Title 45: Education

Section 1. Short Title

This act may be referred to as the "Educational Honesty Act."

Section 2. Findings; Purpose

1. The Internet is a new technology with a vast potential for enhancing communication and the sharing of information worldwide. The growth of the Internet promises to allow people to share thoughts and ideas, from the simple to the scholarly, in ways that were little imagined even a decade ago. As the Internet becomes a repository for this communication, it also promises to become an important research tool.
2. Testimony before us indicates that an alarming number of students are misusing the Internet, with the encouragement of a new breed of Internet service — the term paper Web site. Studies show that, last year alone, students purchased tens of thousands of packaged, prewritten papers off the Internet, and more than one million students visited sites that offer such papers for free. About sixty-five percent of these students are high school-age or younger, and about half of them are habitual users, coming to the term paper site about once each week. These numbers will grow as Internet access becomes more widespread.
3. Several student witnesses testified that they would not have plagiarized without Internet access, either because they would not have had access to pre-written papers, or because they would not have had time to acquire a paper from a mail-order source. Testimony indicates that increased access to papers, many of which are free, in combination with the tendency of many students to work at the "last-minute," creates an inducement to plagiarize which many students, particularly those younger students still in secondary education, find difficult to resist.
4. Assisting and promoting plagiarism — the most serious academic offense — strikes at the core of the educational process, and thus at the very heart of a free society. Doing a student’s work for him not only deprives him of the valuable discipline of the learning process, but tends to destroy his moral fiber by lending credence to the all too prevalent notion that anything, including a degree, can be bought for a price.
5. Public schools are important in the preparation of individuals for participation as citizens, in the preservation of the values on which our society rests, and as a means of inculcating fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system.
6. Testimony from school psychologists suggests that adolescent students are in a critical period of identity and value formation, when they are particularly vulnerable to influence by others, particularly their peers, and especially susceptible to academic pressure.
7. Many of these sites, with names like "Cheater.com" and "Evil House of Cheat," directly encourage students to plagiarize rather than do the necessary learning on their own.
8. The Web allows for anonymous browsing of packaged and prewritten term papers and instant accessibility. Buying a paper online is alarmingly easy. It is fast, simple, and safe. A panicked student can log on to the Internet, and download a pre-written, perfectly packaged term paper in a matter of minutes.
9. The popular Web index Yahoo!, the first search option for many, has 35 links to term paper sites, experts have testified to as many as 72 English-language term paper sites.
10. While secondary school students are particularly vulnerable to these sites, term paper companies market to college students as well. Companies package papers so they can almost be handed to professors "as-is." Many custom write papers to student specifications, down to minute details like font, margin size, and style of attribution. Nearly every school disciplinary board reports an incident, and experts agree that the overwhelming majority of cases go undetected.
11. Plagiarism at our institutions of higher learning corrupts the integrity and significance of a college degree, creating an unfair slur on the vast majority of students who honestly fulfill course requirements.
12. Previous attempts at legislative proscription have failed because they have proscribed only the sale of term papers. Testimony indicates that the most serious threat to ethics in the classroom comes from Web sites that do not charge for term papers. These sites are typically supported by advertising, or by a nominal membership fee, and are not covered by current laws. This statute eliminates this loophole by extending the prohibition to cover all manner of distribution, whether by sale or otherwise.

2. Purposes — The purposes of this act are:

1. To promote the use and growth of the Internet a tool for communication and research by those seeking to conduct honest research, and inhibit the use of the Internet by those who encourage others to pass off another’s work as their own.
2. To protect the integrity of education against the increased threat of widespread plagiarism, made possible by the surging popularity of the Internet.
3. To protect the morals and values of our children from those who encourage them to cheat.
4. To extend the prohibition against helping a student plagiarize to those who give papers to students as well as sell them.

Section 3. Definitions .

For purposes of this statute:

1. "Distribution" means intentional dissemination in any manner.
2. "Term paper" means any form of written academic work, in part or in whole, including, but not limited to, a theme, thesis, report of research results, or fictional work.
3. "Educational institution" means any school, college, university, or other educational program, either private, parochial, or public.

Section 4. Prohibition of Term Paper Distribution

1. A person commits an offense if he, alone or in concert with others, distributes to another, or arranges for or assists in such distribution with another, a term paper, knowing or having reason to know that such term paper will be submitted or used by some other person for academic credit and represented as the original work of such person at an educational institution without proper attribution as to source.
2. It shall be presumed that a person has reason to know that such term paper will be submitted or used by some other person for academic credit and represented as original work if such distribution occurs over the Internet, or any other computer network, and any of the following services are offered or promoted

1. custom research, formatting or writing; or
2. addition of the student’s name to the paper; or
3. blocking sale or distribution of the paper to a certain geographic region or educational institution; or
4. specification or categorization of paper length or word count or similar device for establishing page length; or
5. specification or categorization of formatting or method of attribution.

1. That person fully cooperates in a State-approved Internet-based search engine aimed at helping teachers detect plagiarized term-papers. Cooperation shall not be deemed to be full unless the particular term paper which is the subject of the offense is retrievable by the search engine; or
2. That person did not distribute the particular term paper until 96 hours passed from the moment the term paper was requested; or
3. That person participates in any emerging Internet technologies or protocols designed to unalterably mark the origin of data travelling across the Internet in a manner so that material from the Internet is automatically identified in the submitted paper; or
4. That person only distributes the term paper with the original author identified and in PDF format so that the term paper can not be electronically manipulated by the buyer.

Section 5. Sanctions