Chapter 6

Ethical Dilemma

Consider the scenario in which a group of your fellow students approach you to see whether you are interested in participating in a project that is intended to be a commercial venture. The group has become up with a novel approach to obtaining large numbers of e-mail addresses. This requires the development of some software, and once this is used it will be possible to develop a very extensive e-mail address list. Subsequently, this information is to be sold to companies involved in spam advertising. Your voice some initial reservations based upon your concern that this may not be entirely legal/ethical. However, you are assured that the software will only be used to obtain e-mail addresses for people who are normally based overseas- specifically in third world countries. Since the team is to be based in the UK and the software is going to be used to locate e-mail addresses that are normally based outside the UK, you are assured that you will be breaking no UK law.

How would you proceed?

Asking for further information is necessary to justify what is the commercial enterprise is all about. In addition, consulting a higher personnel is also necessary to gather more significant information. Proper analysis on the data gathered should be done to insure that there is no misuse of privacy rights.

Do you consider that this is a legal/ethical undertaking?
              
On the first place, spam is threat to privacy rights which makes it not ethical undertaking. Even though the act spamming is to only gather people's email addresses outside from the UK, still it's un-ethical to break the law. 

Would you still be willing to participate if the level of remuneration is sufficient?
           

Probably, it is better to inform others that, as a group, we are not in favor on participating the commercial venture.  One good reason is that it violates the privacy since it involves spam advertising, which is not even good even if the remuneration level is sufficient. 

  
At what point would personal remuneration override any ethical reservations that you may have?

When remuneration overrides the ethical issues, that is the time that we could consider it as a benefit of the total compensation to what we will receive as an exchange of performing the service. But beforehand, it is better to consider that the work is for the good of everybody, that everybody should benefit. 

Does this compromise your legal position?Yes by involving on certain scenarios like creating a software that violates the privacy of the users through obtaining email addresses in a form of spam advertisements. Upon being involved on this kind of situations, as developers, we are threatened because we can be considered as criminals. Hence it is un-ethical.

Chapter 5: Regulating Internet Content

Ethical Dilemma

Let us suppose that you are employed by a company that develops websites for clients. One day your boss presents you with a new project. In brief, your company has obtained a contract from a law enforcement agency to develop several websites. These are to act in line with the ‘honeypot’ scenario mentioned in the previous chapter. The project being undertaken by the law enforcement agency is to gather information in relation to people who peruse the site.

What is your ethical position?

• From the first place, 'honeypot' is not good since it is an act of gathering a person's information without the owners permission. It is relatively deals with threats in an unusual way since it serves as flexible tools to collect information on how an attack affects the network.

Do you think this is an appropriate agenda in terms of invisibly policing the internet?

• Yes since they can invisibly gather information without hurting other people.

Since your boss has presented you with this brief, in the case that you do not agree with the ramifications of policing the internet in this way, do you have any practical alternative but to undertake the work?

• There is no other options but to do the task and do it in a right way.

Are your views influenced by the nature of the content of the websites? For example, would your views be any different if the websites related directly to terrorism or other forms of political extremism?

• The appearance of certain websites play an important role in the views and opinions of the viewers. It generates influence by nature since the content seem to be believable. In cases like website appears to be factual and genuine on its content, there is a big possibility that it will affect our opinions as viewers.

To what extent do you think that the internet is currently policed-not only in terms of monitoring those who enter particular websites or who enter contentious chat rooms areas or the like?

• The internet is said to be policed if it imposes restrictions on allowing users, particularly younger people,  to visit un-appropriate sites like pornography.

Chapter 4: Intellectual Property Rights

Ethical Dilemma

Consider the case of Alice who was writing a textbook. She wishes to include in her book material from various resources- particularly a few key diagrams that have previously been published in other books. Some of these books are quite old, dating back to 1930s and 1940s.

In the intervening years, the original publishers of these books have been taken over several times but, following some fairly extensive research, she is finally able to track down the names of companies who currently own the rights to the books from which she wishes to reproduce diagrams. Following this exercise, she contacts these companies and asks for permission to reproduce diagrams from these works.

The majority of companies respond and indicate that she can reproduce the diagrams- providing that she pays a fee (ranging from £40 through £2,000 per diagram reproduced). Payment is deemed necessary because, although the diagrams are quite old, the copyright has not expired (typically, copyright for material that is published in a book continues for 70 years after the death of the book’s author). Alice decides that she cannot afford the permissions cost (these total an amount which is far in excess of the revenue that she will get from her book once it is published).

Although copyright serves to reward people for their creative work, in practice this does not always happen. For example, only relatively recently have author’s contracts with publishers contained clauses to the effect that they will receive royalty payments for materials reproduced from their work. Consequently, in the case of old books, there is little, if any, chance that an author (or rtheir estate) will receive any remuneration when original material from their book is reproduced.

With this in mind, Alice decides to scan the relevant diagrams, make a few alterations to them- so they look a little different- and then use them in her book without having obtained any permissions to reproduce them.

Ethical Issues:

• In  the case of the older book, should publishers require significant fees to be paid to them if material from one of their books is reproduced elsewhere?
• To what extent should this be underpinned by consideration of fair use?
• Is it reasonable for publishers to require significant amounts of money to be paid in relation to the reproduction of material from an old book- particularly when they know that this will not be passed on to the author, or their estate?
• To what extent is it appropriate to simply make modifications of diagrams, and therefore avoid the payment of permission fees?

• To what extent is Alice is guilty of plagiarism?

Reaction:

The book should be paid since Alice will be using some of its diagrams to produce another textbook. The company who's reproducing the book should give a fair discount to Alice since according to the Fair Use Act, but if it is used for educational purposes it has no charge at all. It will be better if Alice will just get some of the ideas written in the book and come up into another idea from her own instead of copying that will lead to plagiarism. Alice will be subjected to plagiarism if she has edited the diagram that was quite similar to its original form. It is because plagiarism is the close imitation of someone's language, idea, and expression.