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…and if you do, I’ll sue you, and I’ll win.

That’s what I’ll be telling any professors I might have who require the use of Turnitin.com, and I encourage you to do the same.

Turnitin.com is a plagiarism detection service used by many universities around the world, including in British Columbia: the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Northern British Columbia. In case you didn’t notice, that’s all the universities in the province.

I am not disputing the importance of academic honesty, in fact I agree wholeheartedly that plagiarism is a behaviour which cannot be allowed (honest students suffer from it after all). However using a service like Turnitin is not the proper method of enforcing said academic honesty. The service is built upon (and indeed thrives upon) immorality, hypocrisy, and likely illegality.

The fact is, despite the amount of press Turnitin has garnished over the past years, the vast majority of students do not even know about the service until they are required to use it by a professor. The other fact is, the vast majority of people (of any age) take the words of an authority figure at face value, and conducts no further, independent, research. This means that save a handful of students, nobody knows much more about Turnitin other than that a) it “combats” piracy, and b) they have to use it.

Once you take a course with a professor who requires the use of Turnitin.com, you are deemed to have given implied consent. From SFU’s Turnitin.com policy:

The fact that you registered in a course which requires use of Turnitin.com means you give your consent for the University to collect, use and disclose limited and specific personal information about you through its service provider Turnitin.com.

We will return to the issue of implied consent later on, but for now let us move on to how the service works. You write your first paper, and it needs to go into Turnitin. You follow your institution’s instructions, log into Turnitin.com, agree to their Terms and Conditions without reading it, and you completely fail to notice the other usage policy that they have. After logging in, you proceed to upload your paper for the professor to check.

Once the paper is submitted, Turnitin compares it against thousands of other papers to give a “probability of plagiarism” for your paper, a percentage of the amount of “plagiarized” work in your entire work. It then saves a copy of your work to compare other people’s works against, just in case anyone decided to plagiarize you. Turnitin calls this “protecting students’ intellectual property”, it’s not.

Turnitin claims that they don’t actually store your work in their database, that it’s merely a “digital fingerprint” that they store. I wonder what their definition of “digital fingerprint” really is, considering that they have to store the whole of your work to compare other works against, and they even send your work to third parties, word for word, upon request and after being approved by your professor.

Now that you know how the service works, it’s time to discuss whats wrong with it. For the service to be effective, it must have as many students as possible submit their works into the database. This has led to many campus wide requirements to use the service, with a failing grade as the only alternative. What results is nothing less than presumed guilt until proven innocent. By requiring that all students submit their work for plagiarism scanning the institution is effectively communicating a message of distrust of its students. It’s saying “until you can prove that you did not plagiarize, we will not evaluate your work”. This kind of thinking is contrary to one of the very basic principles of justice, the presumed innocence until proven guilty.

The large volume of its collection also happens to be its own downfall. Constantly individuals are coming up with original ideas completely independently, only to discover that ten other people have already came up with the same ideas before they have. Collect a large enough database of ideas, and its inevitable that someone’s completely original idea have been thought of before. The larger the database, the more likely it is.

Furthermore, by archiving your work in their database they are depriving your work of value (marketability), once it’s in the database you cannot use your own work in the future, because if whomever you market the work to checks the work using Turnitin, the result will necessarily be 100% “plagiarized”, and they will not buy your work. If you have an excellent marketing idea, submit it to Turnitin, and if someone half way around the globe acquires your paper (by requesting and having it approved by your professor) and then acts upon it, your chance of becoming a millionaire have just been stolen.

The concern of marketability combined with the fear of duplicate original ideas creates a chilling effect which is detrimental to the freedom of expression of students. A student is forced to self-censor, to refrain from writing about anything that might hold commercial value, and perhaps refrain from writing about one’s own interest, if this interest is shared amongst a significant number of people. Not only does this communicate a completely wrong message to students, it also has a great potential for reducing the quality of a student’s work. An academic institution should be the very last place this kind of censorship takes place.

