In the wake of student protests, officials at Virginia's McLean High School have said they will begin an electronic program to check students' papers for plagiarism in phases, as opposed to requiring the entire school to participate this year.

The school, in northern Virginia's Fairfax County, was going to require all students to submit essays and other assignments to an internet-based plagiarism detector called Turnitin.com, school officials said last month.

Turnitin.com reportedly checks submitted student work against a database of more than 22 million student-written papers, as well as other web sources and electronic journals. Students receive an "originality report" for each document they submit. School leaders said they decided to use the service as a means to deter plagiarism, because the internet gives students easy access to other people's work.

Now, only ninth- and 10th-grade English and social-studies students will have to turn in their work for review on the web site this year, McLean officials say. Juniors and seniors will be incorporated into the program over the next few years.

The change comes after a group of students, members of the Committee for Students' Rights, called Turnitin.com's practice of adding their essays to its database an infringement of their intellectual-property rights. One of the school's students helped collect more than 1,100 signatures on a petition objecting to mandatory use of the service.

The students say they do not cheat or approve of cheating. But they say the use of Turnitin.com by the school implies they can't be trusted.

"We object to the mandatory use of our intellectual property by this web site," Ben Donovan, a senior at the school, posted on the Ed-Tech Insider page at eSchool News Online. "We will turn our assignments in to our teachers and our teachers only, and we have the right to expect that our teachers will not turn around and reproduce those papers electronically, especially not for a for-profit third-party internet service. The administration has threatened us with failing grades if we refuse to use Turnitin.com. Is this legal? I know McGill University, a private university, couldn't do this, so how can a public high school?"

Donovan's post continues: "In any case, it looks like we are headed for a showdown at McLean that could go to court. We are currently consulting with lawyers as to where, exactly, we stand legally."

Donovan could not be reached for comment about the school's latest decision before press time, but student Nicholas Kaylor, a senior, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying: "Until there is a clear opt-out option for everyone, we're not going to back down."

McLean High School isn't the only school in Fairfax County to use the service; the school division has been using Turnitin.com since 2003, and more than three-quarters of its high schools use the site.