For the London Free Press – August 31, 2009

Read this on Canoe

TECHNOLOGY: Service cross-references students’ work against a database of essays

During recent years, plagiarism has become a serious concern for universities and colleges. The prevalence of websites selling previously written essay papers has made obtaining counterfeit work easier than ever.

In 2002, 29 students at Carlton University received a failing grade after it was discovered they had copied portions of their essays from a website. This was one of several high-profile instances of plagiarism that brought attention to the issue.

In an effort to combat this trend, universities have sought the assistance of Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection service designed to cross-reference a student’s work against a database of essays. The service will detect instances of plagiarism and alert the professor to potential misconduct.

The database consists of scholarly works as well as previously written essays by students and various online sources. The risk of being caught submitting plagiarized work has made Turnitin a powerful deterrent in reducing plagiarism. The knowledge that their work will be screened by the detection service often deters students from considering the submission of work that is not their own.

However, many students have voiced concern that their work is being used to earn a profit for Turnitin.

In 2008, a lawsuit was brought by a group of students in Alexandria, Va., claiming the service violates copyright laws. The complaint stated that by storing the documents in their system after they have been submitted to Turnitin, they are violating the rights of students by obligating them to use the service and then using the submitted work as the basis for their profitable database.

Students contended that while they permitted access to their writings to ensure it was original, they were not consenting to Turnitin storing their work to use in the screening of fellow students’ submissions.

The court found in favour of Turnitin, ruling that any use of students’ work was limited to a comparison with other works and not for any expressive or creative use. The court found that any potential copyright issues were offset against the substantial public benefit the service provided.

The court further held that by clicking “I agree” to the Turnitin user agreement that students were consenting to having their work stored.

The decision was under appeal by the students until a recent settlement brought the matter to a close. The settlement gave the students protection from counterclaims for legal costs brought by the defendant in exchange for abandoning any further appeals.

However, this may not signal the end of the controversy surrounding turnitin. Legal action is being contemplated by other student groups unhappy with the policies of Turnitin. Some institutions have discussed eliminating the use of the service or letting professors decide if it should be used on a class-by-class basis.

It is not the concept of Turnitin that is being objected to by students, it is the manner in which the service is being operated.

Take a look at this Wired article.   

That article is a few weeks old, but was referred to in this post from yesterday about Apple’s upcoming announcements.

I’ve thought for years that the touch screen tablet form factor was a winner – the problem is that the price has always been too high, and the performance never that great. The netbook phenomenon has shown that people will respond to “good enough” if the price is right. And smartphones – as great as they are ( I really like my Sony Ericsson X1) – don’t quite cut it as a computer because the screens are just too small to replace a laptop. The Amazon Kindle is intriguing – but the black & white screen, its limited use as a book reader and tethering to a phone network, not to mention the fact that it is not available in Canada – all factor against it.

I have been using Windows 7 at work for a week (which of course has touch screen capability built in) and noticed that the changes to the taskbar at the bottom are clearly designed to be touch screen friendly. And it is much faster than Vista and has features that enhance productivity.

I’ve been toying with getting a netbook for use for various members of my family (myself to read the online version of the London Free Press instead of the dead tree version, my wife to take to volunteer meetings, my son to take to class) – but with Windows 7 upcoming for netbooks, the new tablet rumours from both the Apple and Wintel camps, and the new CULV chips – it’s hard to know what to buy, or how long to wait to buy!

So here’s what I want. A touchscreen tablet running Windows 7 similar in size to a netbook. It needs some kind of keyboard for data entry – but perhaps a screen based one is good enough. Graphics performance sufficient to play video cleanly. At least 2 gig ram. Modest hard drive. Several hour battery life. DVD drive would be nice – but perhaps creates too much of a price/size/weight penalty. And priced under $300 (well, OK – maybe $400) Can.

And can I have that now please?  Or at least by the October 22 Windows 7 launch?

For the London Free Press – August 17, 2009

[Note: Due to a technical glitch, this column has not yet been posted on the Free Press or Canoe websites]

VERDICT:  A recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision showed that it’s possible to enforce oral contracts under the right circumstances 

Oral contracts can be difficult to enforce. As famed movie producer Samuel Goldwyn once observed: “An oral contract is as good as the paper it’s written on.” 

The absence of written documentation can make it very difficult to prove in court that an actual agreement was reached. The judge is left to decipher the intent of the parties based upon what they claim the arrangement was. This is often to the disadvantage of the person claiming an agreement existed, who may have a hard time showing sufficient evidence to prove it. 

But a recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision may lend strength to those trying to enforce promises made through an oral contract. In UBS Securities Canada, Inc. v. Sands Brothers Canada, Ltd. the court found that an oral agreement was sufficient to enforce an agreement to buy shares. 

A representative of the plaintiff, UBS Securities, agreed to an oral contract to buy shares from a representative of the defendant’s company, Sands Brothers Canada. The plaintiff then entered into an agreement to sell the shares to a third party, relying on the oral contract. 

The defendant refused to comply with the terms of the oral contract, claiming that the agreement had not been finalized in writing. The shares remained with Sands Brothers Canada and UBS Securities sued for specific performance to receive the shares for which they contracted. 

The trial judge found in the plaintiff’s favour, deciding that there was a binding and enforceable agreement between the parties. UBS Securities was granted specific performance of the contract, entitling them to the 100,000 shares they were promised. 

Sands Brothers argued UBS Securities was under a duty to mitigate (or reduce their losses) by buying replacement shares at the time of the breach of contract. However, the court found that similar shares were not readily available at the date the contract was breached, leaving them unable to mitigate. 

