Archives

Does The Fight Against Plagiarism Violate Student Rights?

By Marc H. Isacoff- Contributing Writer

Plagiarism is rampant across colleges and universities all across the country according to Plagiarism.org, a website run by iParadigms, LLC. According to the statistics reported on their website gathered from surveys done by U.S. News and World Report, "75% of college students admitted cheating, and 90% of college students didn't believe cheaters would be caught."  It’s hard to deny these facts and enough to scare any educational institution into a state of panic, trying to determine if their own students are among those included in the survey statistics. 

Interestingly enough, the company responsible for Plagiarism.org, also offers a for-profit product, called turnitin®, for educational institutions across the country.  This service allows professors to submit student assignments to crosscheck against a database built from other student’s assignments across the country.  On the outside, this may seem like a good tool for teachers, and even students, to avoid any instances of plagiarism.  However when one reads the fine print, there is more to the service than meets the eye.

When students are asked to use this service, they are also asked to agree to a ten page end-user license agreement, commonly used in the software industry.  This type of agreement becomes a legally binding contract between the user, the student; and the company, iParadigms.  When a student clicks on the "I Agree" button, that which many in our society never read, the student grants iParadigms the right to use the student’s intellectual property as the source for their product.  Without student’s papers, there would be no product. 

This is a scary scenario for students, knowing that they must either agree to these terms or face possible academic penalties from the institution in the form of diminished grades.  This matter came up in a recent class at Southern New Hampshire University, where a group of students brought their concerns up to the attention of their professor and the administration.  It took a rally cry of many students to have their concerns addressed properly, and an alternative service that does not violate student’s copyrights was eventually offered. 

Other students across the country have not been so lucky and have been forced to use this service by their teachers and professors or face receiving a zero.  With some classes, standing up for one’s beliefs can set back or even destroy one’s academic or professional career.  It can be the choice of sacrificing one’s own intellectual property or academic career to stand up for one’s own beliefs.  When we start giving up our smaller freedoms, when do we begin to give up our larger ones? 

With all of these copyright and privacy concerns existing for students, iParadigms still boasts on its website that it has more than 450,000 educators using their product in millions of educational institutions worldwide.  The company also anticipates having over 166 million student papers next year.  iParadigms is benefiting to the tune of millions off of the hard work of students across the world, yet the amount that is given back is zero. 

Who is fighting for the rights of the students?  Unfortunately, it does not appear that anyone is.