Plagiarism Checking Websites
Last month a group of high school students filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a company that archives student papers for purposes of plagiarism checking. I wrote about it here.
It turns out that the company has been around for a while, and at least one college specifically advised it’s professors not to use the service without receiving the voluntary consent of their students. My guess is numerous other colleges took the same approach.
I’m intrigued by the fact that the college professors sought legal advice, whereas the high school teachers apparently did not. Without knowing any numbers, I can’t say that this is a representative sample by any means, but it does point out the need to teach our citizens the basics of copyright law, so that they at least know when they MIGHT need to get a legal opinion on something. In this case the students are suing the company that checks the papers, and the company clearly should have known enough to do some due diligence checking on the legalities of their business model. But the students may also have a case against their teachers and their schools - now that’s a scary thought.
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