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Cyber Ethics
By
Drs. Alkadi & Acosta
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Cyber Ethics
 The majority of the slides were taken from
the book, “Cyber Ethics” by Halbert Ingulli,
which is referenced later.
 For more information, go to:
http://halbert.westbuslaw.com
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Intellectual Property & Cyberspace
 If seven million people are stealing, they aren’t stealing.
David Post, Prof. of law, Temple Univ.
 Today’s Internet pirates try to hide behind some contrived
New Age arguments of cyberspace, but all they are really
doing is trying to make a case for Age Old Thievery. When
they hack a DVD and then distribute it on the web, it is no
different that if someone puts a quarter in a newspaper
machine and then takes out all the papers, which of course
would be illegal and morally wrong.
Michael Eisner, Chairman & CEO, The Walt Disney Company
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Ethics Case: Napster
 Is it ethical to listen to as many times as you want a song that you
didn’t buy?
 You will probably send it to a dozen of your closest fiends and relatives.
 Napster operates on a (P2P) computing model. Users who have
downloaded the free S/W from its site can then access the directory of
available music and add tunes of their own. Napster’s server is an
intermediary, allowing one user to reach the files of another.
 In other words, you are able to broadcast your request to millions of
other music lovers in the Napster’s community.
 Does anyone else have this CD on their PC, are they online?
 What happened to Napster?
 http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/02/20/napster.settlement.03/
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Intellectual Property Law
 Our legal system has developed ways of protecting intellectual
property.
 Congress passed copyrights, patent and trademark laws.
 What is protected is the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
 This follows from the high value we place on freedom of speech and
expression.
 Copyright law protects the tangible expression of an idea from being
reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder.
 A copyrighted work of art must be original, and created independently
by the artist.
 The law curbs this right, making it last only for a set time period.
 It also permits reproduction of portions of copyrighted work for limited
work such as criticism or classroom instruction.
 Visit http://www.copyright.gov
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Ten Commandments Of Computer Ethics
Created by the Computer Ethics Institute
 1.Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Harm Other People.
 2.Thou Shalt Not Interfere With Other People’s Computer
Work.
 3.Thou Shalt Not Snoop Around In Other People’s
Computer Files.
 4.Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Steal.
 5.Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Bear False Witness.
 6.Thou Shalt Not Copy Or Use Proprietary Software For
Which You have Not Paid.
 7.Thou Shalt Not Use Other People’s Computer Resources
Without Authorization Or Proper Compensation.
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Ten Commandments Of Computer Ethics
Continued
 8.Thou Shalt Not Appropriate Other People’s Intellectual
Output.
 9.Thou Shalt Think About The Social Consequences Of
The Program You Are Writing Or The System You Are
Designing.
 10.Thou Shalt Always Use A Computer In Ways That
Insure Consideration And Respect For Your Fellow
Humans.

