College Success Tip # 50 - Illegal Academic Downloads
Ill-gotten treasures have not lasting value, but righteousness delivers from death.
Proverbs 10:2
Illegal activity is serious business. Although a friend, peer or staff member makes a suggestion to you as it relates to cutting cost on Higher education programs, textbooks and fees, be mindful not to commit an illegal crime. Photocopying copyrighted material from textbooks is prohibited. Additionally, attempting to download copyrighted programs on a CD’s or DVD’s is prohibited.
Just because everyone else is doing something, in class seeking to justify their unacceptable choices doesn’t make the crime acceptable. Also, just because you have instant access to downloadable material doesn’t make it right to illegally download because it is conveniently accessible to you.
Think twice before accepting or considering illegal academic downloadable material in the form of email attachments, CD’s or DVD’s. There are a lot of scammers, scams and pitfalls associated with illegal activity. Even though the cost of course materials can be expensive, it is better for one to pay the price legally than suffer the consequences of obtaining anything illegally. I heard a sermon by Dr. Charles Stanley focusing on the principal of sowing and reaping and he stated that “we reap what we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow” and the statement is true in negative decisions as well as positive decisions.
Examples of downloadable material for higher education students include a companion program that is associated with the textbook a teacher for a course. For example, let’s say Advanced Bird Watching 101 requires a textbook for $75.00 and a companion download access code for computer use of $20.00. Totaling your course material cost to $95.00. Now there might be some students who elect to complain because they believe the textbook is more important than the program and they’ve heard rumors that the instructor doesn’t use the program although require it. So instead of doing things the right way, some students opt to do things their way, which is not the best way if it is indeed the illegal way.
I encourage all higher education students to legally obtain all course resources. That means pay for the resource through legal means, rent the resource by legal means or if someone you know is willing to allow you to have or borrow resources they legally paid for, that is the way to go.
There are ways to obtain academic resources and one is to contact your instructor if you have financial issues. Sometimes professors can converse with their department chair, dean or even the publisher of the textbook for complimentary access codes that expire after a couple of days or so.
Illegal downloads cause many problems which include having to pay legal consequences for the offense and painfully going through issues that could have been avoided that now affect your personal life regarding your time, money and peace.
I remember working on my Graduate School Degree and there was an expensive computer program that our instructor advised us to purchase for the class. A lot of students were upset about the requirement and the teacher advised us to talk to the Teacher’s Assistant. Well the class was advised to bring a specific amount of money along with their laptop computers so that the TA could download this resource on one’s computer. Sad to say a lot of people brought their laptops and the program was downloaded. (I DID NOT PARTICIPATE, I DID NOT ALLOW THE "TA -Teacher's Assistant" TO DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM TO MY COMPUTER).
Everything appeared OK. But the next class session which was a week later everyone was looking for the Teacher’s Assistant because the program caused a massive virus on everyone’s computer causing them to go in for computer repairs and some not being able to access important information for work, school and personal use all because of a bad decision from an illegal academic download.
Do things right, pay the fees from legal credible sources and avoid illegal activity.
Peace & God Bless,
Aiming Towards the Target,
Dr. Bryant
