PCBEEUSA - Freedom on the Web

I was working at a local high school, helping to train students on a new software application.  As I walked around the computer lab, I caught several students checking out their My Space page or, in one case, watching the new Spiderman movie online–a month before the theatrical release.  I mentioned it to the school’s IT coordinator. She explained that the servers are set to block those pages, but there are websites out there that help you bypass all that.

Not suprisingly, there are all kinds of things, legitimate and otherwise, that you can find online, free or for a fee. You could, for example, buy a term paper and save yourself the trouble of working for your diploma (I often wonder if a professor ever got the exact same paper from two different people?).

Well, today, I read of something that, I would never have thought of.  There is a website that sells corrupted word processing files.  You read that right.  Corrupted files that won’t open.  The idea is you have a report due soon, and you don’t have time (or you’re too lazy) to complete it on time.  So, you purchase a corrupt file, rename it and turn that in.  A couple of days later, when the instructor tries to open the file, he or she finds that it won’t open and asks you to send it again.

Meanwhile, you’ve had a couple of extra days to finish the assignment.

Of course, sometimes it is possible to fix corrupted files.  If the program can’t do it, there are services out there that often can.  So if the teacher is clever, the whole thing could backfire.

No, I won’t give you the url.

Sometimes the illegal is also dangerous.  Like every other major movie, the next Harry Potter film will  be available online long before the film is released.  It was announced today that illegal downloads of this movie are very likely to contain a very dangerous virus.

So buy a movie ticket or rent the DVD, OK?

And do your own homework…

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