I remember a disciplinary case at our school in which two students illicitly gained system-administrator-level access to the computer network. The students were shocked to find themselves called in for remedial action because they felt they had not “done” anything—they did not change settings, delete files, or otherwise tamper with the system. In their minds, it was all about seeing if they could crack the system and poke around a bit. The process was their goal, as was the subsequent gloating. But because they did not technically break anything, why should they be in trouble? Indeed, they felt they had done the school a favor by finding the security holes in the network. This story raises two questions in my mind:
• Is the Internet an intrinsically different environment from other shared human environments? In other words, does the Internet introduce a uniquely new moral sensibility?
• What is it about adolescence that makes teens particularly prone to unethical online behavior?
Internet observers note important distinctions between Internet-related moral issues and Internet-dependent moral issues (Van Der Hoven 2000). Internet-related issues are those in which the moral issues are the same as they would be in parallel, off-line contexts. Downloading other people’s files or e-mail is an invasion of privacy, morally identical to going through others’ desk drawers or postal mail. Internet-dependent issues are actions that cannot occur without the Internet, yet the underlying ethical issues are familiar and perennial. Without the Internet, there would be no viruses, no spamming, no flame wars, and no hacking. But not all Internet users engage in these behaviors. The Internet offers unique opportunities for unethical behavior, but it does not require its users to be unethical. The options for making moral choices exist as much on the Internet as they do in other arenas of human endeavor.
Technology innovators often deny or ignore the ethical implications of their work. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story is a seminal example of how literature richly captures these morality tales. Dr. Frankenstein did not consider the consequences of his actions aside from the contributions he believed he was making to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Consumers of scientific knowledge, in their turn, leave technical development to the experts, effectively abandoning their own role in making moral choices. A student of mine once remarked that if music is “on the Internet,” it is fair game for downloading—dismissing the circumstances that might have put it there. The fact of the technology seems to mean that subsequent actions are allowable, even intended.
Many of the moral issues we are now dealing with are not new but have taken on new dimensions. Specific features of information and communication technologies (ICTs), like anonymity and speed, inject unfamiliar characteristics into conventional situations. Hamelink (2000) anticipates that genuinely new moral questions will eventually arise, particularly in the area of artificial intelligence and other intelligent systems. For example, what lies in store for human interaction with virtual beings? Who will be responsible for decisions made by intelligent digital assistants? For the time being, however, uniquely new moral issues are not at the heart of our problems. Instead, we are revisiting old moral dilemmas, made more complicated by new technologies.
Why does it seem that teenagers are especially susceptible to the lures of cybermisbehavior? During adolescence, individuals formulate moral perspectives on many aspects of life. But intellectual growth often out-paces moral development. Psychologists and educators have long puzzled over minds that are so capable of knowledge absorption yet relatively undeveloped in the subtler skills of moral judgment and decision making. Sociologist Émile Durkheim (1925/1961) believed that morality grew from attachment to a group and respect for its rules and symbols of authority. His views influenced behaviorist psychology and gave rise to the character education movement, associated most strongly with William Bennett.
In contrast, psychologist Jean Piaget (1932) believed that children define morality by actively struggling with issues of fairness. He felt that education should focus on ways of thinking about moral issues such as justice and human rights, methods of relating to others, and strategies for choosing what is moral. Piaget’s theories belong to the cognitive-developmental traditions of thinkers like John Dewey, and his work prompted the influential psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s research into the stages of cognitive-moral development (1958, 1984).
MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND ICTS
A great deal of what we now understand about adolescent behavior in the online world comes from these theoretical perspectives. The rules we establish to maintain order are influenced by behaviorist psychology. Rules give adolescents clear boundaries and expectations, which they need to understand their place in the world. Codes of conduct, more nuanced than rules, reflect the cognitive-psychology tradition, as they parse out the differences between truly immoral behavior (e.g., stealing credit-card numbers) and mere violations of social convention (e.g., using all capital letters in an e-mail message). Rapidly changing technologies, and changing uses of those technologies in different contexts, can confuse these distinctions.
