So, when you copy somebody else's work (e.g. a song) for personal enjoyment, it's an outrageous crime; but when you copy a student's essay for profit, it's fair use. You're right, it's not at all surprising.

When has Turnitin ever copied the essay? They just received a copy and stored it, but never made one themselves.

By that logic, me e-mailing you a Lady Gaga MP3 is not copyright infringement.

But I'll bet I could find a gaggle of lawyers willing to take you up on that.

It's copyright infringement by you, the person who made and sent a copy, not by me who just received it. If you look at the lawsuits, they're all convicted because they uploaded, not because they downloaded.

No such thing follows from icebraining's logic.[1]

If you think otherwise, lay out explicitly how you think the two cases are similar.

[1]Err, unless you are Lady Gaga.

You never made a copy of the MP3 yourself — you just received one and stored it. Ditto for people who receive copies from MegaUpload.

Has anyone ever been convicted for just downloading MP3s?

Besides, there's obviously a difference between receiving a random essay from a person who claims to own the rights (that's obviously in their TOS), and asking to download an MP3 of some band. In the latter case, the downloader obviously knows the copy is illegal and it can be argued that (s)he's abetting the infringer.

I couldn't have worded it better myself :)

You can find that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin#Controversy

Turnitin has always been a concern of mine; not just the copyright/fair-use conundrum, but the privacy issues too.