College students are adults. Plagiarism in order to achieve a college degree fraudulently is worthy of public attention.

Edit: note, "public attention" != "mob of ruthless assholes destroying someone's life".

1. This alleged plagiarist’s college convicting him and publicizing the fact that he has been judged a plagiarist by due process, and: 2. A public accusation of plagiarism without process of any kind.

Public attention to a conviction is entirely different from public attention to an accusation. I’m with you if you want convictions by due process of plagiarism in college to be worthy of public attention. I am not in favour of accusations like this to be brandished so enthusiastically.

The flaws of the "court of opinion" are many and worthy of concern, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to hide any mention of blatant wrong-doing.

This essay isn't a public denouncement, it's merely presenting information. Is this a call to a lynching? "Aaron Kerzner of Boston, I blow my nose at you."

I am only speaking to what we should do in response, namely laugh uproariously at what appears to be a finely crafted piece of work, and use it as a catalysts for serious discussion about where our institutions of higher education are failing, and eschew debating this named person’s crimes or character. I think the essay would be just as thought-provoking if it left the person’s name out, it would still pose difficult and important questions:

How does such an essay get accepted?

If someone cheats and gets a degree, how do they prosper in life? Should there be a correlation between honest work on a degree and success? If not, why do we care about the degree?

How much of submitting an essay is composing the essay, and how much is mechanically rearranging existing ideas into a form that passes the professorial filter?

Is there a Turing Test going on here? If a professor can’t tell the original works apart from the plagiarized ones, is the test flawed, or is there really no distinction between the good and bad students?

I really like the post, it provides much grist for my Olde Mill, which lies just west of the Forest of Runnymede.

In this particular case the evidence seems rather damning, but there can always be plenty we aren't aware of, life is complicated. Personally I hope the accused can recover from this, though in general I think that if more college students realized that the shame of plagiarism could come back and bite them in the ass later in life that would probably be a good thing. College isn't play time. Nor should it be training wheels for adulthood.

You work in tech? You've seen countless idiots who blatantly lie to get jobs? You've seen them get promoted (so they can no longer do harm, or because they're really good at lying) while talented people have to stick around to fix the problems and carry the slack?

Cheats prosper.

Plagiarism is a matter for the plagiarist, their employer or their institution, and the person whose work was copied (at a stretch). It's not the responsibility of a vigilante or a mob to chase up and vilify someone who has made an entirely academic mistake, deliberately or not.

That it's proof enough for you, or me, or anyone in this thread, is irrelevant, unless you're one of the three aforementioned parties involved. What influence do you or I have on their academic conduct? That's the teacher's, tutor's, or lecturer's job.

And since I'm overlooking the fact that plagiarism in itself is a form of copyright infringement, I'll posit this: people are against SOPA because it bypasses due process and presumes guilt, as decided entirely by the self-certified victim. How is a name-and-shame post like this, where the accused has had no opportunity to defend themselves or explain, any better? Were they even made aware of this beforehand?

Does anyone even know under what circumstances this happened either? Because an undergrad copying an article means absolutely nothing compared to a PhD doing the same.

I don’t know if you intended to scare me out of my skin, but I find that phrase chilling. Men have been lynched and hanged without trial given that very same sentiment.

Accusing someone of plagiarism on the Internet and sentencing someone to death are such completely different scenarios that I have a hard time comparing the two.

edit: Upon further reflection, I do think that creating a honeypot essay for the sole purpose of shaming whoever copies it does seem rather malicious to me. However, I'm speaking more about the general case of publicly naming plagiarists than this particular witch-hunt.

Process is always warranted in the case of punishment, but when someone makes the evidence of their wrongdoing public on the internet, it's silly to act like it's some kind of witch-hunt or lynching to point it out.

I'd say the main issue here is not that cheating on a college degree indicates a lack of competence. Rather, it indicates a lack of trustworthiness. This is just as serious of a shortcoming.

The Internet is like a bell, you can't just unring it.

Though someone stated that (not sure if this is fact) there is no statute of limitations on plagiarism, I feel like when it comes to college papers there should be.

Regardless of the fact that legally, college students are adults, they are still very prone to making mistakes. I see no reason to punish this one simply because he had the misfortune of copying a paper from an internet blogger.

