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How to Block "TurnitinBot" from Caching Web Pages and Using Bandwidth
In addition to copying and storing webmasters' content without permission in order to make a profit, Turnitin costs the world's webmasters huge amounts of money by sapping their bandwidth! Every time "TurnitinBot" visits a Web site to copy content without permission, it generates a "refresh page" action on every page that it hits. That saps the monthly bandwidth allocated to the site. When a site runs out of bandwidth, the Web host takes the site offline. When a site goes offline, the webmaster also suffers lost revenue.
Bandwidth is not free. In fact, it's probably the most important and expensive aspect of any hosting plan. Webmasters pay a great deal of money for bandwidth. Does Turnitin care? Apparently, no. As with all other aspects of the Turnitin.com business model involving acquisitions, there seems to be no reciprocity.
There hasn't been much—if any—backlash about this injustice because, quite frankly, few people know that it's happening. Most webmasters pay little attention to the individual clicks that cause bandwidth to dwindle. Most webmasters DO know about search engine bots, however, but those are welcome. Webmasters don't complain about search engine bots like "GoogleBot" because the search engine companies give so much BACK to webmasters. Without search engines, Web sites would have no audience. TurnitinBot, on the other hand, is nothing more than an online parasite. A webmaster declares, "[Turnitin] charge[s] for accessing the data they've collected, so I'd rather not have them using my bandwidth/server load for free" (vBulletin.org).
To block Turnitin's parasitic crawler, "TurnitinBot," from caching any pages of your Web site, put the following code in a robots.txt file in the top-most folder of your site:
User-agent: TurnitinBot
Disallow: /
TurnitinBot is not welcome. Every webmaster should put an end to Turnitin's freeloading.
Anti-Turnitin.com Copyright Notice for Students
If you are a student who is concerned with Turnitin and/or your school violating your intellectual property rights, you can place the following copyright notice at the bottom of your paper to prevent your school from submitting your writing/ideas to Turnitin.com. If your school ignores your copyright notice and does submit your property to Turnitin or any other service/program/database, you can sue the service and/or your school for up to $150,000 per incident, as allowed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Cornell Law School).
Copyright 2007 [STUDENT NAME]. All Rights Reserved. Aside from my professor's sole, personal review as part of his/her private, single-human, software-free grading process (checking for plagiarism with Google is acceptable), neither my professor nor my academic institution may otherwise copy, transfer, distribute, reproduce, publicly/privately perform, publicly/privately claim, publicly/privately display, or create derivative works (including "digital fingerprints") of my copyrighted document (intellectual property). The same restrictions apply to Turnitin.com and all similar services if my document should somehow come into their possession. Neither my professor nor my academic institution may submit my copyrighted document, in whole or in part, to be copied, transformed, manipulated, altered, or otherwise used by or stored at Turnitin.com (iParadigms, LLC) or any other physical or electronic database or retrieval system without my personal, explicit, voluntary, uncoerced, written permission. Regardless of supposed intent (e.g., "to create a digital fingerprint"), no part of my copyrighted document may be temporarily or permanently transferred, by any party, to Turnitin.com or any other service, program, database, or system for analysis, comparison, storage, or any other purpose whatsoever. Violators will be monetarily punished to the fullest extent allowed by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and/or international law.
Students can Set a Trap for Violators
The first step in preventing your school from submitting your intellectual property to Turnitin is to place the aforementioned copyright notice at the bottom of your paper. The second step is to make sure that if your professor ignores your copyright notice, you have the necessary evidence to make your entire school district legally regret summarily dismissing your rights.
At least 24 hours prior to submitting the paper to your professor (with copyright notice included), send a copy of the paper through the postal system, addressed to your mother and/or father, at their address. Seal the envelope extremely well. Tell your parents to expect the envelope, but make sure that they do NOT open the envelope when it arrives! Store the envelope somewhere safe.
If you later find out that your professor submitted the paper to TurnItIn, your postmarked (dated) envelope—containing an exact copy of the copyrighted document that you submitted to your professor—will serve as evidence that you clearly warned your professor/school in advance that they may not transfer or grant third-party license to your work. They will have no defense, and you will almost certainly be awarded monetary compensation if you file a civil suit.
How to Force Turnitin.com to Remove Your Content from Their Database
It's much easier than you may think.
Send a cease-and-desist letter to Turnitin, demanding that they permanently remove all of your content from their database. They absolutely must comply with your removal demands, or pay statutory damages to you in the amount of $150,000, as clearly outlined in the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
Here is exactly what you should say to Turnitin:
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immediately and permanently remove all of my documents AND web pages that are currently indexed in your database;
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immediately and permanently stop indexing all of my web sites.
Provide Turnitin.com with a list of ALL of your domains. Force Turnitin to confirm, in writing (email or letter), that they have completed demands 1 and 2. That is crucial. Do not stop hounding them until they supply this written confirmation. Once Turnitin provides you with written confirmation of your removal demand, they will have absolutely no legal defense if they violate your intellectual property rights again in the future.
We suggest that you send your removal request via both email AND regular mail. Using both of those written contact methods will provide you with ample proof of your request in case Turnitin does not comply or violates your demands at a later date.
Here is Turnitin's contact information:
iParadigms, LLC
1624 Franklin Street, 7th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
1-866-816-5046
1-510-287-9720
legal@iparadigms.com
info@iparadigms.com
info@turnitin.com
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