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.'"
Confession (Score:5, Funny)
And in case he decides to take down his brilliant acting resumes (complete with sunglasses) like he did with other videos, here are some mirrors [citypages.com]. I
Hilarious article though, well done CityPages. I liked the dialogue with the judge and the story of Kavoosi's tattoos at the end. Clear infatuation with himself, I'd avoid.
Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:2, Informative)
This sounds like a ghost writing service more than plagiarism. Plagiarism is where you steal someone elses work and take credit for it. Highering someone else to write your academic paper is unethical yes, but plagiarism? If it's an original work... no. It is not plagiarism.
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Informative)
Well the claim its your own work, when its the work of somewone else is where its plagarism.
If you're desperate enough to use a service like this, how likely are you to know or care if your work for hire ghost writer is copying from some other PHD candidate's paper that he sold after he graduated?
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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.
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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.
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That's a different scenario from the actual offered service, and clearly, the staff of this enterprise might be guilty of plagiarism, but to claim that your contribution amounts to the same is stretching the definition severely.
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.
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, Interesting)
I was going to mod this but decided instead to comment. I faced a similar situation in my freshman year in college. My English professor's only comment for my final paper was "This paper gets an 'A' if you answer my verbal question correctly, and an 'F' if you do not." Needless to say, I did answer the question correctly and in the process learned a valuable lesson about how I should attribute sources more completely in my subsequent papers. (Thanks, Mrs. G!)
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not plagiarizing if you have permission, which having purchased the paper, you have.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarizing [merriam-webster.com]
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not plagiarizing if you have permission, which having purchased the paper, you have.
Plagiarism is about citing your work, not about copyright or permission.
If you use someone else's work without citing it, you have plagiarized.
How is it that people don't know WTF plagiarism is?
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Because they don't rely on knowing, they look up the definitions of things?
It's clearly, clearly, not citation. Otherwise, ghostwriting would be plagiarism, and no one (conventional) thinks that is the case.
Plagiarism is use of someone else's work without citation OR permission. The OR clause is absolutely essential to the definition.
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No, it does not. Read the FIRST TWO WORDS:
to steal
It isn't theft if you paid.
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Maybe it could be considered both ghost-written and plagiarized.
Like all those "... as told to" auto-biographies, which don't deserve the title "autobiography", but rather "authorized biography".
And for those wondering where the site is: http://payforessay.com/ [payforessay.com]
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It is not what we usually mean by plaigarism, because the author is compensated, and agrees to, the deceptive attribution. What it is, is simply cheating.
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"A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter
Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah... when you think about it, the student is just outsourcing their work to someone else. Most larger business do this now, so I can't blame today's students for not thinking that it's a big moral issue.
Hell... if this was an MBA course and I caught one my students doing this, I'd be half tempted to give him bonus points for proper application of modern business principles :)
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Absolutely nothing moral involved. It's an ethical violation only (because nearly every school has a signed code of ethics prohibiting this).
Could be moral if you believe that violation of a signed agreement is immoral, I suppose.
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If I were in the paper-selling business, I'd go find a large stash of term papers, and crack the security on the site.
Given that Turd-it-in has had numerous documented security flaws, this would be my site of choice. Ironically, the site that purports to protect the rights of students, has had obvious holes that made it trivial to shop for the paper of your choice, and submit it as your own, and not get caught by the same service.
Yet school administrators and teachers alike continue to force their students
employees (Score:2)
What's crazy is the people he hires to write the papers don't seem to have any sense of the ethical issues involved. At least two of them are interviewed using their real names, and they act like the only thing wrong with this whole shady enterprise is that the fool didn't pay them on time. One of them is apparently an established writer [google.com] for the Star Tribune; another one seems to be an award-winning teacher [orlandosentinel.com] in Orlando Florida. I'm glad these individuals are no longer working for this douchebag, but it do
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.
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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?
This boils down to a what is the difference between morals and ethics question. I think that wives of men that go to strip clubs feel that it is wrong in both ways, you would need to ask them for specifics though.
