Interesting rights debate
I thought the case mentioned below was very interesting because I can easily see both sides of the issue. As a student, I wouldn’t want my ideas and papers permanently stored. However, as a teacher I would want to be able to check for copying. I think there needs to be a mechanism for students to remove their work from the database after it is compared. This would still find most copying, but would eliminate some of the privacy issues. (Well, except for the having to trust the company to actually remove it, which is a non-trivial issue.) Also, reserving the right to sell the data is just flat out wrong. I don’t see how they have any legal basis do to so.
Students sue antiplagiarism website for rights to their homework
As the Internet democratizes publishing and companies build databases containing other people’s work, similar court challenges may increase.
By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0410/p01s04-legn.html?page=1