Computer ethics

Computer ethics
Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

August 25, 2012

Computer ethics

Basics

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.
Intellectual property: Should software be owned? Social issues: Is access to the Internet a basic right that everyone should have? Privacy: Is it OK to display personal information on the Internet (such as their

online status or their present location via GPS)? Free speech: How much control must threre be regarding gambling / oence / pornography? Cyber war: Will war happen more often? Employment: Will surveillance happen more often?

Figure: Overview of computer ethics (Source: ethics.csc.edu).

Computer ethics

Basics 1
There is a dierence in speed of technology, national law and conceptual understanding.

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Figure: Technology is far in front of law and understanding Figure: Motto of developers at Facebook

Question: What is the role of software architects in Computer (and information) ethics?

Computer ethics

Infosphere and ethics

ICT Information and Communications Technology. It is radically re-engineering or re-ontologizing the infosphere. Infosphere The term is used by Luciano Floridi, referring to biosphere (zone of life on Earth). Infosphere = Totality of Beings. Example R.Z. Sheppard: In much the way that sh cannot conceptualize water or birds the air, man barely understands his infosphere, that encircling layer of electronic and typographical smog composed of cliches from journalism, entertainment, advertising and government. Ethics Systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior [eth]. Meta ethics Where do our ethical principles come from? Normative ethics Moral standards that regulate right and wrong. Applied ethics Examining specic issues. Schools of ethics A short overview depicts a rough taxonomy of schools: Deontology Peoples actions are to be guided by moral laws. Relativism No universal moral norms. Utilitarianism Maximum happiness for the maximum amount of people. Social contract A set of rules must be agreed upon.

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Computer ethics

Physical property and intellectual property

Property Proprius: Ones own. the right to manage, use, posses, exclude, derive income from [Flo10]. Intellectual Property Creations of the mind, set of exclusive rights are recognized under the corresponding law. Question: Why should there be physical property?
Derived from human rights, religious-historical context. Utilitarian: Natural right exist, e.g. in oneself, therefore it can be extended to

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

outer things.
Liberalist (Locke): Natural ownership is ones labor. Idealist (Hegel): Creation is expression of ones personality.

Question: Why should there be intellectual property?

1

Intellectual property has dierent characteristics than physical property. Two facts that distinguish PP from IP:
IP can be copied, without loosing quality. If a physical thing is stolen, the owner cant use it anymore. Stealing an IP deprive the

owner only partly.

2

Utilitarian: Intellectual creations are costly and resource intensive, people will engage in this, if they know, they will be rewarded. Economic: Implementation of incentives (through IP laws) leads to a richer society.

Computer ethics

Should software or content be owned? How can it be protected?

Note: Audio and video has be protected for a long time through copyright, proprietary software uses the same laws.
Economic justication has been questioned by e.g. Stallman (1995) [Flo10]. Free meaning for zero price = Free meaning libre (with little or no

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

restriction).
Copyleft movement: GNU General Public License, written by Richard Stallman,

was the rst copyleft license being in extensive use.

IP laws were made for physical property. Means to make software physical: Licences as means to control IP. DRM: Making data articially into something physical, limiting how many times it can be copied / viewed. Cryptography researcher stated that he will not release research: Dmitry Sklyarov, a PhD student, was arrested during a visit to the US. Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for intellectual property rights enforcement: Make internet providers responsible for what their users do online.

Computer ethics

Digital divides / digital exclusion

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Figure: Map showing the amount of computers per person (Source: ethics.csc.edu).

Computer ethics

Digital divides / digital exclusion

Digital divides: The term digital divides refers to any inequalities between groups regarding knowledge of information and communication technologies (ICT). Disability divide Web programmers often dont care wheter their site is readable with any device or not. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are developing standards. Older people 1/4 of Germans dont have access to the internet1 . Gender Stereotypes are online often reproduced or magnied [Ada02]. Ideas change: While it was a status symbol once to be able to connect (having a mobile phone) it is now a status symbol to be able to disconnect.

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Computer ethics

Hacker ethics
Does ICT help against discrimination on the ground of identity ( gender, race ...), or can it mitigate discrimination?
Sharing: Write code and share it. Openness: Access to computers and anything which might teach you something

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

should be unlimited and total.

Free access to computers: All information should be free. World Improvement: Computers can change your life for the better. Mistrust authority: promote decentralization. A hacker is someone who

challenges the existing order

Meritocracy: Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as

degrees, age, race, sex, or position.

Techno-Libertarianism: All information should be free, equality emerges from

such freedoms.
Initially the internet was build in a way, that it cannot be controlled very well. Rumor: Low bridges intentionally designed so Long Beach in New York stayed a

middle-class resort (authenticity is questioned...).

Computer ethics

Privacy

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Alarm clock rings at 7:00:00 Tossing the covers at 7:05:02 Placing feet in slippers at 7:05:31. Making breakfast... Protocolling every place, every thought etc. is what god or an angel does in the abrahamic religions. Benets: Better shopping at e.g. Amazon etc. But: Can we control, who has access to that data? Facebook only recently introduced acceptable privacy controls. Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement(ACTA) for intellectual property rights enforcement enforces privacy breaches.