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the wives of men who go to the strip club along with their husbands?
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Or go by themselves. :-)
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Men who have both husbands and wives and leave their wives behind when they take their husbands to the stripclubs are the worst sort of immoral douchebags in the world.
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Can someone please tell me the difference between morality and ethics? The OED definition of ethical [oxforddictionaries.com] is "morally correct" (OK it can mean a precription drug [moneyterms.co.uk] as well, but that is clearly not what we mean in this content).
The real moral problem I can see here is that someone argues that it is legal, therefore it is OK even though it is inethical - i.e. do anything you can get away with and stuff the ethics of it.
Difference between morality and ethics (Score:5, Interesting)
There isn't a well-defined one, but there is a common, somewhat fuzzy, distinction often made with "ethical" wrong as the subset of "wrong" that deals ith behavior that fails an obligation to some particular other person (excluding any God or similar divine entity) without license, and "moral" wrong as the subset of "wrong" that deals with behavior that is wrong independent of any obligation to any other person (except, again, any God or similar divine entity.)
Under this model, fraud is often characterized as unethical, while recreational drug use is often characterized as immoral. (Both, obviously, presuming they are seen as wrong at all, and in general terms; its possible even under this general framework to construct an argument that either of those examples falls into the opposite category in some or all cases.)
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I think that wives of men that go to strip clubs feel that it is wrong in both ways
I don't think your analogy is correct. Businesses that specifically target married or otherwise attached people [ashleymadison.com] are comparable, but strip clubs aren't. If this were a general research service that people could abuse to get homework done that would be comparable to a stripclub that some men go to and cheat on their significant others.
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I would say that ethics is a system for accomplishing something specific without causing any problems or complications for you or others, eg, having business ethics is what makes a businessman not screw people over, cause environmental disasters, etc, and medical ethics is similar for the medical profession--confidentiality, be thorough, hippocratic oath, etc.
Morality would be a system that is supposed to* prevent problems and complications no matter where you apply it; don't murder, love thy neighbor, cont
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I agree in part, obviously its more nuanced than that. Some men are allowed to go to strip clubs on their own... some are even allowed to date outside of their marriage, for others, even acknowledging another womans existence is a violation.
The point is tho, its the other commitment that makes it a violation and not the act in and of itself.
Just as an author who hires a ghost writer is not considered to be doing anything wrong, the student who does the same is... because he has an agreement with the school
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Maybe the Plagarism guy needs to make a joint venture with those people who you pay to be good references, with answering services and everything.
Then you go to work for one of those Chinese companies that pays you just to show up and look like a foreigner to show how International they are.
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The distinction between ethic and moral is not clear-cut at all.
ethics /ks/ Show Spelled[eth-iks] Show IPA
-plural noun
1.
( used with a singular or plural verb ) a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture.
2.
the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3.
moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.
4.
( usually used with a singular verb ) that branch of phi
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Looks like you just copied a definition from a dictionary without understanding the question. No Points.
Morals are basic principles of right and wrong-- "it is wrong to kill", "it is right to show compassion" and so on.
Ethics are methods of reasoning about those morals. "If it is wrong to kill, what actions should I take in order to live my life according to this principle?" "Is it possible to apply this moral principle in a consistent manner, and if not, how should my moral precepts change to allow for liv
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Usually courses like that have more stringent tests than just presenting papers written at home.
I think this is more directed at "liberal arts" students, people whose future jobs will be in sales and marketing, if they can ever get anything better than flipping burgers.
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As somebody who is a "liberal arts" major and an engineering major, I figure that a service like this would be more use to the engineering students. I know that the college that awarded me my liberal arts degree (Humanities with English Language) and one of my engineering degrees uses software to check for consistent writing style, and any attempt to use that service on my Humanities degree would have rung alarm bells all over the place. On my engineering degrees, though, essay questions were rare enough th
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As we promote college as a way to make more money rather t
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if students were evaluated in a meaningful and practical way, this service would be useful to maybe a handful of smart but lazy students.
