THE RIGHT ANSWER

My daughters' young faces are glowing from the monitor screen as I walk into the dark computer room unnoticed. They are honing their detective skills to solve a mystery in the most recent series of "Nancy Drew" computer games.

If they are stumped, there is no sense of cheating when they leave the game to find the right answer on the Internet. They access chat-groups, websites or social networks, compiling and sharing a plethora of digital routes in the same way we used to trade baseball cards. When it comes to outside help in solving a Nancy Drew mystery, they have not honestly hurt anyone but themselves. They are innocently developing a programmed habit of seeking for the right answers to many of life’s questions in their endless and limitless digital world.

When I was a kid and stuck a piece of candy in my pocket without paying, it was clear that I was stealing. But our children have grown up in a digital world filled with fuzzy borders. Many of them will download a pirated movie or a MP3 tune without equating that behavior with theft.

These kids are raiding the candy store of copyrighted media, national exams and areas beyond our understanding without realizing that everything is not free for the taking. Unfortunately, there are no recognizable doors or cashiers to keep them honest;. They acquire information without permission and without appreciating the moral or legal ramifications of violating intellectual property rights.

A colleague of mine has a twelve-year-old computer phenomenon that was able to hack through a certain government agency's firewalls. It wasn't until the FBI was at their door that the father knew the high level of skills his son had acquired. The child’s game of “challenge” evolved into an illegal trespass into governmental data.

Our young people search with a mob-like mentality within the immense network of the internet, and all moral checks and balances are totally absent or unappreciated. We have not been sitting next to them at the computer to instill our values and moral fiber.

Just the fact that we can access specific information does not necessarily mean that it is in the public domain and free for the taking. How do we know such information is valid?

We will be left with what we teach our children. The ethics of this new digital world is in our hands. But how do we address a problem that we can neither see nor comprehend? I suspect Madoff’s gang thought they had found “The Right Answer”.