ACM Code of Ethics and Professionalism
(Excerpt)
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GENERAL MORAL IMPERATIVES
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Contribute to society and human well-being
Avoid harm to others
Be honest and trustworthy
Be fair and take action not to discriminate
Honor property rights including copyrights and patent
Give proper credit for intellectual property
Respect the privacy of others
Honor confidentiality
ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVES
 Articulate social responsibilities
 Enhance the quality of working life
 Proper and authorized uses of computing and communication
resources
 Ensure that those affected by a system have their needs clearly
articulated; validate the system to meet requirements
 Protect the dignity of users
Intellectual Honesty
McConnell, Code Complete
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Refusing to pretend you’re an expert when
you’re not
Readily admitting your mistakes
Trying to understand a compiler warning rather
than suppressing the message
Clearly understanding your program – not
compiling it to see if it works
Providing realistic status reports
Providing realistic schedule estimates & holding
your ground when mgmt asks you to adjust
Whistle Blowing
 What
are the alternatives?
 When is it okay?
 When is it not a choice?
Ethics of a project
 fairness
to the knowing users
 implications for unknowing users
Are all projects worth doing?
Intended misuse
 Potential misuse
 Unexpected consequences
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 Google glasses
Hyperlinks
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Responsibility to users
 Making it clear that its another site
 Protection from inappropriate material
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Responsibility to other site owners
 Bypassing advertisements
○ Ticketmaster and Microsoft
 Use of their resources (e.g., images)
What is Intellectual Property?
Ownership and property
 Rights of ownership: Blackstonian
Bundle
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 Exclude anyone from the property
 Use it as sees fit
 Receive income from
 Transfer property to someone else
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Intellectual property: intellectual objects
Intellectual Property v. Real Property
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Physical objects
 Zero-sum gain: one user at a time
 Significant cost in both development and
replication
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Intellectual objects
 Used by many at once
 Significant cost in development, marginal
cost in replication
Need for Protection
need to recover the development costs
 knowledge of future ownership is
incentive to increase value
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Arguments against IP
Free flow of ideas
 First amendment freedom of speech
 Creative ideas build on society and
culture
 Pay what you want
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 Music, Textbooks, Games, Books, Software
Legal Protection
Copyright
 Patent
 Trademark
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Copyright: How Long?
1790: 14 + renew
 1909: 28 + renew
 1976 : author + 50, corporate 75
 1998: author + 70, corporate 95
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Digital Rights Management
 Enabling
copying is criminal
 Preclude through architecture
 Problems
 Constrains who can use
○ Exceptions will be too constrained
for someone
 Tracks who is viewing
Digital Millenium Copyright Act (‘66)
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Illegal to …
 bypass technical measures used to protect access
 manufacture or distribute technologies primarily
designed or produced to circumvent technical measures
 remove or alter copyright management information
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Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes (Aug ‘00)
 8 studios sued 2600 Magazine
○ posting DeCSS
 bypasses Content Scrambling System (CSS)
- commercially distributed DVD
Copying copyrighted materials
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Responsibility of those enabling it
 Software
 Network providers
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Cases: software
 Napster
 Grockster
 Bit Torrent
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Cases: network providers
 Verizon
 Six Strikes
APIs: Oracle v Google
Issue: Android APIs are very Java-like
 Android VM was built in a “cleanroom
environment”
 Oracle sued over the APIs
 Ruling: not copyrightable
 Ruling overturned
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Patents
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Physical objects
 Process, machine or composition of matter
 NOT laws of nature, scientific principles,
algorithms
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Criteria
 Novel
 Not previously described
 Non-obvious
 Useful
Patents
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Hardware, software, processes
 NOT laws of nature, scientific principles, algorithms
Can patent new applications or combinations
 Criteria
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 Novel
 Not previously described
 Non-obvious
 Useful
A man "has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee
take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?" -- Thomas
Jefferson
Software & Business Process Patents
Processes vs. algorithms
 What is non-obvious?
 Examples
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 Name Your Price (Priceline)
 One-click (Amazon)
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Opinions
 Marco Arment (inherently problematic)
 Paul Graham (patents === software patents)
Recent Activity
German legislature: resolution calling for
cessation
 New Zealand considering outright ban
 US courts appear to be backing off
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 Bilski v Kappos (Supreme, 2010)
○ Hedging the risk of commodities fluctuation
○ Claims denied
 CLS v Alice (Circuit, 2013)
○ Trading platform to assure that neither side renigs
○ Claims denied
Trademarks
Word, phrase or symbol
 “Pithily” identifies
 Infringement: used by someone else
 Dilutions
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 Blurring – dissimilar products
 Tarnishment – negative or compromising
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Has been applied to domain names
 Cybersquatting
 Parody or criticism
Domain Names
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Cybersquatting
 .net, .org, .com, …
 Punctuation (hyphenation, etc.)
 Phrases, nicknames
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Parody, criticism, complaint (cybergriping)
 Property rights vs. free speech
 Bringing people to the site under false pretenses
 Including the name in the url vs. appearing to be
the site