Okay, smart guy, now you're on the hook. What's your concrete proposal for evaluating students in, say, an English class in a "meaningful and practical way" that is impervious to ghostwriting and plagiarism?
As a college professor who tries to come up with unplagiarizeable assignments on a daily basis, I can tell you that this is easier said than done.
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I'd guess English is probably the harder of the subjects to achieve this. I was really thinking more technical/engineering where you can grade students by making them do.. technical stuff and engineering stuff.
However my thought would be to make assignments mostly worthless from a marking perspective.. and put most of the emphasis on exams where the subject is not known before hand.
In this kind of structure.. the assignments are more a means for students to learn and for teachers to evaluate progress. A stu
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and put most of the [grading] emphasis on exams where the subject is not known before hand.
I'll tell you from first-hand experience that students, even honest ones, HATE it when you do this. Well "tough titties", right? But even worse, many honest students do well in a normal assignment setting, but if you put them in an exam situation, they freak out and do very poorly. Exam anxiety is a very real problem, and grading by exams alone is unfair to these students.
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And there are vetting apps to watch submissions for various plaigarism. The sword cuts both ways.
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You presume that the spontaneously written essay isn't going to be shortcut with serious paste jobs.
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Ethical ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you wonder why capitalism is going down the drain when CEO argue like 6 years old ...
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And you wonder why capitalism is going down the drain
Quick, buy drain stocks!
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Perhaps it was somebody else who wrote his argument for him. Does he have a six-years-old employee?
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Plagarism, Inc. (Score:5, Funny)
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.'"
Yes, but can they fix my Karma? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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They promise at least a B, but with grade inflation isn't a B now equivalent to a D in my day?
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90% and up = A
80% and up = B
70% and up = C
60% and up = D
Everything else = F
Now? 50% is an F.
And if you give too many Fs, you'll be sued.
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90% and up = A
80% and up = B
70% and up = C
60% and up = D
59% and below = F
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Probably not, but he can make incredibly stupid videos for you .
http://www.youtube.com/user/jordan4604 [youtube.com]
Which is worse - that he made the videos, or that he posted them?
It would seem (Score:5, Insightful)
Unethical is not the word (Score:2)
While strip clubs might well be unethical, from at least some points of view, the word for this is dishonest.
It's no surprise he conflates the two.
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Strips clubs are worse than this guy. I met a nice girl there, and she said she liked me... I spent all my money on gifts for her and then it turns out she never really did like me. She broke my heart.
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.
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> But where's the plagiarism? As far as I can tell the papers are original.
Yes, original papers...that people are then buying and passing off as their own work.
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On the other hand, it's not copyright abuse, given that these papers are created as works-for-hire, with the express intent that they be plagiarized...
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His definition of ethics is lousy (Score:2)
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.
Porn? (Score:2)
How are porn and strip clubs unethical?
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In the case of a reports-for-hire service, it is the customers that are being unethical, not the report writers.
Re:Porn? (Score:5, Funny)
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You've got that backwards; it's the real ones which won't hold up without support.
Strip and porn shops? (Score:2)
I mean, sure it traditionally attracts the bottom scum of society, but so does the military, construction work, truckers, bars, the dollar store, goodwills, walmart, tattoos, booze, gambling, etc. etc. Where the lower-class are involved you have to keep an eye our for abuse, as it's so fun and easy to abuse the desperate, but there's nothing inherently unethical about it.
He can be shut down rather easily. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was in school, I posted copyright notices on EVERY single paper I ever wrote. That was my way of ensuring no one copied my work and allowed me to defend any potential charge that I may have been a plagiarizer myself.
Texts of term papers posted on other sites (whether university or a forum or by a student) are typically copyrighted works themselves, or represent a portion of one.
DCMA, anyone?
Even a handful of violations can send this guy packing.