In addition to the judge finding the plaintiff to be a credible witness, two additional considerations swayed the court in reaching its decision.

First, the plaintiff’s case was enhanced by electronic communications made during the course of the negotiation. The plaintiff produced detailed exchanges, made before the oral contract, outlining specifics of the agreement. The e-mails traced the proposed agreement from its origin until it was nearly completed. 

The use of e-mail resulted in more evidence being available. It resulted in creation of a time-stamped record of interactions that could be used to recreate the intention of the parties. 

Second, the appeal court found that it was common practice in the securities industry to make binding agreements orally. The fast-paced nature of the securities trade makes oral contracts necessary for the market to operate efficiently. In the time necessary to reduce the agreement to writing, the impetus to complete the transaction may have passed. 

So, in some instances, an oral contract is better than the paper it’s written on.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today. It reads as follows.

Last week I posed a survey on copyright reform. Here are the results.

The result is overwhelming.

So in anticipation of comments pointing out the following:

- it clearly was not scientifically accurate

- it is quite possible that the question was biased

- it may reflect the large proportion of users to creators and thus shows the tyranny of the majority rather than a principled view.

Businessweek has an article entitled 12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office  that tells why using these terms will make you seem out of date.

For the London Free Press  August 24, 2009

Read this on Canoe

PRIVACY: A patron complained after his driver’s licence was scanned and his photo taken before he was allowed into a Vancouver club

British Columbia Information and Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis recently released a decision in response to a complaint by a customer of the Wild Coyote Club in Vancouver.

The customer complained about having his driver’s licence swiped and photo taken by a surveillance camera to gain entry to the bar.

The club’s system scanned and recorded the information found on the magnetic strip: driver’s licence number, name, sex, date of birth and partial postal code. The system tracks the date and time the customer entered, as well as the number of visits the customer makes to the bar.

Bar management said it used the information to: “improve customer safety, prevent minors from entering, keep a record of banned customers and keep a record of customers for use in court action or for law enforcement purposes.”

After receiving no “reasonable explanation” to inquiries concerning this practice, the customer filed a complaint with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC (OIPC).

B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) governs the “collection, use and disclosure” of personal information.

Under Section 7(2) of the act, a business “must not, as a condition of supplying a product or service, require an individual to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information beyond what is necessary to provide the product or service.”

Loukidelis found that the club’s actions breached this section, since the swiping, photographing and retaining the customer’s personal information was “not necessary” to achieve the purpose of public safety as stated by the establishment. Though obtaining such information may be “necessary” for certain customers who have been removed or barred in the past, it was not found to be necessary to collect such information from all patrons.

Further, despite the bar’s repeated claims that the practice had “dram-atically improved safety and security,” no material evidence was established to support this claim.

Instead, the privacy commissioner found, “There has actually been at least some increase in such events after the installation of the software. While improved reporting may account for some of the increase in incidents, the fact remains that Wild Coyote could not point to a single objective indicator to demonstrate improved safety as a result of the use of the system.”

Under Section 11 of the B.C. law, a business “may collect personal information only for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances.”

In this situation, Loukidelis found the collection of personal information was inappropriate. To protect the safety of patrons, information such as driver’s licence numbers is unhelpful. And collecting information from patrons who were never involved in any violent incident could not be justified.

In conclusion, Loukidelis held that while the issues of violence and public safety were real and deserving, the practices of the Wild Coyote Club breached the B.C. act. The club was ordered to stop collecting personal information and consult with the commissioner’s office if further measures were to be implemented.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.   Please vote.

With the copyright reform hearings and public input now in full gear, I thought it would be interesting to get a feel for where readers are at with this issue. So I created this quick, clearly unscientific poll. Copyright issues are really about balancing the interests of creators, users, and society as a whole, and are far more complex than a short question – but lets see which side of the larger debate readers fall on.

Take the survey

Survey results

There is always a struggle between the concepts of privacy and confidentiality on one hand, and transparency and freedom on the other.   Dan Michaluk has a case comment in his All About Information blog discussing a recent Ontario decision that sided with the LCBO in its denial to release certain documents under a freedom of information request. (For those of you outside of Ontario, the LCBO is the Ontario government corporation that runs liquor stores. It is thus is subject to typical freedom of information legislation that allows anyone to request to see documents subject to certain exceptions.)

The court said that the LCBO did not have to release certain documents relating to a dispute it settled with a winery, based on solicitor client privilege. 

The court took a broad view of solicitor-client privilege and its treatment under the FIPPA freedom of information legislation, stating that:

“… no party would willingly entertain settlement discussions with a government institution if it knew its confidential settlement discussions would be made public.”

I can’t argue with that.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.   It reads as follows:

There has been lots of controversy over privacy issues relating to various services offered by Google and many others. Those issues are often not easy to come to grips with because they are in the context of previously unknown territory. Speaking of unknown territory, The Onion has a parody news report entitled “New Google Service Lets Privacy Critics Opt-Out, Relocate to Remote Village“.

Michael Geist has an article about the recent lawsuit Bell launched against Rogers after Rogers aired an ad critical of Bell’s internet speed claims.  We have all seen the Bell and Rogers ads that tout their advantages over the other for their various services (better/faster/cheaper/more HD/more channels/less equipment/easier to set up/more reliable…).  

This particular issue deals with internet connection speeds and the “up to…” promises of speed.

I get that these two companies are fighting hard for the same customers –  but I suspect consumers are getting more jaded rather than enlightened or convinced by the ads.