Plagiarism Inc. 236
Here's an interesting article on the life and times of 24-year-old Jordan Kavoosi, who has made a business of plagiarism. His Essay Writing Company employs writers from across the country, and will deliver a paper on any subject for $23 per page. In addition, his company will get it done in 48 hours, and he guarantees at least a B grade or your money back. From the article: "'Sure it's unethical, but it's just a business,' Kavoosi explains. 'I mean, what about strip clubs or porn shops? Those are unethical, and city-approved.'"
Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think I'd call a strip club or porn shop unethical. By some standards immoral for sure.. but what is the ethical violation of a strip club or porn shop?
The ethical implications of this are pretty direct though. You help someone get credentials which they are not qualified for, they become a civil engineer and end up building a bridge that falls on your head, cause someone wrote the paper on "building bridges that don't fall on people" for them.
Obviously that's a much oversimplified and unlikely scenario. And ethical concerns aside, I think this is hillarious. This guy has some stones!
While I'm on my soapbox, I'd like to say I think it's pretty sad that this kind of service is useful. If education was done properly, or specifically if students were evaluated in a meaningful and practical way, this service would be useful to maybe a handful of smart but lazy students.
Ethical ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you wonder why capitalism is going down the drain when CEO argue like 6 years old ...
It would seem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but can they fix my Karma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the comment could be worth 5 points, but at 48 hours turnaround time, you'd never get past a +2 informative even over a long weekend.
What plagiarism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Academic fraud, yes. Unethical, yes. But where's the plagiarism? As far as I can tell the papers are original.
> what about stripclubs or porn shops? Those are unethical...
Not by my ethics.
Porn and Strip clubs unethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope this guy isn't one of their essay writers. Porn shops and strip clubs may be seedy, nasty, and often run by unsavory people, and they most certainly are often run in an unethical manner or carry unethical merchandise (and are not my cup of tea), but the concept of a porn shop or strip club itself is not unethical.
Running a shop whose sole purpose in life is to write papers for students to (unethically) pass off as their own work IS most certainly unethical.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's an original work , yes. However it's not your work and you are signing your name to it. Therefore it is a form of plagiarism. Even if the other author gave you the rights to publish it . You can't claim it as your own.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the wives of men who go to the strip club along with their husbands?
Garden Variety Narcissist (Score:3, Insightful)
Justifying his own shitty actions with the "everyone else does it" cliche while enabling his clients to avoid accepting responsibility for their own actions.
Talk about epitomizing everything wrong with the world these days.
The wave of the future (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible to foresee an educational model in which ghostwritten papers are sent straight to the outsourced graders, eliminating the inefficiencies that students and educational institutions bring to the process.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:3, Insightful)
To claim someone else's work as your own, that you paid to commission, is not plagiarism... as the GP said, its Ghostwriting.
Does a company plagiarize your work by claiming ownership when you leave the company? No, that work was commissioned for them, and it is now their work. They are not the author, but they are the owner.
And just as the post to which you replied said, how do you know these el-cheapo papers are not being plagiarized by the ghostwriters from whom you're purchasing them? It seems very likely they are given the sleaziness of the owner, and considering the price so low and time-turnaround so short, it seems unlikely that that much research could or would actually be performed.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any guesses what's going to happen to any student that gets caught doing it? Well, there'll be words thrown around like scholastic dishonesty, cheating and expulsion.
I think this is a great thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
...because it will make sure that lazy students don't ever have the initiative to turn their work ethic around. Thus, when they get to the real world and are found out they won't make it. Since I have very good work ethic I won't have to compete against these bozos (well, not for long anyway).
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
For $23, can I get a page on how his service is ethical that will get me a "B" in my ethics class?
I'd pay for that.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ghostwriting it may be, but unethical it definitely is.
As an academic, I've had numerous cases over the years where a student submits work that he did not write. Just because he may have legally engaged a "ghostwriter" to provide this work does not mean I won't flunk him just the same, and in some cases, see to his expulsion.
When a celebrity, say Sarah Palin, writes a book, everyone just assumes that it's a ghostwriter actually constructing the sentences. Nobody who buys such a book is going to be outraged because it's actually the work of a ghostwriter, because the entire enterprise is more of a cultural badge than a meaningful bit of literature.
If a student submits a paper however, there is the solemn contract between him and the institution that the work presented is his and his alone. It's all over the student handbook and the institution's rules. When you try to play fast and loose with that, you've crossed a line and should be punished. Of course, in many cases it's impossible for a professor to determine whether the student that he's seen a handful of times, out of a class of a hundred or more, was actually capable of writing what he submitted. Since part of my expertise is in the analysis of literary styles, I could usually accurately determine whether someone has written a submitted work, as long as I've exchanged at least a few sentences with him in the course of a semester. Over 20 years, there was only one circumstance where I had an incorrect initial opinion about a student's work, and in that case a brief meeting with the unusually quiet, shy student confirmed that he indeed was the author of the wildly expressive roman candle of a paper he submitted. He got off the hook, got an "A" and ended up as my advisee when he got his well-deserved PhD. Today he writes a most impressive and successful political/cultural blog (Hi Roy!) but really ought to be writing fiction because the motherfucker's a pistol. Now that I've retired from academia, he is one of the students of whom I am most proud.
In closing, let me just say this to anyone thinking about buying a paper online: It's totally lame, so write your own goddamn paper. You're a student dickwad, so you really don't have anything better to do, and if you think your Economics paper is more important than the paper for my class, which you are only taking to satisfy some Humanities requirement, so it's OK to let some bogus bullshit through to me since you don't plan to ever care about literature or composition once you are trading derivatives, I can assure you that you will be found out and that your parents are going to kick your ass when they learn you were thrown out of school for being a douchebag, and your plans for being one of the gods of finance will be shredded into little tiny pieces. And yes, you'll still have to pay off those student loans.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ethics vs. morality (Score:2, Insightful)
"...what about strip clubs or porn shops? Those are unethical..."
He confuses ethics with morality. Dude--write a 1500 word essay on the differences between morals and ethics.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree with your sentiment, but not your conclusion. As a TA, I caught no less than 10% of my students literally copying text off of the internet and pasting it into their essays. None of them were punished in the least. The lesson I learned from the experience is that if you don't have any pull in the department, you let cheating slide because it is not worth the hassle. And this wasn't at some no-name school, either. It's one of the top research universities on the west coast.
As a TA I simply fail the students if I catch them. They can then take it up with the department, and the department then can take it up with me (where they _will_ meet staunch resistance).
Just slap a big F on there. If someone complains (nobody will, because nobody wants to invest his time into teaching), just tell them that it was plagiarism and your scientific ethics compel you to take action. And that you leave further actions up to them (there will be none, because nobody wants to invest...).
Works for me...