There was an article in the Washington Post today I found interesting, called McLean Students Sue Anti-Cheating Service. My immediate reaction was “Oh look, some cheaters are frustrated at being caught, and much like the people who ate at McDonalds and got fat, they’re suing!” From what I could tell from the article though, that is not at all the case here.

The issue actually has little to do with cheating, and instead focuses on plagiarism. How companies like Turn It In function is by running a comparison algorithm on a suspect paper against, among other sources, “millions of student papers.” (As a quick aside, I love that in their brochure they say they check all this against their “in house copy of the internet.” I know what they are trying to say, but the idea of having an “in house” copy of the internet is pretty amusing).

My question is: what is the source of these nearly 22 million student papers? Are so many students thrilled at the idea of an anti-cheat device that they are throwing their papers to this company, rubbing their hands together, and snickering at the thought of all the naughty cheaters being caught? I doubt it.

From what I could glean from this article and a few Google searches is that the papers are automatically added to the database when a paper is submitted for plagiarism tests. I somehow doubt that all the millions of students using this program sign off on having their papers stored in an online database either.

Now is it likely that a paper a student writes that is submitted to Turn It In somehow be used elsewhere? Doubtful. But the fact that a company is saving copies of creative works and using them for their own profit seems questionable, especially when that company serves to police individuals.

Personally, I don’t really have a problem with the existence of these types of services. I can remember the long, never-ending evenings in college writing 5, 10, 15, 20 page papers (the longest paper I ever wrote was on paradoxes in time travel in movies, which clocked in at around 22 pages). Knowing that other students out there instead spent 5 minutes searching online for a paper did irk me. Then again, I highly doubt an essay from eCheat.com is going to result in a high evaluation anyway. I would however have a problem knowing that my paper on time travel is being scanned through thousands of times per day, without my knowledge or consent, all so that this company can make money.