X Paper-mill v. Turnitin.com-- X predicted winner

culturecat.net/node/1156

Come on, get it together, rulers of the shadow industry! I want to see that day. Are you freelance writing rats just going to let turnitin deep-six the value all your years of prewritten essays? Where are your cojones?

And what about the writers who have seen a 100% drop in royalties from pre-written essay banks since the rise of turnitin... we are making 0 now because of them.

Is there a logical solution to this problem?

I don't have a lot of experience with "pre-written papers" - but as far as I know full-text of essays is not available to TurnItIn or any other search bots - it's only available to paid users. In result, TurnItIn cannot "copy" such essays (unless they are submitted one-by-one by students who purchased them).

Stop whining and start writing. Nothing lasts forever.

Pirate-- You sound more like a slave than a pirate. That's slave talk, and you have it on borrowed authority.

And if you think I'm going to stop whining about some unfair stuff that's going on, and $5-7K a year that is suddenly gone from my income, you're a fool.

It's not just me, either. I've worked for companies who had been stockpiling pre-written essays into the exponents since the 1970s! And this is a winnable case. So yes, I'm making some noise, such as I can.

Major-- As I understand it, once a student hands in a pre-written essay, as they will, and it is entered into Turnitin.com (often automatically by the university), it then becomes part of Turnitin.com, and is detected as plagiarized from then on, becoming basically worthless to whomever was originally selling it. Is that right?

Please avoid making nonsensical remarks. Everyone in here has the right to post anything they deem fit!!!! #WHOtfAREYOU!

#IamPerfection

I just find it interesting that you have a business that promotes unfair practices (buying papers to get ahead while others are being honest) and yet, become upset when something unfair happens to you. I am being perfectly sincere when I say this. In fact, I would jump at the chance to own such a stockpile of papers. As a writer, I could easily paraphrase all of them and get them past the sites like turnitin and their ilk.

So you say this is winnable? Do you have lawyers currently working on this problem? Again, I am being sincere and would appreciate some civil discourse on the subject. Otherwise, I'll be forced to troll you back.

It's not just me, and I don't "have a business;" I'm a writer like you. Everyone in the industry, from writers to companies, was selling pre-written papers until just a few years ago. It was the discount option, because it couldn't be tailored or customized, but it was very popular. And yes, anything is winnable.

Are there lawyers currently working on this? I ask because it does not seem winnable without the people who have the real means to tip the balance.

You're right; I know a few optimistic lawyers, but I don't have the resources to hire a hotshot. That's why I started this thread: to catch the eye of any of those mob appointees in the skyboxes who might want to invest in making business as lucrative as it used to be.

Thanks. You have my sympathetic ear as I am definitely looking for new business investments. I'll have to do some more reading and thinking on the subject before I invest.

Thanks again.

Yes, if it's entered into TurnItIn then it becomes part of the system (that's why it's funny when sometimes a customer asks their writer to send him/her a TurnItIn report to prove the paper isn't plagiarized ; ). Still, I guess TurnItIn isn't set up with all universities and it still cannot recognize direct quotes as a non-plagiarized content.

Just a few questions: So what's it going to take to make it as lucrative as it once was? Are the plagiarism sites collecting and redistributing the essays that they claim to check for plagiarism? I'm also curious what it would it take to purchase one of these defunct sets of essays? Disclaimer: I'm shamelessly sniffing around here for opportunity.

So what's it going to take to make it as lucrative as it once was?

Turnitin is the main culprit. They have the most extensive databases. Writecheck is just a partial version they own, and smaller sites share the rest of the distribution. If Turnitin goes, they all go.

Are the plagiarism sites collecting and redistributing the essays that they claim to check for plagiarism?

As far as I know, Turnitin doesn't redistribute, only collects and then cross-checks. Some unethical term-paper mills have services or side-businesses offering commercial plagiarism-checkers which redistribute checked essays. These have also suffered lately, due to the severe decline in popularity of pre-written essays.

I'm also curious what it would it take to purchase one of these defunct sets of essays?

You'd have to talk to an essay company owner who has one. A good bargaining chip for you is that as long as Turnitin.com's around, the set of pre-written essays is virtually worthless.

Thanks for the response.

I'll keep sniffing.

I guess everyone knows by now that Turnitin won this competition. The writers of pre-written papers had to surrender and start writing original papers per client since even Google has proven to be a formidable plagiarism checker as well. It isn't that the writers gave up, it was the industry changed its focus due to the academic institutions teaming up with the plagiarism detection services. Academic writers had to adjust and deliver on a new set of rules in order to remain relevant in the industry. That was a requirement and so it happened.

While Turnitin destroyed the business of reselling pre-written essays, it was equally responsible for the sudden explosion of the demand for original custom-written essays since 2007. In my opinion, plagiarism scanning is the best thing that ever happened to good independent writers.

Turnitin and other plagiarism detection tools are finding themselves having to keep up with technology these days instead of academic writers. Artificial intelligence has proven to be a formidable opponent to their plagiarism detection abilities. Something that they did not have to deal with when students were still mostly hiring human beings to write their papers for them. Unfortunately for these students who have come to rely on technology for their essays, it is also technology that have made it more difficult for them to use free or even paid AI writing services. Nothing beats a human being writing an original paper for the student. In the end, both TurnitIn and AI writing will bow to the perfection that is the human written essay.

I agree with this.