Absurd Litigiousness Continues in America

This morning I read a number of news stories, many of which reported more lawsuits in America. How absurd can we be? Well we've already seen people suing God. Now today I've seen stories about a student suing the University of Massachusetts because he received a "C" in one of his classes. I can't help but scratch my head on that one. Maybe he's being done an injustice, but there's got to be a better way to solve the issue. Oh, and by the way, he's not some 18-year-old kid - the guy's 51. He should know better.

The second suit that I read about today involves a man suing his priest. According to the story, the man called the priest and left a critical message on the priest's answering machine. The priest played the message in church on sunday, and allegedly told the congregation, "This is the person in charge of religious education here last year. That's why it is no surprise to me [that] we had the kind of religious education we had. That's why we didn't get altar boys. What should we do? Should we send him to hell or to another parish?"

The story says, "[The parishioner] claims in the lawsuit filed this week in McHenry County that he was defamed and suffered "immediate emotional distress, embarrassment and humiliation."

Where do we even begin with something like this? Should I say that if you're bold enough to say unloving words to your pastor or priest, you ought to be willing for others to hear them? I think this guy needs to look for another way to deal with the issue. This goes back to the issue of Christians suing one another, and how the Bible teaches that we ought to take our disagreements to the church (1 Cor. 6) instead of taking one another to court. There are plenty of examples of this, but the point is that it makes us look really bad, and gives Christ a bad reputation.

What can we do to curb the overabundance of litigation that mires our court system in pointless actions?

Antiplagiarism Service Sued For Copyright Infringement

Last week, this story was published about a lawsuit against a company that offers an anti-plagiarism service to schools across the country. According to the Washington Post, two high school students from Mclean, Virginia are suing iParadigms, LLC--the California company which offers the Turnitin anti-plagiarism database. Turnitin is a 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.” And that – the fact that student papers are added to the database – is the heart of the lawsuit.

I have a particular interest in this case because SWBTS (where I am currently a student) uses Turnitin to screen papers and major assignments for most of its classes. According to the story, "Turnitin is used by 6,000 institutions in 90 countries, including Harvard and Georgetown universities, company officials have said."

The suit charges that Turnitin unlawfully adds students' papers to its database without the consent of the authors, and offers no remuneration to the students. These high school students object to the use of their intellectual property (their papers) by a for-profit business without their consent. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, seeks $900,000 in damages from Turnitin.

Read more about it here.

What do you think? Is it wrong for this service to use student papers in this way without giving them any compensation or even getting their permission? Is the company doing the same thing (using someone else’s work without giving them credit) that its service seeks to prevent?

On a personal note, I believe it is sad that plagiarism is a problem in seminaries. Conversely, I think it borders on the ridiculous that we must be constantly warned (and threatened) about plagiarism to the point where professors are lecturing us on the evils of “unintentional plagiarism.” Plagiarism is bad, but the remedy must never be worse than the cure.