How is it that you define wholesale copying of someone else's work and passing it off as your own a "mistake"? You might as well call burglary a "mistake".

"I see no reason to punish this one simply because he had the misfortune of copying a paper from an internet blogger."

Holy chutzpah Batman! He chose of his own free will to copy someone's work rather than do the work himself (which is CLEARLY against the rules). But because the person he copied from is a blogger who has the means to expose his misdeeds, that's unfair?

I can't imagine the circumstances where that's true. In general, you'd have at least a few hours to decide and change your mind. In most cases it wouldn't happen at all unless you actively show your interest in that other person.

Maybe when you're drunk and a lady just throws herself at you out of nowhere? I don't know how I would call such a person though ... lucky bastard?

I don't think it's unethical to cheat if cheating becomes the norm. At some point, it becomes the fault of the system, not the participants, and the schools are higher up the food chain.

i think it's kind of scary how quick people are nowadays to froth at the mouth and go crazy with the big-scale internet public shaming. one of the downsides of the rise of social-media, i guess

I would cancel his degree and send a notice to his current employers.

so would i.

i was just pointing out that there are different degrees of public outing. revoking his degree, getting him fired, and ruining his reputation with hsi colleagues is sufficient...no need to make him an international internet villain

Ok, we know the guy cheated on this paper.

There's a whole lot we don't know though: who is this guy? what led to the cheating? was it his first offense? is this paper really relevant to his professional career? was he looking to profit from it?

Many more things we don't know and for which it's usually better to handle such things away from the Internet.

There is no legitimate reason to do so. EVER.

I'm unclear as to what this has to do with the fact that plagiarism is always wrong, 100% of the time. Just because one may be guilty of doing something they know is wrong doesn't mean their declaration of that action being wrong is somehow invalid.

Sorry, had to add that

The bottom line is, you have an accusation on the Internet without the benefit of an accused person facing their accusers, without a process for presenting and evaluating evidence in context, and without any kind of judge or referee in place to rule on any issues of admissibility or propriety.

We get together and lament how places like Fox news can distort the truth and present biased cases against people. And then when something comes along and plays to our prejudices, we whip out the torches and pitchforks, planning to ruin the accused plagiarizer and whatever professor may or may not have accepted this ridiculous essay.

Quite honestly, I find the thought of this person suffering in the future when they apply for a job somewhere entirely repugnant. Now, if there is some process and he is expelled from school or censured on his academic record, let him explain that to whomever asks. But the idea of having to defend himself against mob sentiment is a giant step backwards to frontier justice.

People fuss and fret over surrendering their liberties to the TSA. We should think about what part of civilized behaviour we voluntarily surrender when we act like this.

But I do fully agree he should have due process, for all we know he was punished already by his university (though I don't know why they would leave the essay posted online...)

Honestly, after seeing the people here on HN crucify the guy here: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/274100/20111229/ocean-market...

I will be surprised if anyone has this same opinion.

"This type of insensitive public lynching is so reminiscent of primary school."

My thoughts exactly..

See this reddit comment [1] by his sucessor as PR guy for the maker of the Avenger Controller.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/nw1vm/ama_the_guy_who_...

> In our conversations, he has compared himself to no less than Howard Stern and Charlie Sheen. He has proclaimed himself to be the biggest thing on the internet, and has repeatedly touted how much power he thinks he now has with the press. He told me tonight "if they fuck with me, I got all these websites all over me. Whatever I tell them to write, they write." He says that he has a TV interview with SPIKE TV next week. I look forward to him telling them what to do and what to edit into their coverage. Tonight, he reiterated that in unmistakable, forceful terms.

> His abrupt swings in tone and mood were astoundingly rapid. He told me he would burn the company to the ground and destroy everyone associated with it, including me, he regretted to inform me. "I know you're just a guy doing a job and you don't know any better. I'm gonna ruin your life if I have to."

I shouldn't have used the affirmative, but it is highly probable. Megalomania and rapid mood swings are serious telltale signs.

Another possible cause for mania would be side effects of drugs. You can read in this interview[1] that he takes testosterone to correct a deficiency, it could also be the culprit.

[1] http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/4238/article/oceanstrata...