“The Economics of Authorship: Online Paper Mills, Student Writers, And First year Composition” ~Kelly Ritter
Plagiarism is always an issue in academia. It has come to the point where students think it is okay to acquire papers written by other students over the internet and not bat an eyelash about it. The reason given for this as stated by the author is that the students do not necessarily do it because they want to trick their professors into thinking that they wrote the paper “but because of their cultural and ideological disconnection from the system itself.” It is the internet, it’s accessible to everyone therefore it is not plagiarism. It is just a product, the process doesn’t matter; the author states, “the negligible desire to do one’s writing or to be an author, with all the entails in this era of faceless authorship vis-à-vis the internet; and the ever-shifting concept of “integrity” or responsibility when purchasing work, particularly in the anonymous arena of online consumerism”. To them it becomes an issue of general knowledge and what they are turning is a general knowledge paper. Something that was already known by society but now it is placed into words. The authorship does not matter. Education today especially in the American society has become a notion of consumerism. Especially in college, the student pay the money so they expect at the end of the four year not only to have the high paying jobs or get into the great medical, business, graduate and law schools but to get the high marks on their transcript that their parents hard earned money paid for. Students demand that professors relook their papers and give them a higher grade when it is not satisfactory. So it makes sense to some of these students to take papers written by someone else and place their names, on it, the assignment is completed. “First year composition students may only occasionally view themselves as authors, and by extension infrequently view the papers they buy online as “authored,” because they also place so little value on the actual work they produce as students.” There is definitely “a lack of recognition on the students’ part that authorship is valuable and that published writing is more than a product for the taking.”
On the other hand, the article talks about students feeling the pressure to write for professors as their audience when trying to look into the camera lens. The dangerous side to doing this is stress and of course, unoriginality. Students need to understand that feeding the professors their words back to them in a paper is not the way to go. Yes the idea was great that’s why they said it. Now is the time for the student to speak up and show the professor that they know what they are talking about on the related topic. Putting someone else’s words in that place just defeats the purpose.
The issue that is being debated here and in academia is “the idea of ownership versus authorship when determining ethical use of a paper, especially a purchased one, is less clear in many students’ mind, even as faculty understand- or profess to understand- what it means to create an “original” and quality text to “own” as an author.” Because the student views the paper as a product he or she either has to produce to get to the next level of their 10 year plan, it is okay to pay someone to write the paper for them because it has no relevance to anything they will have to do later on in life. But it is not considered plagiarism but of two reasons, they have the original author’s permission and they bought the rights to have that paper in their possession. You can see the student views it as a copyright issue, like publisher and other authors they have to ask the original author to reproduce their product in some way, shape or form. Then they too own these words and ideas but give credit to the source. The only problem here the students do not acknowledge the original writers for reasons such as getting expelled and banned from other colleges. And for this reason it is plagiarism, if you can not site your source to give them credit or if you pay someone for their work and try to pass it off as your own it is concerned plagiarism even if you did pay for it and asked permission. Credit should be given where it is due.
I’m not quite sure how this would be related to the writing center, because logically speaking no one that bought a paper online would not come to the writing center for help. Those that forgot to give credit where it was due will be reminded to do so and those that were caught by professors would possibly be expelled.
Here is an episode from the show, Facts of Life that demonstrates the case of plagiarism. One of the characters, Natalie submits her short story to a magazine only to have it rejected once again by the publisher. She later sees her story in a magazine under a different author with little alterations of her story. She decides to sue find the person and sue her for stealing her story. She goes through a frustrating process in trying to prove to everyone that what the woman who stole her story is wrong but later decides not to sue her due to her definition of writer’s satisfaction.
Part ONE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1loizHd7R0
Part TWO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eckCPpVJIc0&feature=related
Part THREE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwBIFvqbZ18&feature=related
"Prevention through education as well as punishment is key for violators."
Plagiarism is always an issue in academia. It has come to the point where students think it is okay to acquire papers written by other students over the internet and not bat an eyelash about it. The reason given for this as stated by the author is that the students do not necessarily do it because they want to trick their professors into thinking that they wrote the paper “but because of their cultural and ideological disconnection from the system itself.” It is the internet, it’s accessible to everyone therefore it is not plagiarism. It is just a product, the process doesn’t matter; the author states, “the negligible desire to do one’s writing or to be an author, with all the entails in this era of faceless authorship vis-à-vis the internet; and the ever-shifting concept of “integrity” or responsibility when purchasing work, particularly in the anonymous arena of online consumerism”. To them it becomes an issue of general knowledge and what they are turning is a general knowledge paper. Something that was already known by society but now it is placed into words. The authorship does not matter. Education today especially in the American society has become a notion of consumerism. Especially in college, the student pay the money so they expect at the end of the four year not only to have the high paying jobs or get into the great medical, business, graduate and law schools but to get the high marks on their transcript that their parents hard earned money paid for. Students demand that professors relook their papers and give them a higher grade when it is not satisfactory. So it makes sense to some of these students to take papers written by someone else and place their names, on it, the assignment is completed. “First year composition students may only occasionally view themselves as authors, and by extension infrequently view the papers they buy online as “authored,” because they also place so little value on the actual work they produce as students.” There is definitely “a lack of recognition on the students’ part that authorship is valuable and that published writing is more than a product for the taking.”
On the other hand, the article talks about students feeling the pressure to write for professors as their audience when trying to look into the camera lens. The dangerous side to doing this is stress and of course, unoriginality. Students need to understand that feeding the professors their words back to them in a paper is not the way to go. Yes the idea was great that’s why they said it. Now is the time for the student to speak up and show the professor that they know what they are talking about on the related topic. Putting someone else’s words in that place just defeats the purpose.
The issue that is being debated here and in academia is “the idea of ownership versus authorship when determining ethical use of a paper, especially a purchased one, is less clear in many students’ mind, even as faculty understand- or profess to understand- what it means to create an “original” and quality text to “own” as an author.” Because the student views the paper as a product he or she either has to produce to get to the next level of their 10 year plan, it is okay to pay someone to write the paper for them because it has no relevance to anything they will have to do later on in life. But it is not considered plagiarism but of two reasons, they have the original author’s permission and they bought the rights to have that paper in their possession. You can see the student views it as a copyright issue, like publisher and other authors they have to ask the original author to reproduce their product in some way, shape or form. Then they too own these words and ideas but give credit to the source. The only problem here the students do not acknowledge the original writers for reasons such as getting expelled and banned from other colleges. And for this reason it is plagiarism, if you can not site your source to give them credit or if you pay someone for their work and try to pass it off as your own it is concerned plagiarism even if you did pay for it and asked permission. Credit should be given where it is due.
I’m not quite sure how this would be related to the writing center, because logically speaking no one that bought a paper online would not come to the writing center for help. Those that forgot to give credit where it was due will be reminded to do so and those that were caught by professors would possibly be expelled.
Here is an episode from the show, Facts of Life that demonstrates the case of plagiarism. One of the characters, Natalie submits her short story to a magazine only to have it rejected once again by the publisher. She later sees her story in a magazine under a different author with little alterations of her story. She decides to sue find the person and sue her for stealing her story. She goes through a frustrating process in trying to prove to everyone that what the woman who stole her story is wrong but later decides not to sue her due to her definition of writer’s satisfaction.
Part ONE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1loizHd7R0
Part TWO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eckCPpVJIc0&feature=related
Part THREE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwBIFvqbZ18&feature=related
"Prevention through education as well as punishment is key for violators."
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