Selling Authors’ Rights for A Fraud: Is that Possible?

While most people are hunting for jobs, some people are hunted by jobs; young academics or professors are asked to become ghostwriters. The cyberspace facilitates this phenomenon; indeed, all over the Internet websites proposing to “help” students are proliferating. Notwithstanding the moral aspect of such practice, this practice raises some legal issues such as: Can someone sell his/ her authorship rights to achieve an illegal purpose?
The concept of “ghostwriting” shares some similarities with the concept of plagiarism, however, the reactions differ remarkably. While plagiarism is condemned as a capital offence for law students, ghostwriting has not really been tackled. Indeed, a student caught using the ideas or words without proper referencing may be suspended, see his degree withhold or even expelled.2 Whereas rarely does a student loss his degree because of using a ghostwriting service. However, such offence is much more dangerous as students without much knowledge obtain diplomas and enter the job market to the detriment of other ‘traditional’ students.
The purpose of this article is not a judgmental one, instead, this article highlights a practical complication that arises from ghostwriting: with whom resides the authors’ rights? The author believes that although the author’s rights were sold, due to the fraudulent component of the situation, the rights are reverted to the original author.