A website that provides term papers for a fee to would-be plagiarists has a section from which one can download papers on Ethics. The irony doesn't stop there. One of the papers is entitled "Academic Dishonesty and MacIntyre's View of Virtue". 5 pages, $50 USD.
Turnitin.com claims that it hosts the "world's leading plagiarism prevention system", but their service seems to fall more under the category of detection. They prevent insofar as the create a surveillance culture, which is incongruous with the academic climate of the liberal arts college. How then to combat the temptation for students to download from Term Papers R Us?
This is great stuff, Zach, th
This is great stuff, Zach, thanks for posting. I've been casually exploring sites like these from time to time and have never ceased to be amazed at their audacity. If you use google, you can often see their papers for free--when you search for a paper, click "SEE CACHED" and you'll see what's cached at Google, which is often the same paper they want to charge you $50 for.
Of course, I guess it's dishonest to bypass their fee-system and download the paper for free, but since dishonesty is what they're selling, I find myself surprisingly indignant.
Google as detection device
If the bodies of these essays are visible to Google, then I suspect that Google would in fact serve as a better plagiarism detection tool than Turnitin.com. I've heard as much from a colleague, who submits suspicious sentences to a Google search, but I've never had the occasion or reason to test it.
re: Google as detection device
I've tested it and agree. And a while back, Nick Carbone did a very detailed test which showed how much more accurate Google is.
Charlie
cyberdash