Lecture 11a: Social Impact and Ethical Issues of the Internet

What You Will Learn Today

1. Compare the Internet with other communications media.
2. Select ethical principles and a code of conduct on which to base decisions.
3. Discuss the impact of commercialisation of the Internet.
4. Discuss freedom of speech and censorship on the Internet.
5. Discuss privacy and security issues and viruses.
6. Discuss information and software ownership, distribution and plagiarism.
7. Discuss the international impact of the Internet on development, equity and culture.

The Internet as a Communications Medium

• How is the Internet like other communications media? How is it different?
  • global scale, anonymity, interactivity, reproducibility, uncontrollability
• What unique social impacts and ethical issues has the Internet introduced?
  • What social and ethical issues are not also general IT issues?
  • How does the Internet magnify or intensify existing ethical issues?
• What new, unsolved ethical problems has the Internet produced?
• Consider social and ethical issues when designing a web page or site.
• Create a policy for Internet access and use by your organisation.
• What are the important questions to ask?

Ethical Principles

• Moral dilemmas arise when it is unclear which ethical principle to use, especially if there is a conflict.
• When deciding if an action is right, consider the following:
• If everyone acted the same way, would society as a whole benefit?
• Are people being treated as an end, or merely used as the means to an end?
• Is the action equitable and fair to everyone?
• Are you respecting the rights and resources of others?
• Do you follow standards of performance and behaviour?
• Are you acting with competence, responsibility and integrity?
• What is valued by you and by society?

ACM Code of Conduct

• Contributes to society and human well-being
• Avoids harm to others
• Is honest and trustworthy
• Is fair and takes action not to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, disability, or national origin
• Honors property rights, including copyrights and patents
• Gives proper credit when using the intellectual property of others
• Respects the right of other individuals to privacy
• Honors confidentiality

Commercialisation of the Internet

• The Internet started as a tool for academic research.
• In about 1994 the Internet was opened for commercial uses.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of commercialisation and advertisement?
• How has the Internet improved or worsened as a result?

Freedom of Speech

• How do the Internet and e-mail resemble speech? How are they different?
• Some types of content can be considered objectionable or anti-social.
  • pornography/obscenity/indecency, flaming, defamation/slander/libel, racial/ethnic hate, and depiction of violence
  • Who defines what is objectionable? What are the legal definitions of these terms?
  • What is the motivation and harm of anti-social content on the Internet?
  • Is the bandwidth cost of anti-social content high?
• Netiquette is a suggested way to behave when participating in Internet communication.
  • With the right to use a service comes responsibility to use it ethically.
  • Should people be allowed to post whatever they want on the Internet, and send any type of e-mail to anyone?
  • How do you decide if you are overusing or wasting Internet bandwidth and other resources?
• Spam is unsolicited (unrequested) messages, often sent to multiple recipients, often considered inappropriate.
  • What types of spam should be allowed, and what types should be banned?
  • When should there be rules or penalties against sending spam?

Regulation and Censorship

• How and why are other communications media regulated?
  • The Internet started informally in a spirit of good will and cooperation with no formal regulations.
  • Should the Internet be regulated, or is self-regulation generally enough?
  • To what extent can the Internet be regulated, especially internationally?
• Who should be given the responsibility to regulate what information is transmitted on the Internet?
• Should companies be allowed to regulate the types of content sent on their systems?
  • Should UMU block access to Yahoo and Hotmail during the day, and to other sites at other times?
• Who should be allowed or denied access to anti-social content?
  • How should children be protected? Site rating systems? Filtering software? Discussion and education?
• What harm can be caused by censorship (regulating or prohibiting information)?

Privacy

• Privacy is the freedom from being observed or disturbed.
  • Privacy protects personal information, property and space, and communication.
• Confidentiality is not revealing secret information to people other than its originally intended recipient.
• Why is privacy important? What rights should individuals have concerning their privacy?
  • What is the harm of allowing governments, organizations and individuals collect private information?
  • Companies use private information for focused marketing and data mining.
  • Stalking is tracking someone, which the Internet can make easier e.g. search engines and companies.
  • Criminals can obtain bank account and credit card numbers, contact information, etc.
• What information should governments be allowed to monitor?
  • Governments can use private information to fight crime and terrorism.
• What information should companies be allowed to collect from its customers, and sell to other companies?
  • When should administrators be allowed to monitor e-mail messages?
  • Should employers be allowed to monitor employee e-mail on company systems?
• How can/should organisations protect the privacy and confidentiality of its employees and customers?
  • In what cases is it permissible to maintain data about a person without the person's consent?
  • What policies are in place for data security and removal?
• What information should you reveal to whom?
  • What measures can/should you take to protect your privacy when using the Internet?