Students retain copyright ownership for any original works submitted to the university (professor or otherwise) for grading. The university has no right to use the work in any manner which is not in accordance with the Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42. It’s important to note that nobody else could use your original work in a manner contrary to the Copyright Act without your consent either.

Turnitin.com is making derivatives (copies) of your work for commercial purposes, both of which are prohibited by the Copyright Act, and is not in accordance with fair dealing rights. But Turnitin is covered by the usage policy which you did not notice.

These Terms and Conditions of Use (the “Terms and Conditions”) govern your use of the Turnitin.com web site provided by iParadigms, LLC, including without limitation use of all services, content, data, images, information and other materials posted on or available through this Site (collectively, the “Site”).

The Site is owned and operated by iParadigms, LLC (referred to as “iParadigms,” “we,” “us,” or “our” herein). All services, content, data, information and other materials on or directly accessible from the Site are owned by iParadigms, its subsidiaries, affiliates, licensors and/or vendors.

So you see, they own everything. But that’s arguable since the same paragraphs do not appear in the terms that you must agree to when registering an account (or I just clicked disagree too early and did not see it). It might be comforting (note the sarcasm) to know that iParadigms stamps their copyright on the receipt that you are shown after you submit your work (which includes a copy of the work, no less).

Since the university cannot use your original work in a manner contrary to the Copyright Act, they cannot sub-license the work, or even redistribute it. Your professor would be infringing on your intellectual property right, and likely violating university policy too if he or she submits your work to Turnitin. This is why they don’t, they make you do it. The argument is that if you are submitting your work then your are fully aware of what you are doing (true), and that nothing would then be illegal (false).

But didn’t you give an implied consent by enrolling in the course? Well, yes, but that’s not valid. Even if you personally submit your own work to Turnitin, under Canadian law, a contract may be voided if it was accepted under threat, duress, or undue influence. The implied consent offers no alternatives other than a failing grade, and often the course is required for the completion of a student’s program of study (ie. degree or diploma). One could argue that this constitutes undue influence, which voids both the implied consent and the Turnitin terms.

Recall that Turnitin distributes exact copies of your work to third parties who request it if your professor allows. Recall also that your professor does not have a right to grant sub-licenses. Why is your professor asked for permission to disclose the work? Why are you not being asked? The answer is simple: they are infringing on your intellectual property right.

More concerning than many issues already discussed is the issue of privacy. iParadigms is a California based company, which means that they are under the jurisdiction of US law. At the moment, the United States has a notoriously bad record of respecting the privacy of even its own citizens (protected by the US constitution), much less citizens of other countries (not protected by the US constitution). The USA PATRIOT Act grants unprecedented powers to the government, a US government agency could access the entire database of Turnitin without cause and without warrant. The US government is also quick to violate the law if it wishes, as the AT&T warrantless wiretapping case has shown. Don’t be surprised if such surveillance of the Turnitin database is already happening.

iParadigms sells the Turnitin service to universities for large sums of money, they are making millions upon millions of hard, cold, cash. What is making them this money? Their success, the more works they collect the more luring it becomes for potential customers, it gains a perceived more-effectiveness over competitors. What is fuelling this success? Your work. iParadigms is earning money using copyrighted work produced by many thousands of students, but not a single student have seen a single cent. Non-student produced work is properly paid for (royalties) when added to the Turnitin database, but it seems like somehow being a student grants them a license to exploit you (it doesn’t).

Don’t let Turnitin take advantage of your work, and don’t let your university force you to concede basic rights. Perhaps you wouldn’t want to be as drastic as what I described at the beginning, but if you’re interested in politics, work with the people in your university who are already labouring against the service. If you’re not into politics, then the least that you could do is to sign the petition to abolish (or at least make optional) Turnitin, if one is ever created.

Some are already fighting back, both students and professors. Jesse Rosenfeld and Denise Brunsdon of McGill university both refused to use the service. The McGill senate voted for their professors to grade their works nonetheless. Students at McLean High School in the States have also fought back, suing iParadigms for copyright infringement. Professors are speaking out against the service, and various universities (such as Princeton) have opted not to use the service, for various reasons.

It is time to abolish Turnitin from your university.