NUL Copyright
This blog is to share information and insight on copyright law, trends and practices and how they may affect the Northwestern University community.
March 26, 2008
Turnitin.com wins suit -- transformative fair use
Turnitin.com has had a lawsuit against it dismissed on grounds that its use of student papers in its plagiarism detection service was transformative, and thus exempt under fair use. Turnitin's service, often accessed through course management systems, provides instructors a way to compare the texts of student papers with other texts (other student papers, web sites, and some proprietary full-text databases available on the web), calculating a score reflecting the amount of duplication between a student's paper and the other sources. As papers are submitted for such evaluation, their texts are added to the database for future comparisons. A Library Journal news story on this case is reported at http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6544790.html?nid=2673#news4
by Brian Nielsen | | TrackBack