Plagiarism

NL/Nieuwegein/Bicycle?
Originally uploaded by Oop.

Some interesting things are going on with plagiarism at Universities. For a while there have been some software options for Universities to crack down on those unwilling to do their own work. Unfortunately, some students and rightly so feel this creates an atmosphere based on fear and presumed guilt. Maybe; I am not going to agree or disagree on that one. Don't cheat and you won't have a problem. But the other side of the coin is the inclusion or loss of your intellectual property. For this software to work, specifically turnitin.com, you submit a students paper and it is compared to other literary works. What I don't agree with is the inclusion of the work which has just been submitted as part of the database to judge others against. For several reasons this should be avoided. Someone now "owns" and uses your work without paying the student. The students work now makes their company better (stealing from a student while trying to stop them from stealing seems a bit hypocritical). The other reason this isn't the best system is that one's intellectual property is now held by a company. Should they turn over this work any information contain within these documents can be used by someone else. Should your paper discuss your current research, your work can be used against yours and you are no longer the leader in this area. The examples can go on and on. This discussion will not go into the merits of Open Access, but I do think it needs to be brought up.
Should one plagiarise? Of course not. Do there need to be measures to limit this? Of course. Does there need to be another solution. Turnitin teamed up with a legal team to address the issues presented above. In fact they even address them in one of their brochures. Just because things are legal doesn't mean they are right. They even go on to state these issues are open to debate. What they are really saying is this is a grey moral issue, here's the tool. You pay us for the service and you do what you want. Some students have started to think there needs to be an alternative.
Like I said before, I am absolutely against plagiarism of any kind. But there needs to be some alternative. And I haven't for them to "hold on to my papers" even if its under physical security and sent over "SSL encryption." Thanks for the specific mention of your success at the University of Iowa.