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His company is the copyright holder - he's hiring writers to create papers. Why would he sue himself?
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...except that he is employing ghostwriters who write original material, so he isn’t plagiarizing at all. It is the students who are plagiarizing if they put their name on the paper and turn it in claiming that they wrote it.
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One of the angriest moments I've ever had in my life was when I found out that someone had stolen one of my papers off a computer lab computer (which it had autosaved to) and tried to turn it in as their own. The prof caught it because it was written for a 500-level class and this idiot tries to turn it in in English 102. The prof recognized it, circulated it around, and my prof recognized it and told me about it. He never would tell me the name of the asshole who had stolen it (probably because he knew I w
Immoral vs unethical (Score:2)
Ah Jordan. Spoken like a true third-grade dropout!
Price Has Gone Up (Score:2)
In the early 1970s it was just $3.50 a page per Robert Silverberg.
Interestingly I read Dying Inside [wikipedia.org] just last night, and ghost writing class papers is the protagonist's "profession."
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I used to charge $5 a page in the late 90s. My customers left me when I gave 5 people the same paper for the same class.
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.
Plenty of blame to go around here... (Score:4, Interesting)
While this scumbag's business is about 100% pure fail, anybody involved deserves exactly what they get.
I am having a hard time mustering up sympathy for his writers that aren't getting paid on time (or at all.) They knew going in that the entire concept was scuzzy, and it should not come as any sort of surprise that the CEO of this fine example of capitalism is himself a little lacking in the ethics department.
Interesting that there aren't any complaints from customers in that article... I wonder if Mr. Scumbag-in-chief actually has sufficient "boss" skills to avoid hiring lazy employees that would produce plagarized product?
SirWired
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I happen to know every word you have written has been published before. Ever hear of the dictionary?
I only have one word for you...
Flarglenozzle
Look that up in your dictionary!
it's like doping in sports (Score:2)
yeah sure, if you take steroids or you bank your blood, you can win the cycling race or hit the balls harder
but why do people watch sports? because of the thrill of identification with the human being in the physical endeavour. but if its not the athlete doing the performance, just some drugs actually performing, then this undermines the basic premise for why sports are appealing to anyone at all in the first place
likewise, if you hire someone to generate your intellectual output, you undermine the very con
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good idea bad company (Score:2)
Also an example of lazy/overworked professors (Score:2)
Any professor (or TA) that is more than minimally aware of the abilities of their students should be able to spot a ghost-written paper a mile away. The typical student who hires one is lazy and shows no aptitude whatsoever for the subject matter in class. These students can be sussed out with a simple one-on-one meeting asking them to clarify or expand on some of their ideas. If this short meeting was made a major part of the paper's grade, buying a paper would be a lot less useful since it would still
Children (Score:2)
yea, this is clear, but what about.... (Score:5, Interesting)
but lets look at this with more grainularity:
at what point have I reached unethical in the following situations
1. I hire a typist to type my thesis (this is before computers)
2. I hire a graphic artist to draw my figures
3. I hire a presentation firm to do my powerpoint slides (beamer for me please)
4. I 'hire' (read: give the honor of doing my research) master's students to run my experiments / write code.
5. I 'hire' (read: give the honor of doing my research) phd students to draw conclusions on those experiments
Is the difference between buying an essay and being a research professor that thin? jeesh
That sound you hear ... (Score:2)
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.
Not plagiarism (Score:2)
This isn't actually plagiarism - plagiarism is ripping off the work of another writer. This is simply paying someone to write something for you; in that sense, you might as well call a politician a plagiarist because the letter he sent you was written by his secretary.
What it is, is cheating - which is really, really pointless. You might get better grades in classwork, but you won't learn anything: so you will lose out when it comes to the exam, and in 10 years time when you are being asked questions in an
in-class assignments (Score:2)
That's the only counter I can think of. Only problem is that it won't work for classes where they need to get as much lecture time in as possible, or for on-line classes.
Lots of CS100 classes have the same problem.