In the sense that an employee/student/etc of a community/school/business signs an agreement that may not be in their best interest, but is free to go elsewhere if they do not wish to sign, it is exactly the same thing. Personally speaking, I do not believe in random drug testing. Ergo, I will not join an organization in which this is required of me. Likewise, if a student does not wish to use Turnitin, they may attend a different institution. They are the same scenario, provided the employee/student/whathaveyou is apprised of the situation in advance of joining the organization. And, yes, I would apply your term "legal mire" to all of these types of agreements, precisely because their moral value is NOT clearly defined. As this conversation illustrates, reasonable, educated people can disagree on the nature of this software, which also means that the courts can disagree. Do not underestimate the issue by assuming it is so black and white. -Alexis On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 elw@stderr.org wrote: ::> did nothing to stop it. The parallel here would be if a school required ::> students to accept accept use of TurnItIn - which is a legitimate action ::> (consider the requirement to sign a non-compete or non-disclosure agreement ::> as a legitimate requirement for employment, or an agreement to sign an ::> academic honesty statement) - in order to be part of the student body. :: ::These are not nearly parallel. :: ::You're asking students to send their papers to a for-profit company *not of ::their own choosing* for assessment. That's radically different from asking ::them to sign an academic honesty statement, and certainly different from the ::legal mire that is non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. :: ::Schools already provide a legitimate plagiarism detection tool - they're ::called "faculty". ;-) [If those faculty don't feel that they're able to ::detect plagiarism - well, that's another track of discussion.] :: ::--e ::