RhinoFish - 1:24 pm on May 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

I believe there's got to be some, if not many, legit essay writing services that have nothing to do with college plagiarism - these folks are unfairly harmed by an outright ban.

If they feel compelled, I'd rather see G work with universities on an indexing and searching system for submitted work, because this is the university system's issue.

The bad behavior isn't inherently the ads, it's the plagiarism. If G had a university plagiarism detector they developed (surely students are submitting electronic documents that can be slurped in the system -- and i know G's goal is to manage the worlds information), then let the corrupt companies pay for ads, get paid for services, then get sued by students for providing plagiarized reports (and the collateral damage done to students for submitting paid-for works that are a scam). Also, let the copyright owners of the original works know so they can chase damages also.

This would put a serious chill on students who seek to pay for a degree, whereas the new "ban the ads" plan just relieves G of liability.

G already licenses their API to a company called CopySentry that scans the Internet looking for copyright violations. The technology is readily available and it's vitally in the university's interests.

i wish they'd change their motto to... "do no evil, and once in a while, try to do some good too".

[edited by: RhinoFish at 1:31 pm (utc) on May 23, 2007]