Crime in the Youth

The article, Our Kids as Criminals, made me realize what changes have come about the youth of this country. The article refers to a book titled Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig. The book discusses how now it is becoming easier and more consistent to plagiarize. Today more and more children are being able to do this because it is such a simple thing. The fact that this is happening also makes me think about how new technologies are effecting this as well. It is becoming easier for children to do this, because new technologies are being invented where one CAN do this in just a few minutes. The "Copy and Paste" was invent to move text around between documents, placing it in a different spot in the writing piece, etc. Now it can be used to take text off of a web page and put it into the writing piece. In past times the writer would have to re-type it so the font would match. However, now there is a "copy, paste, and paste and match style!" So now a student can copy the text and paste it into their document without having to change the fonts or re-type it. This made me understand that people are just blaming the youth for abusing the technology that is allowing them to get to these documents, but they are abusing the technology provided for them. If people don't want them to be able to copy something, they should limit the "copy, paste" to only Word, Textedit, Pages, etc. documents. If they can invent a "copy and paste" system, then they can sure enough invent a way to lock it to certain pages.