I’m tremendously excited about a recent piece I wrote for UWire. It’s all about Corrupted-Files.com, a website that sells corrupted files to students that they can send to professors in place of real essays and homework assignments to try to buy more time. I actually got to interview the website owner, who says straight out he doesn’t think his site encourages cheating, and got some great quotes from some GMU professors and various other people. Check it out on UWire.

Here are a couple other quotes on the same subject that didn’t end up in the story for various reasons, but are still terribly interesting. CF, the anonymous website owner, had some really funny observations on his business. (For the record, CF told me straight out that he is 25 years old. He never said he was a man, but I’m just using the male personal pronouns for ease. And in my own opinion from a comment he made, I would not be surprised if he taught on the side somewhere- another reason for him to keep his identity secret!).  (Any bolded statements, I bolded myself)

“I actually never used a corrupted file in my college days. My professors were all very wonderful people and I was very close with most of them so if I needed an extension, I was just honest with them and they were more then willing to help me out. College was kinda challenging for me, as in addition to a learning disability, I was a young entrepreneur who struggled at balancing a growing a business along with my academics. I had deadlines with professors and clients but I still got my shit done on time- it’s called Red Bull. I do not condone making excuses- I hate excuses vs. outright honesty.”

“CF was a joke turned into a social experiment. Ideally (in a perfect world) the student just does his/her work on time eliminating the need to make excuses but unfortunately that is not the world we live in. Personally, I would rather have the student do the assignment late and not cheat/fail (as I saw my friends do in college) and that is how I justified setting up this social experiment. If everyone had wonderful professors like me, there would be no need for Corrupted-Files.com.”

“Not to anyone’s surprise, but my best clients are from Ivy and top tier schools. I guess the more perfect people think you are, the more likely in life you are to cheat to keep that perception. Perhaps I’ll write a paper about what I’ve learned from this experiment, hopefully it won’t get corrupted :)”

“How many businesses can say they have a 100% margin with each unit they ship in addition to no marketing expenses as the product self-markets. I think the Pet Rock and Corrupted-Files.com are the two only businesses to ever pull this off. I got over 75,000 hits the other day, I wish all business were this easy!!”

(CF refused to disclose his actual business numbers. With a smiley face. It was funny.)

Me: What’s the weirdest question you’ve gotten so far about the website?

CF: This was my fave.

“Dear Corrupted File,

I want to ask you a question that’s been bothering me ever since I considered using your website. Your website is green certified, and I appreciate your concern for the environment. However, your website promises to send “a 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 page corrupted Word file. If you are green certified, how is it that you waste up to 40 pages of word documents? I think that is very hypocritical, and I urge you to conserve word document paper.”

Me: Do you tend to get more positive or negative reactions about the website?

CF: 60/40 Positive/Negative. Most people get the humor in this. My favorite response to Corrupted-Files.com was:

“This isn’t limited to academe — it’s a sufficiently common software industry practice that it even has a name. “Empty-boxing” refers to a (possibly apocryphal) story of IBM sending a customer an empty box, then explaining when it arrived that it must have been screwed up in the shipping department. This bought the necessary time for the software to be completed. I worked for a large telecom equipment company that was a true master of empty-boxing. In these days of instantaneous electronic deliveries, it takes a bit more skill. Extremely slow and ultimately unsuccessful downloads from ftp sites featured prominently.”

Me: Do you think your website encourages cheating? If you don’t think it does, where do you personally draw the line?

CF: “It clearly does not encourage cheating as buying a corrupted file forces the student to do their own work vs. buying a paper online or handing in their roommates’ paper from another class. It minimizes plagiarism (which I feel is grounds for suspension) and simply buys the student time if he/she was not able to get an extension, hence my email - BuyMeTime@gmail.com. Corrupted-Files.com turns time into a
commodity and nothing more- we do not condone submitting work that is not your own.”

As you can read in my article, the professors I spoke to did NOT agree AT ALL. They seemed to think as one on this- CC-ing their responses to each other as well as me as if to band together in a crime-fighting superhero professor team! (that would be so beyond cool) I had a few other responses back after the deadline that I wanted to include here as a counterpoint to CF.

Dr. Stephen Farnswroth, a journalism professor at Mason and author of several books on politics and the media, said he would report a student to the Honor Committee if he found out they used the service.

Farnsworth also took it one step further and said, “Even if I couldn’t prove anything through the “properties” info I would still not give the student extra time for a corrupted file. It is the student’s responsibility to turn in his or her own work on time and in a readable format. In other words, any problems with a submitted file, even if I can’t prove anything about the file’s origins, would lead to a late paper penalty.”

Dr. Mills Kelly, a history teacher at Mason, who I quoted in my article, also asked me straight out if I thought it could be a hoax. (I took an entire class on historical hoaxes with him in Fall ‘08).

Professor Howard Kamen, a communications professor at Mason who works over at USA Today as well, added onto Mills’s theory with his own thoughts- “Have you been able to talk to a student (perhaps off the record) that actually used this service? I don’t know if I’d take the site owner at his word. I could see students paying the $5.95, but never receiving the so-called corrupted file. What’s the student to do, then? It’s not like he or she could complain about it to someone …”

Kamen also continued on to say, “I’d tell you that this would constitute an honor violation in my book. I don’t think it’s cheating, per se. But there’s clearly an attempt to dupe/deceive the professor to gain an advantage.”

I have not found a student to talk to about this service, basically because I have no clue where to start except by sending out random Twitters off into webspace. However, if anyone out there finds this article and does want to tell me their experience, I would positively LOVE to hear from you.