The objectives of this chapter are to: Show
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES RELATED TO SYSTEMSEthics creates theories about the nature of right and wrong, duty and obligation that individuals can use to guide their behaviour. Individuals act within a social environment that, in turn, exists within a political environment. Ethical dilemmas are problems that affect society as a whole and are often dealt with in a political setting. The development of Information systems can drive intense social change thereby raising new ethical questions for both the individuals and societies involved. For example, new computer technology makes it easier to gain private information about individuals, such as their shopping preferences, names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses as well as bank and social security details, creating an ethical dilemma for the potential user of that information (whether or not to invade the privacy of the individual). Society will react by demanding new laws to regulate the use and storage of data. Ethical, Social, and Political Issues Introducing a new technology can gives rise to new ethical, social and political issues that must be dealt with on individual, social and political levels. These issues have five moral dimensions: information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, system quality, quality of life and lastly accountability and control. Introducing a new Information system can affect ethical issues that in turn lead to social issues and these subsequently cause political issues. This demonstrates the tight relationship between ethical, social and political issues in this modern information society and how introducing a new information system can ultimately impact on them all. Five Moral Dimensions of the Information Age Laudon and Laudon (2010) describe five moral dimensions of information systems as follows:
These dimensions pose useful ethical questions that a company should consider when introducing a new technology. These issues are discussed in more detail in Section 3.3. Technology Trends That Raise Ethical Issues There are a number of technological trends that generate ethical concerns including:
ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETYResponsibility, Accountability and Liability The term responsibility means that an individual must accept the possible costs and obligations for the decisions they make. Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutions that establishes who is responsible. Liability is an aspect of political systems that allows individuals to recover damages done to them by individuals or organisations that are deemed responsible. Due-process requires that laws are known and understood by all and that individuals can appeal to higher authorities to ensure laws were properly applied. Ethical Analysis If faced with a situation that poses ethical issues and dilemmas, the following five-step analysis can be applied:
Ethical Principles Once the 5-step analysis above has been carried out, the following six ethical principles can be applied to aid in decision making:
Code of Conduct for Professionals In declaring one-self to be a professional, special rights and obligations are taken on. Being a professional, involves entering into constrained relationships with employers, customers, and society due to special claims to knowledge, wisdom and respect. Professional codes of conduct are propagated by associations of professionals in order to regulate entrance qualifications and competencies and to establish codes of ethics. Codes of ethics are applied by professions to regulate themselves in the general interest of society. For example honouring property rights and including intellectual property rights. Examples of Ethical Dilemmas – related to IT systems The following are some real world examples of ethical dilemmas:
THE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMSInformation Rights Privacy is defined as a state in which an individual is not being observed or disturbed by other people or organisations. Claims to privacy involve the workplace as well as the home. Information technology threatens the individual’s claims to privacy by making the invasion of privacy cheap, profitable and effective. An example of Information technology affecting the individual’s claims to privacy is the controversy related to Google Street view where pictures of people’s homes and individual were displayed on the internet without their consent. Most European and American privacy law is based a set of principles called the Fair Information Practices (FIP) which govern the collection and use of information about individuals. The five FIP principles are:
For more details on the Fair Information Practices (FIP), see section 14.1 in Appendix 1 Data Protection For example: Privacy protection in Europe is far stricter than in the United States. In contrast to the US, European countries do not permit the use of personally identifiable information by businesses without the consumer’s prior consent. How the Internet is challenging the protection of individual privacy Internet technology creates new obstacles to the protection of an individuals’ privacy. When information is sent over the Internet it may pass through a variety of different computer systems before it finally reaches its intended destination. Each of these systems may jeopardise the individuals’ privacy as they are capable of monitoring, recording and storing information that pass through them. Web sites can uncover an individual’s identity if they register on the web site in order purchase a product or utilise a free service. Web sites can capture information about individuals that visit their site without their knowledge using a technology called cookies (see Figure 4.3). Cookies are small files sent by a Web site to the user’s browser, which are subsequently used to identify the visitors Web browser and track visits to the Web site. In this way the site can customise its content to the interests of each particular visitor. For example if you purchase a book on Amazon the Website will be able to recommend other books of interest based on previous purchases. Most modern Web browsers allow users to decide whether to accept cookies or not. However rejecting cookies may make some websites unusable. Figure 4.3: How Cookies work (Collins, 2009). Other malicious tools include Web bugs, which are small graphic files embedded in e-mail messages and Web pages that record who is reading the e-mail message or Web page and communicates this information to another computer. Protecting the Individual privacy of Internet users There are a range of approaches that can be implemented to protect the privacy of Internet users, these include the following:
