Afroditi Theodoridou at IP Osgoode does an excellent job explaining the application of Fair Use in the Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Service suit. This post not only makes the decision clearer, it also lays out the legal nature of Fair Use.

TurnItIn lets a teacher submit a paper to see if it’s original or plagiarized. The service keeps a database of the papers submitted for checking. Some students sued, claiming that was an infringement of their copyright. The court decided that TurnItIn was covered by Fair Use. Afroditi concludes with the interesting claim that fighting plagiarism advances the Framers’ original motivation for creating copyright.

[Tags: copyright copyleft fair_use plagiarism ]