http://www.brook.edu/its/cei/overview/Ten_Commanments_of_Computer_Ethics.htm
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Workplace Surveillance
 90% of all companies with more than 1,000 employees
currently use e-mail.
 Sixty billion messages are sent annually.
 Employees are under the impression that their messages
are private.
 Old and deleted messages are archived and easily
accessible by the management.
 In the US there is no comprehensive, uniform legal
standard protecting privacy.
 http://www.PrivacyExchange.org
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Interesting Quotes
 I find the information age to be a healthy thing…the more
you know about somebody else, the better off everybody
is.
Owner of personal database company
 There is the possibility of becoming an even more satisfied
society based on unequal access to information in which
individuals live in glass houses, while the external walls of
large corporations are one-way mirrors.
Gary T. Marx, Professor of Sociology, MIT
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Government Regulation Vs. Industry
Self-Policing
 In 1998, several major companies such as, IBM, HP, AOL
and MS formed the Online Privacy Alliance (OPA).
 The Website is: http://www.privacyalliance.com
 The AOL incident in 1998 stepped up the self-policing on
the part of businesses to protect themselves against
lawsuits.
 It has forced AOL to revise its privacy policy in 1999.
 MS and IBM announced that their companies would pull
their advertising from Websites that failed to post privacy
policies in sync with their own.
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What Cyberspace Knows About You
 If you go to http://www.cdt.org you will learn how much
government and employers can discover about you.
 Go to http://www.aclu.org/privacy and you will find that a lot
of information about you could be available to anyone.
 Spy Technology has become increasingly sophisticated,
check out some of the sites that retail surveillance
technology:
http://www.intercept-spytech.com
http://eaglevision1.com
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Big Brother in Cyberspace
 The government is doing its part in educating Internet
users especially our most valuable asset, our kids.
 Go to:
http://www.cybercrime.gov/links1.htm
and select the following link:
Safety Tips for Kids on the Internet from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation
This is a hyperlink to the following:
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm
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Medical Privacy
 In his book, The Limits of Privacy, Amitai Etzioni says “it’s
Big Bucks we need to worry about, not Big government.”
 Etzioni continues that in 1996, 35% of the Fortune 500
companies acknowledged that they draw on personal
health information in making employment decisions.
 These companies employ millions of people.
 Kathleen A. Frawley, VP of the American Health Info.
Mgmt. Assoc. says “There is a whole market of people buying and
selling medical information.”
 A.G. Breitenstein, Health Law Institute Director, said,
“People are not going to go to feel comfortable going to the doctor, b/c
now you are going to have a permanent record that will follow you
around for the rest of your life that says you have syphilis, or
depression, or an abortion or whatever else.”
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The Library Bills of Rights
I.
Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest,
information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library
serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background,
or views of those contributing to their creation.
II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of
view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or
removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to
provide information and enlightenment.
IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with
resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of
origin, age, background, or views.
VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the
public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis,
regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their
use.
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Questions
 Should children be protected from offensive
online speech? Should adults?
 Who should do the protecting: Government?
Schools? Public Libraries? Parents?
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Internet Anonymity
 In 1997, in ACLU v. Reno the supreme court noted that the
Internet “provides relatively unlimited low-cost capacity for
communication of all kinds. This dynamic, multifaceted
category of communication includes not only traditional
print and news service, but also audio, video, and still
images, as well as interactive, real-time dialogue. Through
the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can
become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther
than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web
pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, the same
individual can become pamphleteer.”
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Internet Anonymity Cont’d.
 The Supreme Court goes on to say, “Anonymity is
a shield from the tyranny of the majority. …It thus
exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights,
and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect
unpopular individuals from retaliation– and their
ideas from suppression– at the hand of an
intolerant society.”
 What do you think about the Supreme Court’s
stance?
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Democracy and the Internet
 I’m very optimistic about the role of human beings in the Information
Age, because this is an era where people – their knowledge, and their
ability to put that knowledge to work – will be more important than ever
before. … The Information Age is enabling people who were previoulsy
forced to pursue a single means of wealth creation –those, for
example, who lived in remote areas had no option but to work on the
land – to choose from a far wide range of work. Technology such as
the PC; the Internet and cheap telecommunications have brought
amazing mobility to the factors of production.”
Bill Gates, 1999
 What about non-democratic countries?
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Ethics and Professionalism

“Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and
welfare of the public in the performance of their
professional duties.”
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)
http://www.abet.org/

1.
2.
3.
Websites for general resources on Engineering Ethics:
http://www.niee.org “National Institute for Engineering Ethics”
http://www.nspe.org “National Society of Professional Engineers”
http://www.onlineethics.org/ “The online Ethics Center for
Engineering and Science”
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References
 Ingulli, Halbert, Cyber Ethics, West Thomas
Learning, 2002
 Martin, Mike W., Schinzinger, Roland, Ethics
in Engineering, Fourth Edition, McGraw Hill,
2005
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