Ockhamism in a Real World

This post is original material . . . I promise

I will draw attention to an interesting debate at slashdot where a student successfully defended his rights against his university not to submit his class papers to a automated plagiarism checker.

Although much of the discussion is about cheating, one interesting notion is the right to profit off one's own work within a university/college setting. This auto-checker (independent of the university) profits off his work by using it to check later papers, and thus increasing its effectiveness and marketability to other colleges and institutions. The student thus loses his intellectual property. I find it most interesting as a digital property rights discussion. Moreover, it raises questions about the American principle of "innocent until proven guilty" within institutional settings.