Crime and Punishment Online: Kicked Offline
When the message “invalid user” first appeared on my screen, I wasn’t much concerned. This had to be some mistake, a glitch. Having navigated America Online for some months, I was pretty sure of myself electronically. I got up to dial their 800 number without the slightest trepidation. Along the way, I was intercepted by my 13-year-old son. “Oh, Mom, I forgot to tell you, I already called and they said they need to talk to you.”
This was not a good sign. When I reached an operator, I was informed that our AOL account had been terminated . “But why? This can’t be. I go online five times a day. I have cards and stationery with my e-mail address imprinted. How can I reinstate it?” The operator informed me that someone had been caught (I had a very clear idea who) going into rooms online and downloading copyrighted software. My pleas that this was a kid messing around fell on deaf ears. Our only recourse was to write a letter of appeal to a group called the Community Action Team. “Write a letter? I need to pick up my mail now!” Too bad. The fastest I could get to CAT was by fax.
Fuming, I set upon my child, railing at him for all the trouble this was causing me. I screamed that his pranks were interfering with my work. James argued that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that he didn’t even want the stuff he was downloading. His friends at school had told him about the room and he just wanted to see if it worked. “Do you really think I care about an upgraded version of Microsoft Word?” I told him he was grounded for life and sat down to write the appeal letter. I assumed that groveling and abject apologies would be accepted as proof of James’ sincere intention never to do it again and my ability to enforce this. I was wrong.
CAT rejected my appeal, and I was officially expelled from America Online, forever. Stunned, I set to work establishing another Internet hookup and hoped that none of the lost messages had been vital. I had 200 change-of-address notices to send. Toiling away at my keyboard, a light seemed to dawn. AOL was right. My son and I really didn’t get it about intellectual property rights. What I saw as annoying mischief was serious infringement on the rights of software developers. James and his buddies were thieves. I stopped for a heart-to-heart with James.
“Do you know that what you were doing online is just like stealing from a 7-Eleven?”.
“No way, Mom. We were just fooling around.”
“Yes, way. You were fooling with things people pay money for. You were taking it for nothing.”
“But we didn’t even use the stuff.”
“Tell that to a judge. Are your friends still going in those rooms ?”
“No, they got kicked off, too.”
It turns out that America Online, citing breach of contract, pulled the plug on thousands of users in recent months. The attitude of James and his friends toward online rules is epidemic. So was my casual response to what he had done. Though furious, my anger had been over the discomfort he caused me. I don’t think that I would have responded this way had James been caught shoplifting.
The teacher in me wanted to call James’ school and demand that they include lessons on computer ethics and electronic etiquette in every keyboarding and computer class. Children need to be taught about intellectual property rights and warned of the repercussions of flouting copyright. But schools will never be able to respond as quickly as this problem demands. Nor will they be able to handle it alone.
Do you know what your child is doing online? Save yourself humiliation and the expense of new stationery. Find out.
