Plagiarism

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I would not consider purchasing a paper from a website and submitting it as my own. After asking myself, "Is it legal? Is it balanced? How will it make me feel about myself?" the answer is that it is not an ethical thing for me to do. Another deterrent is that professors have a lot of knowledge about how students write and they can pick out the originally-written paper from the purchased. I would also be taking a chance that the recycled paper I turned in read a lot like someone else's in my class. If I were to purchase a paper from a website I am not working on the discussion, reading and extended writing skills that I came to college to sharpen. I would be wasting my money on tuition as well. The existence of a website that helps professors check for plagiarism reinforces my opinion that purchasing a paper from a website is an unethical thing to do. There are several hundred million pages on Internet now and I heard on the radio that there are plans to digitize everything in libraries and make it available on the net. The opportunity for plagiarism increases daily and professors have to use such websites in an attempt to keep one step ahead of the plagiarists.

I do not agree with the website owner who said he is improving education by posting certain term papers as examples of the mediocre results of mediocre assignments. A student who is on the web looking for a paper to download is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between substandard writing and exemplary writing, will gladly download a mediocre paper and hand it in with a big smile on his or her face. I agree with the website owner's statement that professors need to take some responsibility for the existence of 'term papers for sale' websites. Professors, or their teaching assistants, need to actually read the papers turned in by their students and reject the filler that was added simply to obtain the assignment's page count. Topics need to be narrow and varied from semester to semester. Perhaps the professors could offer several topics and allow students to write on the one that most interests them.

If I were a professor giving term paper assignments I would discourage my students from committing plagiarism by putting a specific twist on an otherwise vague assignment, like having the students write a paper on the War of 1812 from