[1va]

I'm not a big fan of this business but I take issue with the "Teachable Moment" image seemingly created for this post. How does what TurnItIn is doing constitute an "IP Rights" violation?

Surely in the contract that the school signed they gave TurnItIn permission to use these data in this way, and asserted that the teacher, by uploading the document, is ensuring that he or she has the right to grant that permission. At the very least this pushes the IP issues onto the school, as far as TurnItIn knows they have every right to use this content in that way.

It seems probable that the admissions paperwork for the school probably granted the school the right to make limited use of the work the student turns in. I know when I had to complete a "Bachelor Thesis" the school retained the right to use that content, at least for publication and probably for sale if they chose to. Is that uncommon?

Also, I think the problem TurnItIn is trying to solve is less about copyright violation and more about plagiarism/intellectual dishonesty in an academic context. You could readily buy a paper or essay from someone to obtain the copyright permissions, but if you submit that as your own work to the professor you've violated academic ethics.

[SHOwnsYou]

Pretty sure it is vastly uncommon for schools to retain publishing rights to your papers.

My university has publishing rights (which they purchased) to a single paper of mine to publish in a journal.

[1va]

"The right to make limited use of the work" is different from publishing rights. This technology wasn't in common use when I went to school, but it seems really easy for the school to slip in something granting them the right to upload this to TurnMeIn into one agreement you sign or another.

For that matter, it's not entirely clear to me what the copyright issues are around work you do for your university. I mean you're already handing it over to the Professor with the exception that he'll do some things with it. Can he hand it out to future classes as an example of the kind of thing he's looking for? (This seems common.) Can he bundle it with other papers and use it as a textbook in future classes? (This seems uncommon.) I do think it is common for schools to at least co-own the publishing rights to a Doctoral thesis. (And in fairness, if your advisers are doing a good job, they may have a legitimate claim to that.)

It certainly seems like in the sciences graduate students are frequently complaining about professors taking undue credit for the student's research. Is a paper different than that? How much of your work for a university falls under some sort limited "work-for-hire" style agreement?

[enjo]

Not in my experience. I'm quite sure my wifes PhD thesis belongs, for all intents and purposes, to her granting University. I believe that is standard at least at the Doctoral level.

By the same token my honors college undergrad thesis also granted publishing rights to my University (which is comical given the quality).

[Zev]

A thesis is quite different from a random two page paper on a few chapters reading from last week.