Early on in this business, attorney and Internet ethics expert Nancy Willard identified four key factors that influence online misbehavior (1998, 217):
1. a lack of affective feedback and remoteness from harm;
2. a reduced fear of risk of detection and punishment;
3. a new environment means new rules;
4. perceptions of social injustice and corruption.
Willard proposed that, as a consequence of a lack of affective feedback and remoteness from harm, the user does not see the hurtful impact of his or her actions, leaving him or her with an impression that there is none. This perspective is a result of not actively engaging in consideration of issues of fairness and justice. In an environment of reduced fear of risk of detection and punishment, negative consequences of unethical behavior are less likely and therefore do not act as a deterrent. The user fears the consequences of getting caught, but does not acknowledge the moral rationale behind the rules and regulations. Operating under the conception that a new environment means new rules, users rationalize that “real-world” concepts and values do not have any standing in cyberspace. Therefore, rule violations are seen as violations of (unimportant) social conventions, not of universal moral principles. Perceptions of social injustice and corruption prompt users to justify unethical behavior by claiming they are righting the wrongs of the world and shifting the balance of power away from the corrupt “haves” to the “have-nots.” Context mitigates the moral implications of actions. Willard’s analysis holds up well, even as the digital landscape continues to shift and alter modes of human interaction.
Popularized responses to the impact of new forms of digital media tend to portray it either as the solution to all of society’s ills or proof of its imminent downfall. Of course, it is neither of these. Cyberspace is more nuanced than a petri dish of situational ethics in which users find it increasingly difficult to discern underlying moral values. Cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito observes that young people, in their interactions with new media, are actually developing social norms that are quite different from adult values and behaviors (Viadero 2008). Researchers at the GoodPlay Project (www.goodworkproject.org/research/digital.htm) have captured this dynamic in an explication of Web 2.0–related ethical issues that provides a more granular understanding of the forces at play. Their report identifies five core issues, or “fault lines,” that are salient in the new media environment: identity, privacy, ownership and authorship, credibility, and participation (James 2009). For each, the report presents a fictionalized vignette, then compares the traditional (off-line) conceptions of the ethical issue with the newer, online conceptions of the issue, finishing with an exploration of the promises as well as the perils of online conceptions. For example, in the vignette that describes a case of identity play, the promise of the online environment is shown as a potentially low-risk opportunity to experiment with personal identity, engage in self-reflection, and receive valuable feedback from others in a way that is not possible in the off-line world. The perils of the online environment are demonstrated in parallel fashion. Experiments with personal identity can lead to deception, self-reflective behaviors can be usurped by the expectations of the virtual audience, and feedback can be misguided or even harmful. I think that this kind of in-depth examination is the best way to acquire a meaningful and helpful understanding of a complex landscape.
TROUBLE IN CYBERSPACE
What are some of the behaviors and situations that typify trouble seemingly unique to cyberspace? Most of these technological hot spots have been covered extensively by the media. They are numerous and, like all things connected with the Internet, subject to change. This chapter examines some of the most prominent and troublesome of them, with a focus on how they are perceived through the lens of adolescence. The adolescent perspective is illustrated in this chapter by a series of examples that contain excerpts of students’ responses to hypothetical cyberethics dilemmas. I extracted these nuggets from students’ online responses to the ethical dilemmas posed in a unit of our school’s required computer literacy course. I believe they are a good representation of how many teenagers respond to the morally ambiguous cyberspace landscape. (For a current listing of the scenarios that have been used in this curriculum, see www.uni.illinois.edu/library/computerlit/scenarios.html.)
Cheating
The popular perception is that if teenagers are not looking at pornography on the Internet, then they are using it to plagiarize schoolwork or download copyrighted music. Plagiarism has certainly been made easier by the Internet. Students can copy and paste from many sources; they can also download prewritten or customized term papers (often at outrageous prices). Teachers fight back in a number of ways. They collect in-class writing assignments so they will have original writing samples for comparison. They use search engines to find unique strings of words from suspect papers, and they use the services of companies like turnitin com, which conduct more exhaustive searches for evidence of plagiarism. Teachers also retool assignments to make them more immune to plagiarism. A student who has to write an imaginary dialogue between two philosophers will have more difficulty plagiarizing her paper than if she is assigned to write a traditional comparison of the two philosophers’ perspectives.
