High school and college students know very well about the internet. They know more than us probably. And as a natural human behavior, they use it to ultimately satisfy their needs, whichever they are. This could be dangerous, since the internet doesn't have a filter and anyone could have access to anything, which certainly conveys risks.

But the internet is not all about risks and danger. There a huge wealth of opportunities to learn and advance in any single field of knowledge. All that knowledge is there, most of the time for free, for whoever wants it. The problem is that most of the time the information is disperse and hard to find, and sometimes it takes a good amount of perseverance to obtain what you're in need of.

Students are looking for homework help online all the time. But generally they don't do a research of their own. They prefer to go to forums to websites specialized in homework help to ask their questions. This habit replaces the traditional formula of getting tutor, and asking him/her to solve homework problems for them. This has been done forever. But now the debate is center around the legitimacy of getting help online, especially if the help is obtained from a paid service.

From my perspective, this concern is very short sighted for a number of reasons. First, students have been getting homework help from immemorial times, and the current format is a simple consequence of the actual technological twist. Nothing has changed really in substance; it's simply that the platform is different. Secondly, I think that the really important thing is the students to understand their assignments and the concepts related to them. If they achieved full understanding working with a tutor, or through a paid homework help service, that's not really relevant. The important thing is that they achieved the final goal of comprehension. I do agree that is not legitimate when students pay for homework solutions and they use them as their own work, and they don't really care about learning, because they just want to get rid of their duties.

The solution is simple. Homework assignments shouldn't be graded. They should represent a way for students to sharpen their skills, an opportunity of getting more interested in the field they are studying.