Moral boundaries hazy for Internet generation

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Sep 21, 2003 | by Kate Zernike New York Times News Service

Similarly, studies by the Center for Academic Integrity show a decline in traditional peering-over-someone's-shoulder cheating, but a steady rise in Internet plagiarism between 1999 and 2003.

Here, the warnings against plagiarism seem to have sunk in better than those about downloading. But even some of the lessons about plagiarism came as a surprise to students who had freely used the Internet in high school.

"When I came in, I didn't expect any of this to be plagiarism," said Maria Sansone, 22, a senior. "The idea you had to cite what you took off the Internet was new. I think a lot of people don't know where to draw the line."

Elizabeth Kiss, director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, said she suspected that older generations were not more ethical, just less techno-savvy. "I don't think we've done a very good job of making the argument that it's different if it's copyrighted," she said.

Ann Morrissey, 19, confesses that she hasn't even listened to all the songs she has downloaded. "I have 400 songs, I listen to 20," she said. "I don't know why," she added, then laughed, and answered herself: "You can, and it's cool to have them."

She, like others, does not see the harm done and remains suspicious of the recording industry. "How are you going to make downloading illegal when you can still smoke legally and give yourself lung cancer?" Morrissey asked. "There are a lot worse issues you could focus on."

The university has sent warnings about exceeding bandwidth to a couple hundred students. But on a campus with 42,000 students, punishment seems remote to many.

"No one close to home has gotten in trouble," said Andrew Ricken, a junior.

A common analogy -- downloading music is like stealing a CD -- does not sway students. Many argue that they are spending more money on music.

"I never went out and bought CDs, now I go to concerts, because I know what kind of music people play," said Kristen Lipski, 20. "If you can get your music out to a big group of people to listen to, they'll go to your CD, go to your concert, spend money on posters. It's really expensive, especially for college students, to buy the whole CD."

Langlitz was on his way to a concert downtown by Taking Back Sunday -- a band he said he would never have heard without downloading. "A lot of the bands I know about aren't that well- known," he said. "Before I saw their CDs, I had them in my computer."

These are the same sets of Robin Hood arguments adults make. But while adults who remember the days of LPs seem willing to pay 99 cents a song, students see any transition from free as a denial of basic right.

"A dollar a song is just not worth it," said Edwin Shaw, a 20- year-old junior walking across campus with his MP3 player and trying to confirm which night the Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing on campus.

At best, the new warnings seemed to have some students negotiating new rules.

At a table with friends, John Dixon was debating whether he would be caught if he only traded songs with his roommates on their local area network, off campus. Just to be safe, he's sticking mostly to copying music from CDs. He is not sharing his files -- not because he sees it as illegal, but because he hears the record industry is going mainly after sharers, not downloaders.