It's not like he was out stealing the hubcaps off cars or peddling drugs to the neighbors. Sure, six-figure fraud over the Internet is elegant, not your lower middle class street crime. Parents re-label conduct or blame it on the sheer presence of technology. The parents and the Times fail to see the long-term implications of such youthful scofflaws. The system breaks.
Grades are meaningless when they have no correlation to effort or results.
Cynicism envelops a market fraught with cheaters and wary investors back away from the vehicle that drives capitalism. Parental technological rationalization has one more flaw in its logic. These kids all knew they were acting dishonestly. Little Jonny used 4 different screen names to disguise his identity as he pumped and dumped. Not one of the honors English students thought to ask their teacher if copying from the Web site was permitted.