Schenectady Synecdoche

I know I've repeated it ad nauseam, but, well, one more time:

7. Turnitin.com performs exactly the same task that plagiarizers perform (appropriating writing it doesn't compose) for precisely the same reasons that plagiarizers plagiarize (profiting from the exchange value of that writing). Institutional subscribers to turnitin.com reward a view of the value of writing as residing only in its exchangeability, rather than in its use value to students as learning. In other words, John Barrie -- like any good capitalist -- helps to create the understanding of and attitude toward textual production from which turnitin.com profits.

The commodified attitude towards writing turnitin.com fosters (i.e., "We harvest writing -- often without consent -- to enable productive efficiencies which result in more success and larger profits on our end"), as your post strongly implies, is a growth strategy, with transference to the university, which in turn results in transference to students. In fact, more than anything else, the rhetoric of circulation here resembles the rhetoric surrounding the circulation of counterfeit currency, except that the last link -- the link connecting to labor and value -- is always left unsaid, because such rhetoric is unable to imagine a use value for education beyond its exchange value. And so turnitin.com creates its own customers by (is this illegal, given how it operates and law on fair use and derivative works?) appropriating, without consent, copyrighted works, fostering an economic environment in which other actors do the same, all to stay ahead in the exchange-value race.

Keep repeating this, Mike. It can't be said too many times. As for whether the appropriation is legal: no, it isn't. Except that if universities stipulate in writing that students will have to submit to (I choose that verb deliberately) automated plagiarism-checking that appropriates and then uses their work, that comes under the heading of a contractual relationship between university and student that trumps students' rights in copy. Ethical, no. But technically legal, yes. Hence I think it's important that educators keep being reminded of the ethical, educational, and material implications of what they're doing when they use these machines.

As Mike keeps coming back to copyright, I keep coming back to point 6 in your post whenever I'm doing workshops on plagiarism. If you teach writing fully, then even Turnitin.com admits that you don't need their service. Here's the paragraph from the standard letter on copyright (which they used send to people like Mike who challenged their use of student work; don't know if the still use this letter):

Finally, offering the students an off-line alternative makes their consent absolutely clear. For instance, as an alternative, the student could be required to turn in a photocopy of the first page of all reference sources used, an annotated bibliography, and a one page paper reflecting on their research methodology. Such an option would be unlikely to be chosen by any students, but if they did choose it, the chances of plagiarism would also be vanishingly thin.


Last paragraph from Turnitin.com's "standard statement regarding the Copyright Issue."

Turnitin.com's banking (literally) on the truth that most teachers (outside of writing courses, where the point of the course is teach these things) don't have the time, inclination, or confidence to require, in essence, a sequenced and structured research portofolio.