David Callahan’s book The Cheating Culture (2004) sets this behavior in the context of a larger societal trend. From his extensive data gathering, he concludes that cheating has become an American way of life. He blames the competitive economy and the fact that most cheaters are neither caught nor punished. In other words, crime does pay and, furthermore, puts those who do not participate at a distinct disadvantage. Many people who consider themselves law-abiding and honest citizens find themselves slipping into cheating in small ways, whether by fudging a bit on their tax forms, exaggerating their children’s accomplishments for a competitive admissions process, or failing to return incorrect change at the grocery store. The everyone-does-it mentality is so seductive that cheating and other forms of small-time dishonesty have lost their aura of disrepute.
“Doing Honest Work,” the theme of the January/February 2009 issue of Knowledge Quest, addresses the difficulties of defining originality in student research and writing in the remix age. Leila Christenbury (2009) notes that, though there will always be students who try to game the system, defining plagiarism is hardly as simple as it seems. She examines plagiarism as an instructional issue as well as a strictly ethical one. She reminds us that concepts of originality shift over time and across cultures (citing Shakespeare’s unattributed lifting of a popular version of Hamlet) and that preventing plagiarism requires active instruction on the part of teachers, who must then require practice on the part of their students. She exhorts teachers to take responsibility for creating assignments where blatant plagiarism is less likely to occur. Holtzman (2009) writes from a high school student’s point of view in describing how expectations of “original work” shifted during his years of schooling, creating confusion in the minds of students. As a senior, he concludes:
Ultimately, I realized that “original work” lies in how a student pulls together the varied strands of the thesis and supports each strand with evidence—in other words, creative synthesis. Research and citations are history’s version of “showing your work” in math, rather than just writing down an answer. (63)
He recommends that teachers and librarians emphasize the centrality of expertise, the role of citations as acknowledgment of previous work, and the importance of synthesis and perspective to help students come to a deeper understanding of the meaning of “original work.”
Improper Use of Intellectual Property
The old-time Internet ethos purports that information “wants” to be free. The open-source movement, in which computer code is made transparent and available to the public for modification and improvement, is a reflection of this perspective—that anything worth creating is worth sharing. Hamelink opines that “Cyberspace is one enormous photocopying machine” (2000, 157) and reminds us that copying intellectual work has an honorable heritage:
Bach copied and reworked music made by others and did this with great respect, creativity and innovation. Many of his choral melodies were taken from other composers. If copyrights were indeed very strictly enforced, jazz musicians would be in deep trouble. In line with the current regime jazz legend Bill Evans should have copyrighted his brilliant harmonic discoveries and any time somewhere in the world a pianist used his way of playing a B flat chord, money would have to be paid to Evans’ publisher or record company. (161)
Teens are among the most prolific users of file-sharing software, which has become a primary means of acquiring music without having to pay for it. The concept of ownership of intellectual property can be a particularly difficult one for them to grasp. Most see no reason to protect the small body of intellectual work they themselves might have created by this point in their lives. So why should others mind? Instead, creators should be gratified that others appreciate their work enough to want to have it.
Unfortunately, modern copyright law and its enforcement through measures like digital-rights management can seem so draconian and invasive that many people find it easy to excuse law-breaking behavior. The prevailing tension is reminiscent of the early days of VCR technology, when Hollywood moguls feared the demise of their studios once consumers abandoned theaters for the comforts of home and bootlegged videos. The industry found a way to accommodate marketing practices to the new technology, and now fee-based video rentals, downloads, online streaming, and pay-per-play options account for a sizable portion of their profits. As noted in chapter 3, the music industry is catching on as well, with online-purchasing models and other forms of (legal) music acquisition.
