Turnitoff 1--This Far, NO Farther

There is a scene in Star Trek: First Contact in which Captain Picard explains why, in the face of impossible odds, he feels compelled to fight the Borg (the soulless baddies who want to assimilate all other species and are always saying that resistance is futile):

They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn HERE. This far, NO farther.

Last fall, at the end of a meeting with the superintendent and the principal of the school my sons attend, the principal asked me what bothered me personally so much about Turnitin.  I didn't want to seem like a Trek geek then, so I didn't repeat Picard's lines, but they did occur to me.

I go to a bank and can't cash a check unless I am thumbprinted.  I drive through an intersection and my car is photographed.  I shop for groceries and can't get the best price unless I contribute a record of my purchase to the store's customer database.  I make a call and the record is turned over to the government by my phone company.  I sign up for utility service and have to give my social security number.   I visit the doctor and am told that my medical records may be produced to law enforcement agencies upon request.  I check out a book from the library knowing full well that the PATRIOT Act may require the librarian to produce my book-borrowing records to the NSA or the FBI without notice to me.  I go to buy a product with cash and am told by the store that unless I give them my name, address and phone number I won't be permitted to return it, even if it is defective. 

At times I feel like some crazy old man who carries around thick incomprehensible manuscripts in dirty shopping bags and rants to everyone he meets about how Big Government and Big Business are listening in on his thoughts through implants in his teeth.  Still, at some point, people have to stand up and say, 'This far, NO farther!"

Perhaps, too, I've got the poppa bear instinct: I will abide insults to my dignity, invasions of my privacy and the sale of my medical and financial records with gritted teeth--but try doing that to my kids and I get mean.  And that's exactly what happened.  My high school sophomore sons were told they had to use Turnitin and to acquiesce in Turnitin's theft of their intellectual property and intrusion upon their privacy.  That kind of thing riles me up.

Turnitin is a service that purports to help schools and teachers detect student plagiarism.  Schools which contract with Turnitin require their students to submit their written work through Turnitin, which then compares it against previously submitted student work and other sources.  The company's chief asset is its database of previously-submitted student papers, intellectual property it has stolen from students in collaboration with participating school districts, which extort "contributions" to Turnitin's database through the treat of lowered or withheld grades.

Turnitin's business practices are illegal, immoral, and premised on dubious pedagogy. 

This is the first in a series of posts about this matter.  In subsequent posts, I will explain and document what's wrong with Turnitin's practices in detail.

Comments

[R-O-B to that G]

Turnitin is just like YouTube - they both extract a lot of value out of others' creative labor...

[writing a dissertation]

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!