Turnitin.com Infringes Upon Student's Rights

      Turnitin.com is undeniably an effective deterrent to plagiarism, but it is the very issue of copyright infringement that has people questioning the legality of the site. What many people don't understand is that works do not need to be registered to be copyrighted. Every literary work that is saved to a tangible medium (this includes paper, computer disk, etc.) is protected by federal copyright laws. Thus, the works submitted to Turnitin.com are copyrighted and the authors hold complete rights to the works. What the Turnitin.com system does, however, is it stores the submitted paper on their servers. This is done without the student's permission. Turnitin.com is operating under the pretense that teachers will force their students to submit to Turnitin.com. Thus, student papers are stored in iParadigm's (the company that runs Turnitin.com) database. This in itself is a blatant violation of the 1976 Federal Copyright Act. Turnitin.com is duplicating copyrighted material without the consent of the student. The student is forced to submit to the site, so submissions are not considered voluntary. In addition, the site does not ask for permission to store the paper, instead, it is done automatically.

      iParadigm and their team of lawyers admit in their legal page that the archiving of papers is treading on shaky legal ground. They affirm, however, that their services constitute "fair use" by grounds that their service does not limit the marketability of the paper. The claim that their service doesn't limit the marketability of a paper is false. If one were to sell a term-paper that was already in the Turnitin.com database, the paper would be of little use to a potential student buyer because any similarities from the student's paper would be red flagged. The very addition of a paper to the Turnitin.com database severely limits the feasible marketability of the paper. That is, the archiving of one's paper eliminates other students with the same assignment as potential buyers of the paper.

      Another strikingly illegal aspect of the Turnitin.com service is the fact that many teachers submit student works without the student's permission. Turnitin.com is operating under the pretense that this is occurring. When a student gives a teacher a paper for grading the assumption is that evaluative rights are given to the teacher. In no way is the teacher entitled to submit the paper to be copied to the iParadigm servers. iParadigm is breaking copyright laws by duplicating a paper without the copyright holder's consent. In effect, the paper (but not the copyright) becomes property of Turnitin.com.

      Turnitin.com is clearly making a profit off the papers that students submit. Without the database of some 60,000 student-submitted papers, the Turnitin.com service would not be as effective. Every paper submitted makes the service more effective and the company therefore yields greater profits. Schools that use the service have to pay large amounts of money in the thousands to ten thousands of dollars range. It is clear that the company is profiting off of students' copyrighted hard-work.

      Interestingly enough, the very place that the Turnitin.com service originally started now has grave doubts over the legality of the Turnitin.com service. Turnitin.com founder John Barrie was a graduate student at UC Berkeley when he started developing the software that the site runs on.  Currently, UC Berkeley does not subscribe to Turnitin.com because they feel the site may be infringing upon student's copyrights. 

      The English Department at Beverly seems to stand behind the service. The school subscribes to the site and pays the annual fee to allow teachers to utilize the powerful plagiarism detection software that the site uses. Turnitin.com has now become a widely used tool at Beverly in various departments such as Science and History. The positive attributes, however, have obscured the serious legal issues that the site entails from both the teachers and the administration alike.

- Zack Anderson
 

The Bands Battle it Out

      On the first day of the Battle of the Bands The Haze and the rap group Syndakit were scheduled to perform. Half way through The Haze's performance the microphone pre-amp blew out disabling the microphones and left The Haze without a lead singer. After the first day’s mishap, The Haze came on stage for a second attempt the next day. Unhindered by the previous days technical difficulties, band members Max Rosenblum, Sean Rudes, Eli Markus, and an 8th grader from El Rodeo went on to play an original piece called "Swimming on Pavement". Then came on The Roscoe’s. They played their rendition of "My Generation," and a couple of other songs. Then came Attila, which is in fact The Roscoe’s with a couple more members. The last group that performed Tuesday was Syndakit. The rap group started raping and then a few people including Andrew Sarnoff and Calvin Duke crashed their act. Syndakit member Jacob defiantly showed off his stuff and Jimmy never got the chance to sing his part. The third and final day started off with AKA. They had a set that included a rendition of "Born to Be Wild" and "I Shot the Sheriff". With the amazing work on drums by Alex Strauss, banging bass lines by Kyle Goldstein, and wailing guitar by Andy Morris, AKA was one of the bands that really rattled the audience. Next came "You R Young Rao", which played a few original pieces. The Soy Bomb effect of the band member with the tambourine was something very few people understood because they didn’t watch the Grammy performance by Bob Dylan in 1998. Lastly came Mistaken, who also played original, punk inspired pieces.

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- The Walrus

Drugs at Beverly - True Confessions

       Many people living in the United States consider drug use a serious problem. It should also come as no surprise that high school kids, more and more often, are engaging in the use of illegal drugs. Local and national media, inspired by cases of tragic overdoses and drug related violence, have attempted an exposé on youth and drugs. However, little is known about the reality of the situation and the students behind it. A series of interviews with students of Beverly Hills High School were able to clearly point out a drug trend. The most common drug used and sold on campus is marijuana. Almost everybody interviewed had done the drug at least once, and most people knew at least one person (often more) who deals marijuana on campus. What may come as a shock to some is that marijuana is not the only drug being used on campus. Although far less frequent, students claim to have tried ecstasy, magic mushrooms, and even snorted cocaine while at school. The drug-sale infrastructure at the school is fairly liberal. To obtain drugs, a student would usually ask a friend who is dealing or who knows a dealer. Occasionally dealers may approach a student if they think the student would be interested. This is pretty much the simplest way that drugs are obtained. A majority of the drug sale and buying among the student population occurs off campus, however. 

      Generally, after an on-campus purchase, a student may ditch class to do the drugs, usually with a group of friends. Drug use on campus is not as rare as it would seem. The bathrooms, alleys, student cars, and even hallways before, after, and during class are locations on campus where drug use is present. During our investigation we encountered students smoking (both cigarettes and marijuana) during PE class. It is not an uncommon occurrence to step foot into a restroom on campus and smell the distinctive scent of marijuana smoke. Students nearby may often notice this activity and ignore it. If a teacher were to notice, the situation may serve as a warning to future drug users to avoid that location. Some of the students interviewed had no qualms over attending class while under the influence of alcohol, marijuana, and ecstasy. One student, who wishes to remain anonymous said, "Yeah, my teacher may have noticed bloodshot eyes or something." When further questioned, the student said it wasn't a very big deal if the teacher noticed or not. In general a fairly lax structure, populated primarily with use of marijuana in addition to a few more potent drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, make up the drug use at BHHS. Off campus, however, is a completely different story. Students reported to have used marijuana, ecstasy, heroin, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), cocaine, magic mushrooms, pain killers, opium, and methamphetamine.  

- LSD