DIgital Law

After looking at both Respect Copyrights and B4UCopy, I realized that students are not using the technology and the internet in the way that it was meant to be used. Students are often not educated enough by their educational institutions on what is and is not legal on the internet. I saw a few examples of students who did not know how to appropriately use the technology that they had on their computer. They didn’t understand that they were participating in illegal activities. Illegal file-sharing, whether that is music, movies, or software, is illegal, and students do not understand that very basic concept, or if they do understand that, they don’t understand how they are sharing and accessing content illegally.

Students are absolutely violating copyright and intellectual property when they either download something without paying for it or use ideas without giving credit for it. This goes to plagiarism, and students have little to no understanding of intellectual property. They also don’t fully understand how to give credit to a person when they use those ideas.

I firmly believe that students need to be held accountable for how they use technology. However, I would also argue that there is a need for massive amounts of education for students in this area. Education of technology and digital citizenship should start in elementary. By the time these students graduate from high school, they should understand illegal practices and the nature of plagiarism. Students should also know how to avoid it by that age as well. Students committing these acts can and will be caught. They need to understand that there are consequences for breaking the law or plagiarism.