Custom Writing Service Says Students 'No Longer Have to Face the Burden of Academic Coursework'

CNS ^ | 1-20-14 | Susan Jones

[cynwoody]

In the “early” days of the net, you used to see a lot of stuff on freelance writing sites looking to hire people for paper writing. I forget what they dressed it up as, but that’s what it was.

Those services were around long before the internet. In the early seventies, if you lived in a university town, you would see ads for them in the local "alternative" press and posted on bulletin boards at the laundromat. And I would guess they arose well before then.

[Jeff Chandler]

This doesn’t help students at all, it makes them lazy, and diminishes their capacity to learn. I’m completely against this.

I agree with you 100% on those points. And I am completely opposed to the government getting involved in any way. They are offering a legal product, not unlike CliffsNotes, only on a higher level.

[Jeff Chandler]

Perhaps a university or individual professor could sue the Dallas company and/or others like it under existing anti-fraud or anti-racketeering statutes.

It seems like quiet a stretch to lump cheating on a college exam in with legal fraud. Any attorneys out there care to comment?

[GeronL]

It is definitely a violation of all school rules and ethics to pay someone else to write your papers for you. These students who get caught should be expelled automatically.

[Jeff Chandler]

These students who get caught should be expelled automatically.

Absolutely. My point is, we don't need to get the government involved.

[GeronL]

They are involved because they are providing the grants and loans for the tuition

[Jeff Chandler]

The government has the right to withhold funding from cheaters, but he First Amendment guarantees the right of individuals and organizations to produce essays.

[cynwoody]

Ted Kennedy got caught paying another student to take a test.

It was Teddy's friend Bill Frate who aced a Spanish exam for him and then got recognized when he handed in the blue book with Teddy's name on it. It was a favor suggested by mutual friends. No money changed hands. Kennedy and Frate were both expelled within the hour. It was 1951. Both students were allowed to return to Harvard later and went on to graduate, Frate in 1954, and Kennedy in 1956, after a stint as a military policeman in Paris.

[Jeff Chandler]

They are producing original creative content. There is no way to prevent them from doing so.

[GeronL]

expelling the students caught doing this is the only way

[Jeff Chandler]

expelling the students caught doing this is the only way

Of course. My view can be summed up this way:

Not everything that is immoral should be illegal.

.

[Hawthorn]

>> It seems like quiet a stretch to lump cheating on a college exam in with legal fraud.<<

Fraud is unequivocally committed not only by the student, but also by the company. Moreover, IMHO, a judge and jury are likely to deal more severely with a commercial enterprise engaged in such fraudulent activity than they might deal with a single student. In fact, the company’s repeated acts of fraud would seem to invite a civil RICO action.

Then, in addition to the fraud itself, one should consider the fact that the parties (student and company) are engaged in a “conspiracy to defraud” — something that ought to give even more fuel to whichever damage suit lawyer is ready to roast the company over the hot coals of a treble-damages RICO suit.

[cynwoody]

The first one I ever came across (might have been an advertisement in the old “Boston Phoenix”) appeared in the mid-70’s, a company memorably named “Quality B*llsh*t”.

From the Villanova Law Review:

Facilitated Plagiarism: The Saga of Term-Paper
Mills and the Failure of Legislation and Litigation
to Control Them
By Darby Dickerson

It cites QBS and others.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Of course, once you get your first job, you can’t hire someone to do the work for you, and then you’re really stuck.

There have been cases of people getting away with hiring foreigners to do their work for them remotely. In one case I remember, it was found out by the network folks wondering about all this network traffic going through the firewall to an IP address in India, terminating on one employee’s computer.

[Jeff Chandler]

Composing an original essay with accurate content has First Amendment protection. It will never be illegal no matter what its end use.

[GeronL]

turn it in as your work though, it is fraud, unethical and should get you booted from school

[Jeff Chandler]

turn it in as your work though, it is fraud, unethical and should get you booted from school

I agree. I always did my own work.

[GeronL]

So we do not disagree on this topic

[Jeff Chandler]

See post #74 and you will see how futile is is to try to stop this by legal means.
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The real problem is that there are too many college students enrolled in the higher education racket to keep an eye on this sort of thing.

[DemforBush]

Agreed. I should have expounded on my post a bit. I was referring mostly to what I saw online in the mid-90s, but you’re absolutely right that paper mills and so on date back decades before the internet. I would guess they’ve been around at least since the 1950’s, if not earlier.