Our Kids As Criminals

I recently read a blog "review" from Will Richardson's webblog entitled "Our Kids As Criminals." The blog link is http://weblogg-ed.com/. In the blog, Richardson posts his comments on an article written by Lawrence Lessig in his book entitled Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. The book discusses the changes the Internet has made on children and how children are not aware of copyright laws. Lessig goes on to analyze the copyright issue as us trying to "wage war" against copyright infringements. Lessig's description raises quite a few debating issues on how to educate our children about copyright laws and what exactly we are teaching them about the Internet.

I decided to comment on this blog by Richardson's because it is truly evident in today's society that our children do not understand copyright laws. Furthermore, it is relatively common for students to be infringing upon these laws throughout their daily technology routines. To me it seems rather contradictory in that we encourage our students to use the Internet and other technological tools to find information rapidly; however, by helping to spread this information through use, we are also encouraging them to act as criminals. We teach our students to find, use, or even create things using the Internet, but are we teaching them how to do so without infringing upon another author's rights? Perhaps this is something we should be including in our "Internet/Technology 101" classes.

On another note, as an educator, I feel as though you can't blame the kids. Even as an adult you have to ask yourself......isn't this what the Internet is for....to learn information and spread it throughout the medium? So, in a sense, isn't the point of the Internet to find ideas (someone else's ideas) and spread them to others?? Thus, any user spreading the information could be called upon the terms of copyright. I guess in real sense, the Internet and its information calls for varying degrees of copyright laws. The question is how do we educate everyone as to what is appropriate for spreading information via the Internet in terms of those copyright issues?