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Articles by Jerry Brito 
Follow @jerrybrito
The Washington Post reports today on a couple of Virginia high school students who are suing anti-plagiarism service turnitin.com for copyright infringement. According to press accounts, the service is used by 6,000 schools, including Harvard and Georgetown. The way it works is that students turn in papers to their teachers by submitting them through Turnitin’s website. Turnitin then compares the submitted papers to a snapshot of the web, to databases of published articles, and to its own database of millions of other student papers. The problem is that the submitted papers are added to the company’s database of student papers without student permission. Plaintiffs in the case specifically marked their papers asking that they not be archived but they where nonetheless. The students have a website at dontturnitin.com.
What’s striking to me is how similar this is to Google Book Search. It remains to be seen whether Turnitin will make a fair use defense, but their past statements suggest that they will. (Here is a PDF of a legal opinion that Turnitin commissioned.)
Google is copying books without the copyright owners’ consent and storing them in a searchable database, just as Turnitin does with student papers. Google copies the whole book, but argues it’s a fair use because they only display a “snippet” of the text in search results. Turnitin also copies the whole work and only displays snippets to teachers if there’s a plagiarism match. Both Google and Turnitin make commercial use of the works they copy and they both arguably serve educational purposes. And If Google’s use doesn’t affect the “potential market” for licensing books to be included in searchable databases, then Turnitin’s use certainly doesn’t affect the potential market for licensing papers to be included in a plagiarism database.
So, can these cases be distinguished? If not, are they both fair use? I’m still thinking about this one, and I’d like to hear what your analysis is.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Cyren Call Chairman Morgan O’Brien and Frontline Wireless Chairman Janice Obuchowski each had a letter to the editor responding to my March 13th op-ed about first responder communications. I’d like to take up just a few sentences to respond.
O’Brien writes that I “audaciously misrepresent[ed]” Cyren Call’s proposal, but does not point out what that misrepresentation was. So, I can’t answer. Obuchoski, on the other hand, does point out a misstatement about Frontline’s plan. She writes,
[Brito] misstates that the plan would build “an interoperable network over spectrum purchased at auction; but Frontline wants the FCC to restrict that spectrum to public safety use.” Frontline will offer commercial service in the spectrum won at auction and provide public safety with pre-emptible access during emergencies to this commercial spectrum to provide additional capacity during peak periods of crisis when first responders’ communications requirements spike. This spectrum would remain in commercial use at all other times.
The thing is, I have always fully understood that the Frontline proposal would share he spectrum with public safety and commercial users. The error was introduced by a WSJ edit made after the last version of the op-ed that I approved the evening before it was published. (I don’t blame the WSJ; they were probably just editing for length or style.)
Don’t forget that tonight we’ll be holding the third installment of our wildly successful Alcohol Liberation Front events. We’ll be meeting from 5:30-7 PM at Science Club. We’ll also be recording our contributors pontificating for our new podcast, Tech Policy Weekly. So drop on by and have a drink with your favorite TLF bloggers.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.