Can Our Youngest Music Thieves Learn Morality

I love my iPod...like no other object I have ever had or will have, and I am not embarassed to say so. With the flick of a finger, I can start a daily musical feast with Brian Hyland's "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", gorge myself on Meatloaf's raucous debut album "Bat Out of Hell", sit back and loosen my belt to a Gregorian Chant, and wash it all down with the sweet sounds of Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings." All I need do in order to prepare for this lavish musical feast is to pay Apple a few bucks to download these delicacies into my iTunes library. You can only imagine the rapture I felt when my 15 year old son showed me-with a series of quick clicks of his mouse and a dizzying array of URL's-that he could download those same songs from the Internet FOR FREE!!!

Free, thought I?! My eyes rolled back in my head as I licked my lips. Mozart's 41 symphonies...the Beatles' complete songbook, Michael Jackson's music videos, and every single 60's hit could be mine. But just then, I remembered that I was no longer a teenager (damn, I hate when that happens). I am a father of a teenager who I am trying so hard to civilize, and perhaps even prepare for the world. I was, at the same time, cognizant of stroking him for his technological wizadry and helping him to understand that filling his electronic iTunes library with copyrighted music, and then sharing it with friends was illegal. I was also aware that if I came down too hard on the side of government, laws, and fairness to others, that he would quickly drift into that glazed and dissociatively stuporous look he takes on when I pontificate in the name of parenting. Yet, I did not want to let this potential teaching moment pass.

In my effort to help him better understand the illegality (and potentially crippling legal and financial effects this could have on him and our family), I knew that I was facing formidable barriers. Legendary Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget suggested to us that young teens, because of their cogntive immaturity, cannot focus on intentionality when making moral decisions...they judge the correctness of their acts based upon consequences- a no harm no foul perspective). Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg believed that teens may eventually develop the ability to internalize societal and parental standards for behavior, but this could take more time than I fancied. Past president of the American Psychological Association, Albert Bandura believed that the process of moral learning could be ushered along through observational learning. And finally, Guggenheim Fellow Elliot Turiel, Professor of Cognition and Development, believes that in the course of moral development, we come to differentiate between moral rules (respecting other's rights) and social conventional rules (appreciating rules of social conduct).

I took this all to mean that while my son had a good shot at understanding that what he was doing was wrong, genetics, evolution and neurological development might set limits on just how far and how fast he could internalize a moral compass. In addition, he was the product of a media-driven and media-obesessed culture, where heroes and role models fall from grace by the hour, and the impllicit message to our youth is, if "you don't get caught, you ain't wrong." How could a few downloaded songs hurt the recording industry? How could they find out about it? Is this really as bad as robbing somebody at gunpoint? Are they really going to come after me? All of my friends do it, and they haven't gotten caught, so why can't I? These I thought were all valid questions for someone wrestling to reconcile inner and outer codes of conduct, the latter of which are not always clear.

I seized the opportunity to challenge him to research (along with me) concepts such as 'fair use', 'monopoly', 'copyright and copyright infringement' and 'anti-trust'. We talked, we argued, we surfed the Net. Additionally, I contacted an intellectual freedom/copyright attorney as well as my private AT&T/Apple tech guru (and waterfall climber) Jason Pruitt. My son and I read about lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), against music thieves both great and small, and how indeed his pirating behavior could be tracked directly to his own computer. In an effort to move my son a little further along the moral highway, so that one day perhaps he would make the right decsions for the right reasons, I challenged him.

I came away a bit richer from this experience...morally, parentally and personally. I seized a moment with a teen...my teen...to listen, learn and teach. I believe that I grew, and pray that, in some small way that he did too.