon the contractual relationship between the university and the student. It is correctly stated that the student enrolls and pays tuition fees subject to the university’s policies, and that universities have a right to review student works in exchange for the granting of a degree. But it is a long way indeed from this right to the right of mandating the compromise of a student’s rights, especially when they are recognized by the very policies that govern the university. To support the assertion, Turnitin introduced the analogy of a structural engineer whose designs, prepared for a civic centre on agreement, were modified by other engineers after the engineer refused to do so himself. The very fact that this was an employed project nullifies its applicability to the argument Turnitin raises.

It is also strongly suggested in Turnitin’s usage policy that any work submitted to the service becomes the property of iParadigms. This is the only argument capable of defending both Turnitin’s actions and the actions of professors who don’t own a student’s copyright. As this involves the issue of consent, I will return to it later.

The United States’ lack of privacy

iParadigms is based in California, and being a private company which collects vast amounts of personal information from Canadians, the case of Turnitin is significantly similar to the case of medical records outsourcing, which led to the B.C. Privacy Commissioner’s report.

In both cases the party outsourcing information is a public body of British Columbia. In both cases the party employed to process and store the information is a private company within the United States, subject to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, and subject to Patriot Act searches. Also in both cases, the information involved is private and sensitive. Medical records reveal deeply personal information, and assignments reveal the personality and views of students. It is not difficult for anyone to enumerate a rather extensive list of reasons why any three-letter agency might want to spy on these databases, all in the name of national security.

The privacy commissioner concluded that despite the issues with information outsourcing, it was not feasible to prohibit the practice altogether. But in the case of Turnitin, it is entirely feasible, as there are readily available alternatives that both cost less and are more effective.

In addition to being feasible, it is highly compelling to discontinue reliance upon Turnitin in light of the fact that the United States is more than willing to disregard the rule of law in pursuit of information, as demonstrated by the NSA’s illegal wiretap of millions of innocent U.S. citizens.

The issue of consent

If Turnitin takes ownership of all works submitted to the service as part of the usage agreement, then it essentially builds the perfect defence to justify any use of student works. No longer would Turnitin violate a student’s copyright by reproducing the work, nor would the professor ever violate a student’s copyright, because the copyright at this time would be vested in iParadigms, and not the student. However, this defence falls flat on its face when the university mandates use of the service.

The university asserts that by being registered in a course which uses the Turnitin service, students have consented to use the service. Since many courses which use the service are required as part of a program requirement, many students have no choice but to take certain courses. Thus, a student’s consent to use the service would be wholly the result of duress from the university, and has no force or effect. Even in elective courses, the consent amounts at least to the result of undue influence from the university, and is also of no effect.

When confronted with the question of student rights, the university defers the responsibility as actions of a third-party which is unrelated to the university [“Check yer six: SFU is jacking up your term paper” June 20, 2005].

But if this is the case, then where does the university find the authority to coerce students into entering a third party contract? If the university wishes to mandate use of Turnitin, then there is also an obligation for the university to ensure that the service complies with university policy. To cease using student papers for profit would be a good start.

Don’t turn it in

It is pleasant to know that some students have already started taking action against Turnitin. Jesse Rosenfeld won a victory at McGill in 2004 by refusing to turn it in [“Academics: student achieves victory against Turnitin.com” January 26, 2004], and students at McLean High School are currently suing iParadigms for copyright infringement.

Students at Simon Fraser could also play a part. If you have professors who use Turnitin, kindly ask them to exempt you from it, some will be more receptive than others, but it’s certainly amongst the meaningful issues to be addressed during office hours.

As Senate is responsible for the academic governance of the university, they have the power to make Turnitin optional, or even to abolish it altogether. It may be worth your time to communicate your own experience and concerns about the service to the Senate Committee on Academic Integrity in Student Learning and Evaluation, which is evaluating the service.

In conclusion

I have only enough space to outline briefly the main problems with Turnitin, and I have done so to the best of my knowledge. I don’t claim to be authoritative on the subject, and encourage you to research for yourself these issues and others which I have not mentioned.

I should like to say that combating plagiarism is a legitimate and important objective, but it should not be achieved by unethical and hypocritical means. There are plenty of viable alternatives to Turnitin. The traditional Google plus human judgement goes a long way. To simply electronically archive a copy of papers by submission via WebCT serves adequately as a deterrence, as demonstrated by my Psychology professor. And even a Turnitin-style service which is limited in scope to, and operated by, the university itself would solve much of the problems that currently plague the service.

With better methods of combating plagiarism than Turnitin, there is no excuse that we are still using it despite the concerns being continuously raised. The end doesn’t justify the means, after all. Not to mention that it is disputable which end Turnitin actually leads us to.