"Custom written essays" are being resold by some companies for profit. What is customer awareness?

I wonder how many students (clients) actually ask a company they order their "custom written essays" from if their paper will not be resold in the future. I'm pretty sure that a client who orders a "100% custom-written paper" THINKS his/her paper belongs to him and will never be resold to other parties. The reality is, some companies make money multiple times on the same paper that was "sponsored" by their client who paid a lot of money for "original research."

What if the client provides research material he/she has done him/herself? In that case, these companies still resell the paper AS THEIR OWN, despite the fact the student owns copyright to the research he or she has made.

What if the student doesn't cite the material 100% accurately? In this case, a professor may just enter a few keywords and find the paper in an online database of papers.

Is it important for students to know that their "custom written papers" will be resold multiple times by the companies they order from and that they give up all copyright ownership to THEIR OWN RESEARCH if they agree to do business with a company that will later resell their work multiple times without any compensation?

A smart student should demand IN WRITING that their custom written paper will not be resold to other parties in the future.

Reputable companies always fully disclose in their TOS that they retain the copyright to the work and that they reserve the right to resell it subsequently. They also wait at least 3-6 months before reselling it, by which time the original customer who paid for and received 100% original work really no longer has any reason to care what they do with the paper subsequently. Anybody purchasing a previously-written paper knows exactly what he's buying and why it's so much cheaper than an original essay. One company that uses my work does include a promise never to resell any work and they charge slightly more for it for that reason. If you pay for original work, you have every right to receive it, but whatever happens to it afterwards is governed by whatever the TOS are that you agree to when you use a given company. If you ever receive old work after paying for original work, you have every right to demand a refund and/or start a chargeback through your credit card company.

In other words, it is OK for you to pay a premium price for a brand new car (ie. a "custom written essay") from a dealer and then let others rent it (for free) after 3-6 months as they wish, correct?

I am sure in some of such companies, in their terms and conditions, they will cleverly add some clause to the effect that they offer "model papers" to guide students in developing their own, "custom", papers for submission to their colleges. And they will require clients to agree to such terms when placing the order. But things become more murky where the client has only requested for editing or proofreading services, and the company proceeds to sell such a paper to another party later.

It's not a very good analogy and I'm not entirely sure who's doing the renting out here, but yes: If you buy a car, you can rent it out or lend it for free to whomever you wish afterwards, or even burn it, as long as you don't claim insurance on it or do it on public property.

Sticking with your car theme:

You can sell a new car as a "new car";
You can sell a used car as a "used car";
You just can't sell a used car calling it a "new car"; and
If you pay a premium to rent a brand new car from the owner, it's really none of your concern that he may subsequently rent it out to others for less as a used rental car.

Same deal with essays whose copyright you own.

It's quite simple, even if you didn't grasp the analogy: the dealer ("the essay company that sold a custom written paper") is doing the renting. All the client can do is to bend over and ask when and for how long they want to rent their car (ie. resell "their" "custom written essay"). And hope it won't be happening too frequently.


Since you give up the title to the car to the dealer (ie. you do not own the copyright) - you cannot lend it or sell it WITHOUT the dealer's authorization. EVEN IF you designed the car (ie. did your own research). Same with essays bought from some companies - by doing business with these companies, you give up your right to OWN the essay, even after having paid a premium price for it (and doing your own research).

Again, smart students should demand that the "custom essays" and their own research work (even if it's only one sentence) should not be put up for sale without any commission to them.


YOU GOT IT. So we can now agree that the term: "BUY a custom essay" is misleading. Because, in fact, you cannot BUY a custom essay from some companies - you can RENT it only.

Still, some not so smart students pay a premium price for renting (and some of them work for free by providing their own research). That was my initial point.

is the Mona Lisa with a moustache the Mona Lisa?

Its a way of making loads of money from one paper. Many have an essay database as well as writing custom essays. This should start alarm bells ringing.

You don't own most of the software that you "BUY" with your computer or that you "BUY" to download, either; you own a license to use it on one computer and the software manufacturer sells that same application to millions of other customers. You can't even install it on a second computer according to most software manufacturers' TOS. Furthermore, many of those licenses typically expire after the specified time period for which you paid to use it.

When you buy an essay from most essay companies, you buy the right to use that essay without limiting what the essay company can do with it subsequently. If that's not acceptable to you, just make sure that you buy essays only from companies that offer TOS that are more acceptable to you. As is the case with any other online business, essay companies have their own TOS that customers can either accept or refuse. If they refuse, they just have to find a different company whose TOS they like better. If the company's TOS say that the copyright is retained by the company, that means they can do whatever they want with it later. As a courtesy, the reputable companies don't resell them until many months after their first sale as original work. They also fully disclose that the essays are not original whenever they do resell them later. The only thing I'm having trouble "grasping" is what the logical basis of your objection to any of that is. If it's in the TOS, that's what pells out all of your rights, and theirs.

