Digenis.org

While we’re on the topic of term papers and plagiarism, let me mention a recent April Fool’s Day joke played by Yandex, the Yahoo of Russia.

On April 1, 2006 Yandex announced on its company news blog that they’re rolling out an exciting new service geared towards “students, designers, journalists, academics, modern writers, and anyone who may have to write a certain length text on a certain topic.” Perhaps they could add future-presidents to that list…The service is called Яндекс Рефераты and it claims to generate unique academic abstracts on a variety of topics.

I captured a screenshot of the site just in case they take it down soon after April:

Simply choose from the list of topics and Yandex ‘generates’ a unique 200-word essay. But what about those pesky accusations of plagiarism?

Нажав на кнопку “Написать реферат” вы лично создаете уникальный текст, причем именно от вашего нажатия на кнопку зависит, какой именно текст получится - таким образом, авторские права на реферат принадлежат только вам..

By pressing the “Write essay” button you’ll create a one of a kind text. Moreover, because the composition entirely depends on the click of your mouse, all rights of authorship belong solely to you.

He heh… Gotta love the reasoning there. Not only is it not plagiarism, but it actually solves the problem of plagiarism:

По замыслу Яндекса новый сервис должен навсегда закрыть проблему поиска рефератов в Сети. Студентам больше не придется списывать чужие тексты, а преподавателям — заниматься доказательством плагиата. Наконец-то и те, и другие смогут вплотную заняться содержанием.

By design, the new Yandex service should once and for all solve the problem of people searching for term papers on the internet. Students no longer need to copy others’ works, and teachers will no more have the difficult task of proving plagiarism. Finally, they and others can earnestly focus on content.

They’ve got a great sense of humor to do this April Fool’s Joke right on the heels of the news that Putin’s dissertation may contain plagiarism.