Plagiarise This!!!

Fairly recently, various schools and universities around the world have purchased a new academic service called Turnitin, which is designed to catch plagiarists in the act by cross-referencing specific papers with thousands upon thousands of other student papers. The main issues at stake involve privacy and intellectual property. Since the company is basically profiting from the scholarly work of students and the students obviously aren't getting a stipend, some consider the company to be violating property laws. Some students argue that the very nature of taking a student's paper and broadcasting it across a database for whatever end is simply an infringement on one's intellectual privacy. This last point concerns me since there is basically nothing to keep this company from handling student papers however they see fit. But what concerns me the most about the issue is that the students are upset and it's safe to assume that a large majority of the dissenting students probably don't perform or condone plagiarism, but simply find the company repugnant in some way. I suppose it really comes down to the particular school or university. If the institution finds that deterring and catching their student body in the act of plagiarism is worth undermining the values of that student population than I don't have any strong objections toward it. I certainly would not want to attend an institution like that however.

If you are interested and would like to read an article about the subject, here is a link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101800_2.html