Until a few years ago, the copyright landscape consisted of several easily identifiable islands--books and articles were different from music, and music was different from software. The advent of the World-Wide Web changed all that. Now media of all sorts can be posted on the Web. The boundaries between articles, music, and software are no longer clear when a single work can contain all three. >>

This discussion examines the ethics of submitting homework downloaded from or generated by Websites. Take a look at a few of the articles on this page and comment on the following questions.

1. Explain why it is unethical to submit homework download from the Web, or generated (e.g., translated) by a Website.
2. Is it also unethical to use these sites in preparing your homework? How about using spell-checkers or grammar-checkers in homework for foreign-language classes?
3. Which of these actions would violate the letter of the copyright law? Does the ethics of the these actions depend on whether they violate the copyright laws?
4. Is it ethical to operate one of these Websites, assuming that you clearly advise your clients that they should not actually hand in this work for a grade?
5. Do instructors have an ethical duty to--
   • advise students that it is a violation of academic integrity to submit output from Websites as their own work?
   • design homework assignments in such a way that it is difficult to cheat?
   • make an effort to detect cheating by using plagiarism-detection services, such as Glatt Plagiarism Services, or appropriate electronic tools such as the now-defunct Findsame for term papers, or Moss for computer programs? (See a list of such resouces at this site.)
6. In view of the problem of online plagiarism, is it OK for instructors or students to put their classwork on the Web? >>