Plagiarism and the Casual Plagiarist

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Plagiarism and the Casual Plagiarist

It is a random Thursday night on the first floor of Brewster Hall and the Campus of State University when a frazzled young girl wanders into the room of a fellow student inquiring about The Stranger by Albert Camus. She needs to have a three page paper completed by tomorrow and cannot find a kick start on the essay writing process. Since her peers are on the level of the common doormat concerning Camus, she was left without any further help. However, had she just typed “the stranger, camus” into Google, three of the first ten sites listed would have directed her to either free or paid essay sites.

While this student simply sat down and worked on her paper, the option to find a pre-made research paper was dangerously accessible to this time strapped student. However, it is these emotions that paper sites play up along with a general apathy towards plagiarism among students that make a stressed student deciding whether to plagiarize or not more inclined to go forward with the plagiaristic activity.

One of the sites that the aforementioned student could have found a Camus essay on is megaessays.com. This site boasts a four page paper about freedom and death in The Stranger. However, upon signing up for the site, one must register and accept the terms and acceptable use policy, but this policy is a separate page that is not shown when the essay abstract comes up. So, the site that claims “immediate access to thousands of high quality papers and essays” on its main page also has the following in its acceptable use policy (note the spelling of plagiarism on this website):

You acknowledge and agree that the license granted under these terms does not pe...

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