Diane's "Good for them!" is what got me mad. The phrase "making money off students" put the cherry on the cake. I'm no defender of TurnitinUK - detection software does not solve the problem of copying, just the detection (mostly) - but from my understanding of the technical aspects of the way the database works, the 'use' of students' work is limited to the thumbprint that is stored. This would not allow Barrie or any other iParadigms employee to read and, therefore, use an essay; the only way that an author's IP could be abused. You might just as well say that all the words I have just used to type this email are the property of someone else. Of the electrons flowing through the computer that made up the email. The thumbnails produced by analysing the essays are rather like the results of me counting how many of each letter were used. Would the fact that ?? letter Ts were used be an infringement of my IP if you took the trouble to count it for yourself?
Whether or not IP belongs to the students or the universities - many of which have clauses defining ownership in the 'contract' signed on registration, but fewer have the procedures to regain that after coursework submission and marking - is another matter. Maybe, Diane could explain her remarks and suggest alternatives to using plagiarism detection software?
P.S. There really were 124 Ts used. 124 is therefore, my intellectual property.
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