R2C2, Inc., owned by Rusty Carroll, is a company located in Carbondale, Illinois, that operates a group of at least nine sites that sold term papers. According to his attorney, they collectively offered a total of 200,000 to 300,000 papers.[1] The sites include: DoingMyHomework.com, FreeforEssays.com, and FreeforTermPapers.com.[2][3]
Carroll and his company had been previously sued by Blue Macellari at Duke University for copyright infringement, false designation of origin, consumer fraud and deception.[4] That suit was settled in 2006.[2][5][6][7]
In 2006, a class action suit was placed against the company and the owner in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Chad Weidner, Karolien Walravens et al. v. Rusty Carroll, and R2C2, charging them with copyright violation for reselling papers written by other authors.[1] On January 11, 2010 David Herndon, chief judge of the district court, ruled that Carroll and his company caused continued "irreparable harm" to an indeterminate number of authors.[8][9] The plaintiffs are being represented pro bono by McDermott Will & Emery.[10] On February 1, 2010, he further ruled that he would order the site closed unless the owner could prove he has permission from the papers' authors, but would not prohibit him from selling custom-written papers. Many other sites engage in that practice, although at least 17 states prohibit the practice by law.[5][11]
Plaintiff attorney Eric J. Conn said, “We'd like to stop this practice, or get as close to stopping it as we can.” Added associate Rita Weeks, “In the end, our perseverance did pay off.” The named plaintiff in the case, Dr. Chad Weidner, Assistant Professor at University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands, added his personal perspective: "Real research is both time-consuming and difficult. To think that there is some kind of quick fix, be it a paper sold online, a paper borrowed from a peer or creative rewriting of an academic's work, is just unacceptable."[1]
According to Darby Dickenson, Dean of the Stetson University School of Law, "The opinion does help the public see some of the sharp and shady practices of at least some of these companies. The fact that someone was willing to take on the company and litigate for several years is significant."[1]
In September 2010, the following statement was posted on Carroll's numerous term-paper websites:
The court decision has brought attention to the issue of term paper mills and academic integrity: "Academic performance in its pure form is exercised from the student-outward. Hopefully this sets an example to other websites who may provide a similar service."[17] Another respondent added: "Why is he fined only $20,000?" [17] A poster called jbarman was even more direct: "You must be kidding. Over and above the copyright issues, this is a guy who contributed to the widespread and growing cheating and plagiarism problems that take so much of our collective time as educators."[17] Walkerst asserts that a term paper website "facilitates plagiarism, fraud, and more".[17]