Ryan of the Dead Parrots notes the increasing use of anti-plagiarism software tools in academe (to fight the scourge of term-paper copying, something noted by Brock yesterday), the use of which apparently may be spreading to newsrooms to catch journalist-plagiarists (though obviously it won’t catch the Jayson Blairs of the world, who generally invented stories rather than copying them directly).

I have somewhat mixed feelings about these services. On the one hand, they do combat a real problem, and one that potentially damages the academic process. But, like Ryan, I wonder if requiring students to turn these papers in using these services (as a former colleague of mine is doing this semester) creates a presumption of guilt; funnily enough, I’d actually be more comfortable if I (the instructor) were the person submitting the papers to TurnItIn.com, rather than having my students do it. Maybe I’m weird that way.