Intellectual Property Rights Intellectual property describes intangible property created by individuals or businesses. Developments in Information technology has created obstacles to the protection of intellectual property because of the ease with which information can be copied and circulated over networks such as the Internet. Described below are three legal mechanisms that protect property rights are trade secret, copyright and patent. Protecting Property Rights A trade secret is any intellectual work product used for a business purpose that can be classified as belonging to that business, provided it is not based on information available in the public domain. An obstacle to trade secret protection is that once an idea enters into the public domain, it can no longer be protected as a trade secret. A copyright is a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property against their work being copied by others for any purpose.. A patent allows the owner a monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years. While patent protection does grant a monopoly on the underlying concepts and ideas, there is a challenge to passing stringent criteria of nonobviousness, originality and novelty. The Internet makes it very easy to widely distribute and reproduce intellectual property. Challenges posed to Intellectual Property Rights Digital media and software can now be so readily copied, altered, or transmitted, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to protect with existing intellectual property safeguards. Illegal copying of software and music and video files is a widespread problem with no immediate solution or prevention. While it is possible to protect against copying of software program code, copyright protection can’t prevent another person from using the underlying ideas behind a piece of software and subsequently developing new software that follows the same fundamental concepts. Patent protection protects the underlying ideas behind software. However a very limited amount of software has received this protection because the software must first pass very stringent criteria concerning the originality and novelty of the ideas involved in its design. The Internet poses a huge challenge to Intellectual Property Rights because it makes it even easier to copy intellectual property and transmit it freely around the world. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is a registered, non-profit trade association composed of the worlds leading IT organisations and majors software publishers (such as Microsoft and Oracle). The principle aims of the BSA involve promoting awareness among both the public and businesses of proper software management practices and the value of software compliance. Methods are being developed for the sale and distribution of books, articles and other intellectual property legally on the Internet. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is supplying some copyright protection. The DMCA put into practice a World Intellectual Property Organisation Treaty that makes it illegal to ignore technology-based protection of copyrighting. SOFTWARE PIRACYSoftware piracy encompasses the unauthorised copying, distribution and/or use of copyrighted software products. Huge financial loses occur each year to the software industry as a result of software piracy. FORMS OF SOFTWARE PIRACYThe following are the primary forms of software piracy:
SOURCES OF SOFTWARE PIRACYThe main sources of software piracy are the following:
As well as acting as obstacles to both privacy and property rights, modern information technologies are challenging existing liability laws and social practices for holding individuals and institutions accountable. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to hold software producers liable for their software products as it is only when software acts as a part of a defective product that stringent liability pertains. However, if the software is strictly a service (not part of a product) these laws do not apply. Other interesting ethical issues are: Should an Internet Service Provider (ISP) be held liable for the material that users transmit, when telephone companies are not held liable for the messages that users transmit over the phone? Should the providers of online bulleting boards (and blogs) be held liable for the content posed on these sites? Also should authorities do more to control the cumbersome amounts of Spam in circulation? Spam is described as unrequested junk e-mails sent to thousands of Internet users. The primary ethical issues raised by new technology are whether or not the individuals and organisations that create, produce and sell systems are morally responsible for the consequence of their use. Furthermore, what liability should the users assume and what liability should the provider assume? Note: A Blog is defined as a form the online diary or journal where people provide commentary or articles on a particular subject. Blogs are continuing to grow exponentially in number, popularity and content. Causes of System Quality Problems The primary sources of system quality problems are hardware and facility failures, software bugs and errors, and low data quality. It is of note that while software companies generally try to de-bug their products before releasing them to the public marketplace, they may knowingly ship products with bugs due to the fact that the time and cost required to fix all minor errors would prevent the product from ever being released as it would no longer be financially viable. However while these software errors and bugs are a source of many system quality problems, the most common cause is in fact data quality. Quality of Life Impacts of Computers and Information Systems Laudon and Laudon (2010) identified a number of quality of life impacts of computers and information systems as described below:
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