Plagiarism Checker getting sued for Copyright infringement!

Turnitin has, over the years, become a widely used service for schools to catch 'would-be' cheats. The programme works by comparing any uploaded works to a large database of previous works. The problem is that these works will themselves be added to the database for future reference.

It has been about 4 years since it was initially reported that students were unhappy with the use of the programme (with some questioning its legality). However, recently some rather clever students to sue the company for themselves infringing copyright - producing for us an interesting test case.

The two students clearly thought this through ahead of time. They registered the copyright on the papers, which gives them the ability to sue for statutory damages, rather than just be made whole. At least one also had explicit instructions in the paper that it not be included in the Turnitin database (and of course those instructions were ignored).

If Turnitin has registered under the DMCA, they could potentially claim safe harbor provisions (e.g. YouTube and your typical ISPs), pushing off the liability to the teachers and professors who actually uploaded the works, rather than Turnitin itself. However, it's not clear if the company will go that route or just claim that it's use isn't infringing at all. Either way, this should be an interesting case to follow.

We eagerly await the outcome!