Another Side Of Copyright
These days when you read an article about copyright that involves students, it also involves the RIAA or the MPAA. This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the other hand, is about two high-school students taking on Turnitin. The students specifically asked that certain papers of theirs not be included in Turnitin’s database and despite this, the papers were included. The students are claiming that this is a violation of their copyright. Should be an interesting case to watch, regardless of the outcome, it’s great to see students standing up for themselves.
[via: Sivacracy]
While I like to see people standing up for themselves, I am not sure that copyright is applicable here. I draw a parallel with Google Print where the content of copyrighted material is stored in a searchable database but the end product does not expose the full content of the copyrighted material to end users.
One of the comments on The Chronicle article says “Their papers also included clear disclaimers warning Turnitin not to index the papers.”
I still don’t think they can sue for standard US copyright infringement. In Canada or Europe they would be able to assert moral authority over the use of their work, but US law doesn’t recognize that right.
That effective EULA makes this an interesting case. Since it wasn’t part of a negotiated contract I guess it will be evaluated with compliance to common law. Could be fun.