On the heels of my great experience at Aldo, I got an e-mail from Greg Pemberton. Several months ago I wrote a post discussing some interesting developments with turnitin.com. In that post I mentioned that I hadn’t gotten a response to questions I had e-mailed Greg Pemberton and John Bullock.
I’d like to thank Greg for taking the time and effort to write back. He actually wrote a very long and thoughtful response that answered just about every question I had. The reason I put this under good customer support is because at this time, he didn’t need to write to me. Enough time had passed that I wasn’t expecting a response anymore. It would have been a lot easier to say “oh well” and ignore it, but he took some time and responded.
As to the response itself, one of my questions had to do with why the Google Desktop merited so much attention with regards to information security when turnitin.com was, from my perspective, far more risky. The explanation is actually very simple and makes a lot of sense. The deal is that Dalhousie has a contract with turnitin while users don’t have much leverage when it comes to Google. That’s why their article ended up focusing where it did. While the contract doesn’t guarantee anything, Dalhousie does have some leverage should something inappropriate occur. I’m sure only a handful of people know exactly what’s in the contract and what kind of leverage Dalhousie has, but that’s a whole other discussion.
So I’m now very satisfied with the very thoughtful response I got from Greg regarding my question about his article. That really meant a lot, thanks Greg.
Turnitin.com
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
4 responses so far ↓
1 mike // Feb 15, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I FOIPP’ed a copy of that contract - if you want, I can check into data protection provisions.
Sean Smith has a copy of everything I FOIPP’ed, as well. He should have a copy of the contract.
2 mike // Feb 15, 2007 at 11:00 pm
I decided to dig up the contract and take a look.
Up front, they say that to the best of their ability, they will protect our personal information and papers (the originality reports on our work are supposedly their intellectual property). (”Use reasonable efforts to protect the security of accounts, passwords, and the source database”). Given that requirement, I am not sure why they were returning passwords in plaintext on unsecured web pages, but that’s another battle. Seems decent so far.
They go on to say if they are required by law to hand material over - say, by the Patriot Act - then they will just go ahead and do that. Not much protection there, because frankly the Patriot Act is a major concern, and is the reason why Nova Scotian public bodies may no longer send information to the States.
They conclude by limiting their liability with regard to security to say that, well, they have no liability. The university would have to prove gross negligence, according to this contract. The only option Dal would have would be to terminate the contract - which, as we saw in the case of Stanford, would result in TurnItIn calling every media outlet they know of and saying Dalhousie harbours plagiarizes and doesn’t care about Academic integrity.
And in all cases, they limit their liability to the amount the university paid them over the last 12 months - in Dalhousie’s case, $9,000.
I have no idea if this document would stand up in court, but after reading it I certainly don’t feel very protected. After reading week, I’ll scan it and post a copy somewhere accessible.
3 Marc // Feb 16, 2007 at 10:28 am
That’s a ton of very relevant and useful information Mike, thanks for the addition.
Just for clarification on my part, though the above reads a little bit like a love fest, that’s directed towards Mike Pemberton, the individual who very thoughtfully answered my questions to the best of his abilities.
I’m still firmly set against turnitin.com as it currently operates. Quite frankly I’m shocked that we’re only paying $9000/yr for it. I had assumed that there was a far greater investment which was where part of the reluctance to bail out was. While that may sound a little counter-intuitive, when you plunk down a bundle on something that solves a problem you have then there’s more of a willingness to want to make it work. It’s easier to throw away something that’s cheap and call it a failed experiment.
4 mike // Feb 16, 2007 at 11:23 am
Absolutely - I too have kind words for everyone I have dealt with regarding TurnItIn, with the possible exception of most of the inhabitants of Henry Hicks.
The contract term is annual, so every year it needs to be explicitly renewed. Ever year, once a year, there is a time when a decision is made as to whether or not to renew. You might notice that I start ramping up my commentary on TurnItIn.com each year a few months before that decision needs to be made.