** I wrote this article last night, let me know what you guys think!
Times have changed, have they not? The latest generation of young people is experiencing young life in a drastically different way than their parents and grandparents did. Thanks to huge advancements in technology and internet, teens and young adults are living much easier lives in a sense. They’ve got cell phones and mobile computers, they have the internet and instant messaging, they have online classes, and the list goes on. Many gadgets are at their disposal that their forefathers couldn’t have even dreamed of. And just as history proves, new inventions and advancements bring with them an entire new world of crime and deviation.
Crime, however, is not yet an accurate statement to describe the new problems prompted by technology. This is because crime by definition means to break the law, however, our government has been slow create concrete laws with which to combat the issues brought up by the ever-growing tech world. Sure, we DO have laws, and they work for punishing the most apparent and destructive forms of computer related crimes. However, there are plenty more needed, and with that, more physical enforcement of those laws.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example of a modern teen. Ryan is a young computer enthusiast. He is what many of his peers might describe as a “computer geek,” or “nerd.” He likes to spend his free time tinkering with computer parts, browsing computer forums, and learning programming languages. Ryan, like many other teens, also uses Peer 2 Peer (P2P) software to download music (illegally). He is not content to stop there however. Ryan has learned of the wide world of IRC (Internet Chat Relay), and has spent the last few nights learning of the file sharing possibilities offered by IRC. He can get movies, full music albums, computer software, and more, all for free! Ryan isn’t hurting anyone (physically anyway), and no body has really told him these things are wrong. Sure, he knows that it is illegal, but he doesn’t know anybody that has actually gotten in trouble for it, except a few that he has read about in the newspaper. But the guys who get caught are either running some large operation, or they did something stupid. That is what Ryan thinks anyway. So, he continues sharing and downloading illegally, never thinking of the damage he is doing to the creators of those products, not to mention breaking the law. “Ah they are big multi-million dollar companies, they have tons of money, how is a little pirating gonna hurt them?” Little does he know he is 1) breaking the law, and 2) contributing the millions of dollars of losses for those companies.
According to a report done by the BSAA in 2004, the total damage of software piracy alone in America was $7.5 billion dollars. That statistic doesn’t even include music and movie piracy. This is a huge deal. Now, what could be done to prevent this from happening? The problem is that Ryan thinks that he can get away with it, and the sad truth is that he probably can. He knows that the police aren’t going to be monitoring his home PC, searching for pirated files. And unless somebody can find a way to change the way young people think about illegal internet piracy, it is only going to get worse. A strategy needs to be developed to help enforce internet laws in a way that will actually work, because we simply are not doing enough right now.
I would propose two primary goals of this strategy: 1) Educate, and 2) Enforce. The first goal for future improvement of preventing internet piracy is to educate young people on why this is a problem. We need to teach kids that it is wrong to be pirating other people’s music, software, or whatever. People need to be taught that internet piracy is essentially the same as stealing. They need to be shown that it hurts people. They need to know that it is real. They also need to know that if they take part in internet stealing, it will not go without punishment, which brings me to the second goal, which is enforcement. A system needs to be developed with which to monitor and punish illegal internet activity, because where education will help the majority of young people, there is always a minority that will continue to break the law. This system must find a way to effectively identify criminals online, find sufficient evidence to support charges, and then bring charges against them. If a system like this can not be established, people like Ryan will simply continue stealing, because they have not been educated, and they do not know that there are real consequences for it.
I am well aware that this system I speak of is not an easy thing to implement. There are many obstacles to overcome. First, in order to bring internet criminals to justice, laws must be improved. The courts must understand the amount of evidence required to convict internet criminals, and have sufficient and just penalties pre-established. Second, in order for the law to be enforced effectively, it will most likely require the monitoring of peoples personal PCs in some way or another. And you can’t just set up a wire tap into some ones internet connection and watch everything that is going on without invading on their fourth amendment privacy rights. A non-invasive system must be developed in which major pirating services can be monitored and then, instead of watching everyone, the system would target specific people who are suspected of piracy.
If this proposal were to be carried out, it would obviously require much more analysis and thought than I have given it in this article. My only hope is that we can begin to pay attention to an area that is much ignored. There will only be more and more billions of dollars in damage if this problem goes unattended. I hope our government realizes that we need drastic improvements, not little laws. We need to be teaching this new and emerging tech-generation that stealing online, is just the same as stealing in person.