The latest “copyright frontier” is defining fair use as it applies to remixing portions of copyrighted work. A study conducted by the Center for Social Media (2008) found that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The research uncovered a wide variety of practices that could be considered legal in many circumstances. These practices include satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving, and the pastiche or collage format that has come to be known as remixes and mashups. The circumstances that constitute fair use require that the new use be transformative. Transformative use means adding value to what was taken and using the new work for a different purpose than the original.
It is important to keep in mind the intent of copyright law, which is that creators deserve the right to be compensated for their work and have some control over how it is used. Though it is easy to claim that the recording companies are the “bad guys” and deserve to be cheated, such excuses can easily be covers for other, less-noble motives. Like many of the ethical issues discussed here, this one carries a complexity that deserves close and careful attention.
Hacking
The unadorned, original meaning of the term hacking is merely this: clever programming, a willingness to share it, and an appreciation of the same talent in others. But the term has assumed other associations in the public mind. Many confuse it with the more malevolent cracking or black-hat hacking, which is invasive and destructive. Hacker ethics have their roots in Willard’s third factor, that the online environment signifies new rules and codes of conduct. The new code of conduct values the sharing of expertise and information. There are, of course, many shades of difference in hacker ethics. Some feel that it is perfectly acceptable to break into systems for purposes of exploration and learning as long as no vandalism or breach of confidentiality occurs. Others regard this attitude as gussied-up cybervandalism.
“Hacktivists,” more purposeful in their outlook, often view the end as justifying the means, particularly when they act out of a strong sense of moral obligation to an overarching cause. For example, it is not uncommon for activist-minded groups or individuals to expose transgressors such as child pornographers, publishing names and descriptions of wrong-doing. These robin Hood–style vigilante tactics are similar to those used by other extreme-leaning activists, from ecoterrorists to political advocates of various stripes. Hacktivists may deface political websites, initiate denial-of-service attacks, or even impersonate and subvert an opponent’s online identity. In the Web 2.0 world, they may merely open up channels of communication to parts of the world that are under electronic “siege.” During the 2009 contested presidential election in Iran, activists outside Iran set up proxy servers that masked the identities of those inside iran who were posting updates to Twitter and other social network services (Sydell 2009). The distributed nature of this activist network made it impossible for Iranian officials to stop the flow of information out of the country, and it transformed the simple microblogging service into a rather major player in the unfolding events.
The hacker ethic holds particular appeal for computer-savvy adolescents, who savor the sense of power and entitlement that seems to come with the territory. They see it as their obligation to test the limits of online systems by finding security weaknesses and otherwise dabbling in spaces where they are not authorized to be. School administrators now find themselves engaged in “nerd discipline” and are confronted with a troublesome mind-set that seems to defy standard corrective approaches. Perpetrators regard school computing rules as applying only to others (who are idiots and need to be controlled), not to themselves (who are brilliant and should be paid to take care of the system).
In Van Buren’s (2001) exploration of high-school hacker ethics, the students she interviewed revealed numerous ways they could wreak havoc, including bringing the entire school network to a halt. Their focus was on the potential power of their actions, the fact that they could cause damage but did not. When asked point-blank how poorly funded institutions could solve problems of network security, they had no suggestions. Their counterargument was that most student hackers, like themselves, were not malicious, offering “the fact that nothing serious had happened to the school networks as evidence of their peer groups’ beneficent nature” (Van Buren 2001, 69). The possibility that they, or other like-minded individuals, engaged in immoral behavior was not a notion worth considering. Teens do not even have to be particularly skilled to adopt this attitude. The disciplinary case i described at the beginning of this chapter required no special technical background. The students used a device called a “key catcher,” a small physical component that plugs into a computer keyboard cable and records key strokes. Their success rested on an ability to attach the unobtrusive device to the teacher’s workstation and scan through all the captured keystrokes to locate the root password. I can imagine an “old school” hacker regarding this scenario with dismay and wondering why kids these days don’t possess real skills.