Essay companies have an obligation not to sell old essays as original "new" essays.

Essay companies have an obligation to disclose whether any work is original or pre-written.

Essay companies have an obligation to abide by any promise not to resell work if that's what they promise.

But if their TOS say that they retain copyright, it's really none of your business that they may resell them months later.

The software that I "BUY" with my computer is PRE-WRITTEN software (the equivalent of PRE-WRITTEN papers). We are talking here about CUSTOM WRITTEN PAPERS. When I hire a company to write a CUSTOM software for me, it is mine only and I (not the company that I hired) can do whatever I want with it.

When it comes to custom written papers provided by some companies, the client not only pays a premium price for the papers, but also gives up all the rights to it. Isn't it a ripoff?


Here is the trick. Most (if not all) clients provide their own custom research / ideas to help the company complete the paper. The company uses the provided material and then prohibits the client (ie. the AUTHOR of the material) to use it -- RESELLING the exact material (and ideas within) for their own profit. The company uses the student's research and ideas and then profits from reselling this research and ideas WITHOUT ANY compensation to the student/client.

You're talking about TOS or "courtesy" - but it would take a semi-smart lawyer to prove that the student/client who provided research/ideas, or even detailed instructions on how to complete his/her custom project is in fact a CO-AUTHOR of the project. And he/she is entitled to compensation every time the project he/she paid for is resold by the company.

This is the key point for me. The market provides every form of solution at a range of prices which customers are free to select between. As such, what is important is that each company fully discloses its policy and sticks to it.

No one can stop the buyer (students) or the seller (websites) in reselling the paper. If websites can sell the paper again so can the student.

That is a question that I am not always asked, but do get asked once in a while. That does not seem to be a concern for the students who order the papers until someone points it out to them. Then it becomes a major concern that sometimes reaches the point of order cancellation due to paranoia. Just to be on the safe side, I decided to respond to that question in my company FAQ's. That way they get the response immediately, which is we never resell papers even 10 years after the paper was ordered.

Students who previously ordered papers are now seeing their papers being uploaded as "model" papers for reselling. These are students who have graduated anywhere from 4-8 years ago. They are worried about how the reselling of their papers might affect their graduation status from their universities but nobody has received any investigative emails from their universities as far as I know. The students these days are also very much aware that their essays could be resold without their knowledge and even if the writer or company provides them with an intellectual transfer of rights to the paper. Contrary to what some might think, the students are very much aware that this practice happens regularly and that they are not really protected by any laws or copyrights as far as legitimate ownership of the paper is concerned. Afterall, they were never supposed to submit the model papers for grades right?

In 20+ years of doing this for a living and thousands of projects, my clients have provided me with real "data" maybe a few dozen times. Clients have provided me with sufficiently developed and sufficiently original ideas and/or sufficient analyses to incorporate into their projects to (arguably) generate joint copyrights maybe once every couple of years, for a rough total of maybe 10 times. Ordinarily, I decline projects if clients want to "collaborate" with me writing it. That's nothing related to copyright issues, though; it's just not a service that I offer, because I find it to be too much of a headache and I'd rather just write every project from scratch, myself. Occasionally, clients provide a fully developed full-sentence outline and/or good original ideas for analyses, in which case I'm fine working from that as the project specs. However, once I start writing the project, that's the end of client participation, unless I'm writing a larger project in prepaid sections, in which case they can request substantive revisions to sections already delivered on an ongoing basis, either as the next prepaid section or (much more typically) in conjunction with the next section of the project for combined delivery.


Even the dumbest lawyer would know that isn't how joint copyright works anytime the respective contribution of each putative author is sufficient to establish copyrights. Joint copyright (where it exists) simply permits both co-authors identical rights to use the work as copyright co-owners. Joint copyright doesn't allow co-owners to demand compensation (or sue one another) for using the work. In my case, the point is moot, because my clients own exclusive copyright to anything they pay me to write. It's also moot in the case of every commercial essay company whose TOS I've read, for at least two very different reasons: First, all of them expressly retain exclusive copyright and expressly deny any copyright transfer to their customers. Second, commercial essay companies only sell their customers a "license" to use the work in very specific (and very limited) ways, such as the right to read and study the work and the right to cite the work as a source in their own research and writing. Even if it were the case that their customers were copyright co-owners, that would simply entitle both the company and the customer to use the work without restriction, and not to demand compensation from one another for doing so.