Prof. Patry passes along an interesting story. Four students are suing a company that compares submitted papers to a database to test for plagiarism.
The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database.
The students are suing because that last piece - they claim (rightfully) that they own the copyright in their respective papers and the school submitted to this service despite explicitly being told not to do so.
Turnitin and the school board have a tenuous Fair Use claim - as one commenter on Patry's blog points out, much of the analysis will probably focus on whether there is a market for high-school term papers. Of course, none of the Fair Use factors are dispositive, and it's possible the commercial use (this probably wouldn't be considered academic use in that sense) and the use of the complete text as opposed to a limited portion might outweight the limited market.
Fred mentions dontturnitin.com which has additional background information about the case. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.