Some teen hackers, though, have no qualms about mischief making, either for its own sake or for more malevolent purposes. Online identity theft is a good example of this mind-set. Simple impersonation can easily occur when someone forgets to log off a networked computer and another sends out e-mail in that person’s name, alters files, or otherwise tampers with the account—often just to “teach the loser a lesson.” Or an account can truly be hacked, using deliberate means for a variety of malicious purposes. In either case, not only have the victim’s personal space and information been invaded but his or her identity has been assumed and misrepresented.
Freedom of Expression versus Freedom from Expression
The Internet has introduced unrivaled opportunities for personal expression, but these opportunities are not without cost or conflict. One person’s right to free speech is a potential invasion of another person’s privacy. Speech can be hurtful, even if accidentally so. Children first learn that they are never to lie. Later, they come to understand that utter honesty is not always the best policy, that there is a time and place for every expression. But the facelessness of online communication removes inhibitions, making it easier than ever to speak before thinking, disregarding or minimizing your target’s reactions. Sensitivity to others’ feelings has taken a backseat to the efficiency of the send command and a general trend toward what might be called “offensiveness deflation.” In sum, ICTs have the potential to cause unintentional hurt, to violate or betray confidences, and to be used as vehicles of outright bullying.
Social network services (SNSs) and cell-phone technologies have multiplied the modes in which personal information can be shared. It is now a simple matter to take pictures or shoot videos and forward them, post them, and otherwise spread them around the digitized universe. The subjects of these artifacts have little to say about the context in which their images are displayed. The rise of “sexting,” sending sexually explicit photos and messages through cell phones, has escalated the problem to new heights. As relationships deteriorate, photos may be distributed to wider audiences. Some teen sexters have even found themselves facing child pornography charges, both for taking and sending photos as well as for receiving and possessing them (St. George 2009). In the worst cases, videos and photos go viral, saturating the Internet and altering lives in profound ways (Bennett 2008).
In response, SNSs have developed a few features that give users some measure of control over their digital images as long as they are members of the particular service. For example, Facebook allows users to “untag” (i.e., render unsearchable) the images of themselves that are posted on other users’ profiles. But they cannot remove the photos, modify the captions, or even delete their names. Many teens are quite sanguine about this phenomenon. As noted earlier, notions of privacy are in transition, and teens may not be terribly concerned about the probing eyes of an abstract public. But users often do not realize how open a “closed” network can be. In the case of Facebook, photos can be viewed by users who are outside a direct “friend” relationship if other second-order linkages are created via status updates, networks, and other means. In general, once the images are “out,” they are permanently beyond a subject’s control.
Grinter and Palen (2002) report the concerns teens have about IM conversations among friends being saved or copied and then shown to others. Teens therefore might view the phone as being a safer medium for exchanging sensitive or confidential information. And, of course, the ability to save, forward, or alter private messages can be debilitating to those involved. One of my students commented:
I’ve lately noticed how dangerous it is to try to have a serious conversation with somebody when you don’t know how closely they value the information that goes on between you two. I mean, if you type it and send it to the person, that means they can save it and show it to someone else or copy and paste. It makes any committing words a serious hazard to your privacy. Just because they say they won’t, doesn’t mean they won’t. I don’t know, A Im and E-mail give you incredible powers of invasion of privacy.
Bullying is a plague that has long been an unfortunate feature of childhood and adolescence. Now, with ICTs, bullying can go on twenty-four hours a day rather than being confined to the school day. The victim’s home is no longer a place of escape and sanctuary. Homophobic taunts, for example, reach far beyond the hallway or gym class now that is possible to “out” others by posting their names online. Rachel simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls (2002), reports that bullies tend to be products of the middle class. They engage in “alternative” or unconventional (i.e., nonphysical) aggression because their culture does not always allow them to display anger in a more open way. These same “good kids” lose their inhibitions and sense of accountability in the online environment, writing things they would never say to one another in person (Simmons 2003). Perpetrators can later behave as though nothing has happened or even claim that someone else was using their screen name or e-mail account (claiming to be victims themselves).