Security

• What types of security threats are possible on the Internet?
  • What types of harm and damage can be done when security is breached?
  • Is sabotage or damage of system data a more harmful crime than downloading data?
• What categories of people are considered security threats?
  • Who should be allowed access to what?
  • What should be the penalties for unauthorised access?
• Systems are often protected using passwords.
  • How can you choose your password to be more secure?
• Firewalls protect organisation networks against unauthorised access from the external Internet.
• Proxy servers filter outgoing requests and incoming data to block access to inappropriate external content.
• Encryption (e.g. Pretty Good Privacy) protects data content so that only those with the key can read it.
  • Should governments be allowed special access to encrypted information to fight crime and terrorism?
  • Can governments prevent people from using certain types of encryption?
• Digital signatures authenticate (verify identity).
• Checksums verify data integrity and transmission accuracy.
• File backups and power backup systems protect hardware and data.

ACM Guidelines for Computer Professionals

• take precautions to ensure accuracy of data
• protect data from unauthorised access or accidental disclosure to inappropriate individuals
• establish procedures for individuals to review their records and correct inaccuracies
• define retention and disposal procedures for information

Viruses

• What is a virus?
  • What harm can viruses do?
• How can viruses be transmitted?
  • How do networks help in the spread of viruses?
• What protection features does anti-virus software provide?
  • How can you use anti-virus software to prevent viruses? To recover from viruses?
  • What other measures and practices should be used?
• Why would someone want to write a virus? What is their motivation?
  • Should there be laws to punish authors of viruses for the harm viruses do?

Ownership and Copyright

• Who owns information? Whose property is information?
• Copyright is a long-term legal right to print, publish, etc.
  • It is designed to protect the rights of people who create.
  • A patent is a shorter-term monopoly right for inventors.
  • A trademark is a short phrase used in identifying a brand of product.
• Fair use does not violate copyright, e.g. if it is intended for education, research, non-profit, non-commercial uses.
• The Internet can make it much easier to copy and distribute software and copyrighted material.
• What are your rights to information on the Internet?
• What are your responsibilities for using the information?
• What is the harm of downloading and listening to pirated mp3 music files from the Internet?
• Will the producer lose profits or market share if you make and distribute copies?
• How should the penalties be determined for those who break the copyright laws?
• Should you put copyright notices on your organisation's web pages? e.g. © 2003 Uganda Martyrs University
• Who owns a website created by an employee: the employee or the organisation?
• Governments of some countries like China poorly enforce international copyright laws.
  • Companies in heavy content producing countries like the US claim to lose billions of dollars a year from copyright violations.
  • Should the US impose economic sanctions on countries like China?
  • Is it less wrong for people in developing countries to violate international copyright laws?

Plagiarism

• Plagiarism is the presenting of other people's work or ideas as if they were your own.
• Is it ethical to copy information from the Internet and use it on your own web site?
• How much information can you use without giving credit to the original author?
• When is it appropriate to use an exact quote, and when can you paraphrase?
• When is it necessary to ask permission from the authors to use their work?

Software Distribution

• Software piracy is illegally copying, distributing and using software.
• Types of software distribution include commercial software, shareware, freeware, and open source software.
• Shareware works on the "honour system" and asks you to register and pay after some days.
• The open source initiative encourages non-proprietary software, source code, protocols, data formats.
• The Internet was founded on academic collaboration, sharing and helping others.
• Richard Stallman started the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation to encourage free software.

International Development

• How can the Internet help international development?
• In what situations can the Internet be a cheaper form of information, e.g. to replace books?
• How can/does the government use the Internet to provide services to its citizens?
• How can schools and universities make the best use of the Internet?
• Are web sites successful for international fund raising and generating awareness of development problems?
• Does the Internet merely increase dependency by focusing on charity to developing countries?
• Can/should governments protect their national interests by regulating Internet use?

Equity of Access

• Access to the Internet is very unequal among and within countries.
  • Africa has relatively low bandwidth for relatively high cost.
  • Africans pay for most of the traffic between Africa and Europe or the US.
  • In Africa only an elite few have access to Internet.
• Does the Internet decrease or increase the digital divide (technological inequalities)? How?
• How can access become more equitable? Who will/should pay for these services?
• How heavily should governments invest in their country's Internet infrastructure?
  • In providing Internet to schools? In supporting private telecomm companies?

Cultural Impact

• The Internet facilitates sharing of information and cooperation among people of many cultures.
  • This can help to promote international peace and understanding.
• However, much of the content of the Internet is in English and comes from the US and Europe.
  • Much of the content about Africa is not created by Africans.
  • What can be done to change the imbalance of content?
  • Is Africa fairly represented in the Internet and other communications media?
• How does the Internet affect individual, cultural and national identities?
  • Are traditional values, customs and religions and being destroyed by media like the Internet?
  • Does the Internet accelerate the creation of a monoculture of selfish, wasteful consumers?
• How does the Internet affect democratic values and control of a government over its people?
  • Is the Internet empowering to the disempowered, freeing people to publish what they like?
  • Is the Internet a vehicle for economic/linguistic/cultural imperialism and dominance?
  • Must all governments accept complete freedom of speech?
  • What if some content is offensive to some religious groups or breaks local laws?

To Do After Class

• The final project usability test plan and Lab 10 are due Friday. Project 5 and Lab 11 are due next Friday.
• Readings: Hofstetter ch. 25; Duncan Langford, Internet Ethics; Computers in Your Future ch. 10