Late Submission

Hi all,

Sorry I couldn't make it today, but I decided to visit my parents in Indiana. I've loved reading the conversation so far. For those who don't know me, I'm a dissertator in Composition and Rhetoric here at UW. I also completed the MA from SLIS while here.

So, coming from my background I'm most interested in the ways authors and audiences interact in a variety of media. In my own work, I focus on writing (that's probably obvious, though), but I am interested in the ways precedents are set that could affect writers and readers. An issue that comes up in Writing Studies is how to approach plagiarism detection services such as turnitin.com. As you might know, some students recently presented a case (I'm probably getting all sorts of legal terminology wrong here) against being required to submit their papers to turnitin.com claiming it takes their intellectual property (their papers) and uses it for profit without compensating the authors. All papers submitted against other submitted papers - there's some sort of algorithm involved - I don't know all of the technological details of the system.

Anyway...I think this presents a potentially interesting case of technology used to consume and use authors' works to supposedly prevent (or catch) replication of others' works. How do y'all understand this issue in relation to what we've read? I have ideas about related to pedagogical approaches that bypass the "need" for such systems, but obviously people support and pay for this "service." What makes someone's writing (or other stuff) worthy of protection? Why is Stephen King's work protected but, someone might argue, my student's paper is not? Is this a problem?

Oh, and sorry if this is too tangential - I tend to think in terms of relationships and analogies.