cshen.ca

The government is trying for the nth time to change Canada’s copyright laws in an effort to please US media overlords, who wish to dictate every detail of how and when Canadians consume media and culture. They want to do this by criminalizing every day activities and imposing hugely disproportionate penalties for these “crimes”.

It is evident, from past bills the government had tried – and failed – to pass, that the goal of this copyright “reform” is to mimic the DMCA of the United States. It is also evident, from numerous examples under the DMCA, that this kind of legislation is a bad idea. One does not have to support file sharing to realize that fines of $1.92 million for allegedly sharing 24 songs, or even $675,000 for 30 songs, can in no way, shape, or form be just, or even sane.

From XKCD: http://xkcd.com/488/

The fight against Turnitin.com is certainly easier if more students are aware of the issues and support the cause, this is why I wrote a 2000 word Peak article detailing the copyright and privacy issues as I know it. Wonder how many people will actually read it.

The Peak removed all the references from the article, so quotes are not properly attributed, or even attributed at all. Considering these were in-text references as opposed to footnotes (which I was told they won’t print), I’m kind of disappointed that they were not printed.

The article: The Peak | Original referenced draft

…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.