Orin Kerr and Eugene Volokh point to a company named Professays that writes essays for college students but does an extraordinarily bad job of it. No surprise, since one wouldn't expect a company based on cheating to be made up of intellectual giants. One of Orin's commenters raised an interesting hypothetical:
I'd like to think that perhaps the essays are bad deliberately, as a form of for-your-own-good-we're-going-to-get-you-caught maneuver. (I'm not sure it's good to cheat those desperate enough to pay for a paper, but on the other hand, I'm pretty sure it's good to get cheaters caught, and some of the customers will be merely lazy or wicked, not desperate and honestly failing. In a much less significant way, I put this on the same moral level as taking money to commit a crime and then not doing it - not very immoral at all, but somewhat unsettling.)
As I consider this situation, I'm forced to conclude that it's not at all morally objectionable to use deceit in certain contexts as a weapon against bad guys. After all, is cheating a cheater different than an undercover cop who lies and infiltrates a gang of thieves, a spy who disguises himself and sneaks into an enemy country, or a general who feints with some troops while attacking elsewhere?
The only difference I can see is that Professays is intending to abet and profit from the dishonesty of others, whereas a cop, spy, or general is more nobly motivated -- assuming their larger goals of infiltration or military victory are justified, then so is the deception. But that's just it! In the same way that thieves are the enemies of cops, cheaters may be seen as the enemies of those who live honestly; therefore, honest people are justified in exposing thieves, even if it requires deception. That there's profit in the endeavor makes the exposer no different than the police officer who draws a salary for doing his job.
But what about the fact that Professays -- even if they are trying to expose cheaters, which I doubt -- may often end up merely helping the cheaters to cheat? In order for deception to be morally allowable, it seems to me that the truth must eventually come out in the sight of honest men. Cheating the cheaters is ok, but honest people must not be hurt in the process. Situations in which collateral damage to innocent bystanders is allowed (such as non-cheating students whose grades are ruined or non-combatant civilians who are killed or injured) should be treated as wars and lifted out of the realm of personal morality.
Apparently, there exist good and bad companies as it is the case in any industry. I had tried EssayPlant once for my Business Strategy class and once for my literature class and got an "A" on each assignment.
Do you think that they deliberately gave me a quality paper to be different from incompetent companies? Once again, it depends on how you treat the situation and your school. I used the paper as a model for my own writing and certainly had to make changes to it as no writer can "be in your skin" to accurately represent your style.
Still, the paper saved me a lot of time which i otherwise could have spent on collecting information on my own, visiting the libraries, searching the net, and spending time getting out of the books exactly what i wanted.
After all, if in the future you plan to become a businessman or a leader (like me) you will not do everything on your own. Right? Just like EssayPlant provided me with the facts, figures, data, statistics and opinions so i could use them to compose my own essay without spending too much time on boring routine procedures, so in the future as a business leader you would want to receive succinct reports and facts that you could later on turn into your own strategy, report, etc. If you value your time, you would probably not spend it on commuting to the library, standing in a line, finding the book, reading it all...I DO NOT state you should not study at all, but you need to value your time. What is division of labor for?
I have accidentally come across the issue of Professays.com that was discussed at volokh.com on the 26th of May and I would like to disagree with the most of the comments. I have resorted to their services twice and received nicely written original essays. Using hem as models I wrote ones of my own. I must confess that I only slightly changed a few passages in order to emphasize certain aspects. I got A and B+ for these esssays. Besides, the fees they charged were very low.As to suggestions like "they're catering to bad, lazy students anyway" I don’t think it is the case. People who turn to such companies most likely don't want to write an essay on some insipid, silly topic which is
disengaged with the reality and prefer to spend their time on more important and necessary subjects such maths and natural sciences or something that they really like to do. Skipping through critical remarks I was particularly amused by funny and absolutely preposterous statements denouncing Professays to be an ingenious plot by the professoriate in American universities. I have read much discussions proffered by far more erudite and venerated folk than any of them could hope to be and the discussion of whether or not an online service that will custom-write essays for students is moral and legal is as hackneyed an argument as any of the other set-piece topics of regular debate for the professors of the humanities. And
naturally such a service can’t be treated as a violation of law or somehow illegal. So they stop bringing up fraud or plagiarism because hiring a writer may or may not be the stuff for chattering on ethical problems, depending on circumstances, but beyond any doubts it is not "plagiarism" or "fraud" It's literary "purchase", not "theft".