On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Dan Butcher wrote:

Chronicle article Dan mentions:
http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i36/36a03701.htm

> Lawyers say the problem with Turnitin.com is that student papers
> are copied in their entirety to the services' database, which is a

This is true of other detection systems. Once I tried one called
plagiserve.com and found it to be useful, but I was uncomfortable
doing so, since I could not be sure of the intent of the group.

And yes, I let the students know I was experimenting with such
software. Actually I offered it to them to check their own papers to
help them determine of they had copied large sections and had
forgotten to include quotation marks and sources.

The plagiarism resource site at the University of Va. has this link
and indicates its concerns with the www.plagiserve.com site. I think
the concerns expressed here are valid in terms of all plagiarism
detection sites.

http://plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/links.html

The fact that the entire paper at any site is loaded into a database
bothers me. I think students should be made aware that this happens
when they or their teachers use such software. We have no idea what
happens to that copy of the paper.

On one level there are some positive elements to using a detection
software. Such software can be helpful to both students and
teachers. However, there is the dark side. So do we choose detection
software as the lesser of evils?

alex