Mc Lean High School - Committee For Students' Rights

Committee For Students' Rights

In 2006, seven members of the senior class, calling themselves the Committee For Students' Rights, staged a protest against the plagiarism detection service Turnitin. The committee argued that the use of Turnitin was a violation of their intellectual property rights, put them in a situation where guilt of all parties was assumed, and also violated student privacy as specified in FERPA. The students were interviewed for three articles in the Washington Post, received the services of an intellectual property attorney, and one of them, Ben Donovan, was featured on NBC's The Today Show. On March 27, 2007 four high school students, two from McLean, filed legal action against iParadigms LLC, the parent company of Turnitin.com. The lawsuit was filed in United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, the jurisdiction where McLean lies. iParadigms counterclaimed, alleging one of the students hacked into its service. Approximately one year later, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of iParadigms and against the students based on the doctrine of fair use, and against iParadigms on their hacking claim because they failed to prove any monetary damages. Both parties appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. On April 16, 2009, the 4th Circuit court affirmed the district court's judgment against the students in favor of iParadigms, and reversed and remanded the judgment against iParadigms on the hacking claims.