In fact, the pervasive concerns regarding adults preying on children are giving way to a growing awareness that it is the peers of children and adolescents who should be the focus of that concern. A study conducted by the Cyber safety and Ethics Initiative at Rochester Institute of Technology confirms that peers of approximately the same age or grade level perpetrate the majority of cyberoffenses, and that cyberbullying peaks in middle school, which is also when the online exchange of sex-related content begins (McQuade 2008). At the same time, it is important to remember bullying remains a feature of adolescence both off-line and online. Of online teens, 67 percent feel that bullying and harassment happen to teens their age more off-line than online (Lenhart 2007). Of the one-third who report being the victims of cyberbullying, girls are more likely than boys to be targets, as are those who more actively share their thoughts and identities online.
As in the off-line world, many cases of harassment go unreported. Research commissioned by the Girl Scouts of the USA found that 30 percent of girls who were sexually harassed in a chat room simply left the chat room and did not tell anyone about their experience (Girl Scout Research Institute 2002). But 21 percent said they did nothing because “it happens all the time” and “is no big deal”—a sentiment often expressed by both harassers and victims in parallel non-Internet situations. Why don’t victims just block the abusers’ screen names, un-”friend” former “friends,” ignore their text messages, and delete offensive e-mail? It is not so simple. If too many technical blocks and filters are in place, legitimate communication cannot get through. Most of all, the victim remains continuously aware of the abuser’s presence. If a group of bullies is involved, the whispering and pointing has a virtual life as well as a physical one.
Teachers can also be the victims of bullying. Student bullies may post their teachers’ home telephone numbers to sex-oriented public forums. They can create or add to websites that satirize or defame real people, such as ratemyteachers.com, where students publicly critique their teachers, or badbadteacher.com, where anyone can accuse an educator of sexual misconduct. As with bullied peers, the subjects of these sites are not celebrities whose lives become something of public property but ordinary citizens who should have more of an expectation of personal privacy. An extreme case of how unfettered free expression can impinge on the rights of others occurred when a student, from his home, created a web-site called Teacher Sux. The site contained offensive and threatening comments about his principal and his algebra teacher, depicting the latter with her head severed and her face morphing into Adolf Hitler’s face. The boy showed the site to other students at school, where it was subsequently viewed by the principal and the teacher in question. His parents sued the school district for suspending their son, claiming his constitutional rights were violated. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against them in J. S. V. Bethlehem Area School District (569 Pa. 638 2002; 807 A.2d 847 2002), finding that obscene and libelous speech was not constitutionally protected. Even though the site was created without the use of school computing facilities, the fact of its accessibility at school and the deleterious impact of its content was enough to convince the courts that irreparable harm had been done to those depicted and to the school climate.
School administrators are especially frustrated by the unique challenges of this particular battleground. First, they do not necessarily understand that an unsafe environment at school can be created outside of school (as the courts determined in the case of the Teacher Sux author). Second, precisely because most of these activities happen outside school, officials may not learn of the harassment, and if they do, they lack the evidence required to pursue disciplinary action. It is difficult to establish a paper trail in an ephemeral online environment like instant messaging. Teens often share screen names and passwords, further complicating investigations. Third, the pursuit of harassers may be inhibited by schools’ fears of being accused of violating privacy rights. Finally, in an atmosphere of moral panic and finger-pointing, school personnel may have justifiable concerns about even getting involved. Freedom High School (Loudon County, Virginia) assistant principal Ting-Yi Oei (2009) was arrested on child pornography charges during his investigation of a student sexting incident because he naively placed the photo in question on his own cell phone. Local law enforcement seemed to be more interested in placating a disgruntled parent and finding a fall guy than in conducting a legitimate investigation of the incident. His outstanding record notwithstanding, his reputation and career were turned upside down.
Access to Inappropriate Content
The potential ability to access online pornography and other questionable content is one of the most volatile Internet-based issues that schools and libraries have had to deal with. The problem is actually a much bigger one than the simple availability of pornography on the Internet. It has to do with minors’ rights to access a wide variety of information, the conflicting and confusing content that is thrown at them by well-meaning as well as unscrupulous content providers, how types of information are interpreted by the community, and kids’ personal ability to deal with what they are exposed to. Because these concerns are so broad and of such importance, the next chapter is devoted to their examination.