Extreme example: A Chinese journalist was arrested because Yahoo revealed his

identity.
Did Yahoo in breach the rights of Shi Tao?

Computer ethics

Free speech
Unrestricted speech occurred in places like ancient Greece. Mill If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justied in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justied in silencing mankind. [mil] [Fis94] opposes free speech because every individual expresses himself, being part of a society. [Wit53] calls it language-game, complete free speech would be a game with no rules.

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Computer ethics

Free speech

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Figure: Piss Chris, Jesus on a cross in a jar of urine oends Christians. The art led to petitions, outcries, prayers and angry letters.

Computer ethics

Free speech

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

Figure: Piss Chriss, Jesus on a cross in a jar of urine oends Christians. The art led to petitiosn, outcries, prayers and angry letters.

Figure: Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons oending muslims. The cartoons resulted into violence against the West, killing people, burning embassies etc.

Figure: Islam, the religion of peace, in action.

Computer ethics

Free speech
Unrestricted speech occurred in places like ancient Greece. Mill If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justied in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justied in silencing mankind. [mil] [Fis94] opposes free speech because every individual expresses himself, being part of a society. [Wit53] calls it language-game, complete free speech would be a game with no rules.
Activity must be tolerated as long as no harm is done (harm principle by Mill). How to talk online? Free speech may insult (unprogressive) countries. Freedom of speech is a modern notion, many unprogressive do not favor this

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

right.
US an EU dier on issues in the control of e.g. pornography and hate speech. ICT bring these traditions into conict.

We have a dilemma...
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claimed that if internet is limited, then its

massive potential is not realized fully.

Legal opponents rely on the opposite: Internet provide arena for illegal activity

such as piracy, hacking, child pornography, drug dealing and terrorism, therefore it must be regulated.

Computer ethics

Anonymous speech
Anonymous speech = Combination of right of privacy and right of free speech

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

[Bel95].
Young computer scientists, who build the internet, were inuenced by libertarian

culture.
Anonymous speech was a cardinal part of it.

Abuses of anonymous free speech:

Pornography regulated more in US. Hate speech regulated more in EU. Gossip 2.0: Cyberstalking [Ada02].

Computer ethics

Conict, security and computer ethics

It is well, that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it. Robert E. Lee
Conventional operations: Killerrobots. Oceans of sensor data: Example of using / industry espionage. Cyberspace-based forms of strategic attacks: Finding exploits in the target

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

systems. , Claim of Floridi:

Even terrorits might make their attacks more focused on military targets.

Note: Compared to destructiveness of the cold war, cyberwar seems to be an alternative...

Computer ethics

Are there changes employment?

Does ICT lead to creation or destruction of employment?
Destruction / outsourcing of manual work. Creation of knowledge work in the knowledge society by the knowledge worker. Some say that there will be less work, others say there are strict limits to what

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

type of work technology can do, others claim that there is no structural relationship between ICT and employment levels in general [Flo10]. Netgain? ICT causes exibility: Work from everywhere at any time.
Downside: Surveillance of employees also becomes possible. Telework in general is build on trust, however it enhances the monitoring of

employees outputs [JGK06].

Telework removes socializing and part of organizing. It makes it less powerful for

employees to bargain collectively [Flo10].

Computer ethics

Conclusion
Question: What is the role of software architects in Computer (and information) ethics?
Software architects are the real power, because law and understanding will

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.

always be behind technology.

It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics, e.g. Facebook

recently implemented a warning you share this information with the public, do you really want to do this?. Technologists and technological watchdog groups, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), have to work together.

Old New

Intellectual property Copyright Copyleft

Social issues Less DD DD

Table: Summary

Privacy Census 1983 Facebook

Old New

Free speech Newspapers Web 2.0

War Military intervention Cyberwar

Employment Input Output

Table: Summary ctd.

Computer ethics

Sources & literature

Alison Adam. Cyberstalking and internet pornography: Gender and the gaze. Ethics and Inf. Technol., 4(2):133142, August 2002. T.W. Bell. Anonymous speech. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/cyber.rights.html, 1995. Ethics. http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/. S.E. Fish. Theres No Such Thing as Free Speech and Its a Good Thing, Too. Oxford paperbacks. Oxford University Press, 1994. Luciano Floridi. The Cambridge handbook of information and computer ethics. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Paul Jackson, Hosein Gharavi, and Jane Klobas. Technologies of the self: virtual work and the inner panopticon. Information Technology & People, 19(3):219243, 2006. Freedom of speech. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/#JohStuMilHarPri. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell, Oxford, 1953. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe.

Outline Basics Intellectual property Social issues Privacy Free speech Ethics in Cyberwar Employment Conclusion: It is vital that technologists are trained in computer ethics.