Can You Trust your Term Paper Website?

An article in The Chronicle tells the sad tale of grad student Blue Macellari and the theft of her work. Blue had posted her graduate study about South Africa on her college's website for review by her peers. Years later, Blue's friend was googling on her computer (maybe trying to find a term paper site for herself?) and found Blue's paper on a site called 'Doing My Homework.'

How did Blue's paper end up in a commercial database? The website's scheme works alot like limewire or a file swapping program. Students are asked to upload at least one paper of their own, then they can browse the database of thousands of other uploaded papers. If they want to use the search feature that makes it possible to find what they need quickly, however, they pay $9.95 a month.

Most likely, a student who wanted access to the term paper mill copied the first academic looking document he could find from the internet. What he stumbled upon just happened to be Blue's private, copyrighted property.

Theft of Digital Property

With no mechanism in place at 'Doing My Homework' to verify authorship, the document was relayed to the company's bloated database of 60,000 aging papers. The file swapping index of papers is just one arm in a commercial empire thriving on fast and loose information transaction.

Instead of trying to locate the real author of the paper, the company slapped their own phony copyright on it. Since the paper was part of a database whose use was for sale, this copyright violation was an act of fraud. The manuscript's real author has disputed the paper mill's claim in court, and with good cause.

This scandal creates a tricky situation for Rusty's clients, who were led to believe that authorship and copyright concerns for the documents they downloaded would not be an issue. Anyone who has downloaded Blue's paper from 'Doing My Homework' and turned in the whole document or just part as their own work could face serious consequences.

Is It Worth the Risk?

Teachers and professors have long memories. Diplomas, certificates and doctorates can all be revoked if evidence is shown that a student plagiarized term papers or homework assignments. Careers built on college attainment could be jeopardized, since anything falsely written on a resume in grounds for termination of employment.

Unfortunately, the thousands of customers who are duped into buying from inferior term paper sites put themselves at risk every day. They risk expulsion or lost credits, their cheap purchases triggering the alarm bells at turnitin.com. They risk academic censure and humiliation before their peers. An entire college education should not be put at risk only to save money.

Six Things to Think About When Shopping Around

Blue's paper, and those of many other students, are uploaded all the time and then distrusted amongst paper mills' various websites. The 'Doing My Homework' consortium operates three companies in total, which each have slick sales pages that appear to come from entirely different content providers. In reality, they are one and the same.

Many companies engage in the creative use of front end web templates. Some conglomerates even have five, six or more internet tentacles vying for position on search engines like google. The aim of these companies is always to entice new buyers and bring in new money. The paper mills spend lots of money on advertising, because customers rarely repeat the experience of buying something old, badly made or useless. When considering purchasing a paper that is not custom made, please keep in mind the following:

Obviously, ten or ten thousand people might have downloaded, and turned in, any paper on a database. If your teacher uses turnitin.com or other anti-plagiarism software, then it will indicate that you plagiarized the paper.
The papers are not checked by anyone for formatting, proper grammar, citations or correct English. They are uploaded by students who are themselves looking for help with their own papers and trying to gain access to a database.
The papers are not 'retired' after a suitable length of time, and some contain very old and outdated materials.
Many of the student uploaders themselves get their papers from the Internet- and if they can find it, so can turnitin.com or your professor.
Maybe you can use the database paper as a source, and maybe not. Often papers are mislabled, and teachers have been assigning increasingly specific, complex work to force their students to perform original composition. Finding a good match with a term paper mill's search engine is treacherous.
Perhaps you can paraphrase the entire downloaded paper, remixing all of the author's own words but using the same quotes and sources in the bibliography? This is an idea, but you will have to find a very precise match of subjects if you want a high grade. Just writing about the Roman Emperor Augustus won't do if your paper is on the socioeconomic conditions of the slaves in the Roman empire.

Avoiding Unpleasant Results

The consequences for being caught cheating can include an unpleasant meeting with your professor and dean, a zero grade for your assignment or class, an irreversible black mark on your academic transcript, or expulsion from your college or university.

For many students, a college education is the largest investment in their lives. It is an ongoing transaction- with tuition fees and time being spent, while friendships, connections, and lucrative skills are formed. This entire investment- years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars from your bank account- can be damaged or lost in one moment of carelessness.

Using a term paper database or buying a pre-written paper is careless. Using a custom term paper service with proven, experienced writers is sound strategy.

Your Strategic Guide

You can use GoodTermPaper's services to reach your goal. Before deciding on a service, you might ask yourself:

What is my career aspiration?
What grades do I need, and in what subjects, to get me there?
What is my budget for this journey?

At GoodTermPaper, we are always looking for experts who can help 'relocate' our clients. Relocate in the sense that our clients are moving from the proving grounds of college and taking up their envisioned careers and lives. Our customers are at a time in their lives when every decision can have important and long-lasting ramifications. We want to be a guiding light to our clients, and help them live up to the challenges of their decisions.

This is the difference between GoodTermPaper and a subscription service database of term papers.

Beware of fly by night operations! As the Pittsburgh Tribune Review said, you don't want to wind up "buying the wrong words." Slate Magazine offers "A guide to buying term papers online." Even The New York Times has some words of wisdom on the topic.