IT Ethics -- Annotated Bibliography Bowie, Norman Annotated Bibliography

IT Ethics -- Annotated Bibliography

Bowie, Norman E. (2005). Digital Rights and Wrongs: Intellectual Property in the Information

Age. Business and Society Review, 110(1), 77-96.

Norman Bowie takes great pains in his peer-reviewed article to point out what is legal an what is not legal when it comes to recording / taping from television and from the Internet. In fact Bowie uses an illegal issue (downloading music from the Internet)

to present a moral issue: young people and students know it is illegal to download copyrighted music and movies, but they don't see it as immoral.

While Bowie zeros in on students and young people for their lack of morality vis-a-vis getting copyrighted music for free, his overall argument goes further than that copyright laws are justified when protecting "artistic creativity." He points to the fact that between

1999 and 2005, "...downloaders…reduced industry revenues by at least $700 million" and as many as 600,000 movie files are shared each day" on file-sharing networks

(Bowie, 88). The bottom line here is that it's certainly about money, not just morality.

Yet, Bowie's piece is aimed directly at the lack of values young people exhibit: "…As

morality becomes more demanding, students seem to be less sensitive to it" (95).

Choi, Chong Ju, Kim, Sae Won, and Yu, Shui. (2009). Global Ethics of Collective Internet

Governance: Intrinsic Motivation and Open Source Software. Journal of Business

Ethics, 90(4), 523-531.

This article continues the discussion that Bowie energized and elaborated on: the rights of privacy, the right of intellectual property and the innovation of "open source software"

(OSS) that allows people to access materials online. The authors use two theories to bring business ethics into the debate: "psychological contract" (a sense of trust within the community of software development programmers) and "intrinsic motivation" (these are experiences sought "for its own sake and as an end in itself" (Choi, 524).

After supplying existing research on the subject of OSS ("…the majority of the literature on OSS…focus[es] on the market versus [the] social and public good"), Choi's salient point is that OSS programmers could help build a bridge between the strictly economic approach to the OSS phenomenon and the "…social anthropological school of thought"

that is based on reciprocity. That having been said, more study is needed (Choi, 529).

Ess, Charles. (2009). Floridi's Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current

Perspectives, Future Directions. The Information Society, 25(3), 159-168.

Is there a need for an ethical standard regarding information and computing on a global scale? Charles Ess believes there is and his article embraces the philosophy of information (PI) and of information ethics (IE) of Luciano Floridi to make his points.

Ess is impressed with the fact that Floridi's PI and IE fill a need for a global information and computing ethics (ICE) using a "naturalistic philosophy" (by combining traditional

Western philosophy with Eastern traditions such as Buddhist & Confucianism) and the Notion of "ethical pluralism" that "seeks to conjoin shared norms, value and practices"

(159).This article delves into esoteric issues; is not easily digested by lay person. The author clearly believes "pluralism" in ICE preserves and protects traditions and values that define unique cultures worldwide. But he could have discussed "shared norms" that help define and clarify Floridi in narrative that was less obscure and circular.

Goldsmith, Jack, and Wu, Tim. (2006). Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless

World (Chapter 1). New York: Oxford University Press.

In Chapter 1 the authors cover the clash between France and Yahoo; Yahoo had insisted that French judiciary had no right to tell an American ISP what content could be legally available to French users, but in time Yahoo backed down and removed Nazi

offerings (and all other offensive material) from its servers.

This chapter is very well-written, very pertinent to the recent history of the Internet and to laws affecting the Internet. Ironically, while Yahoo had stubbornly held out against

French legal threats, insisting it would not give in to censorship, Yahoo agreed to allow

China to tell it what needed censoring (including turning over to China the name of Shi

Tao, a journalist who emailed -- on Yahoo -- a democracy website in the U.S. And for that seemingly mundane act Tao was summarily thrown in prison for ten years). Yahoo's passion for profit clearly out-weighed any ethical stance regarding censorship.

Goldsmith, Jack, and Wu, Tim. (2006). Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless

World (Chapter 8). New York: Oxford University Press.

This chapter follows the trail of the original launch of eBay, which was the brainchild of Pierre Omidyar; soon after his initial success (allowing people to sell and buy online)

Omidyar realized not everyone would deal honestly so he invented "feedback forum," the first "…organized reputation system" (131). But fraud continued and despite having

Square Trade mediation, eBay clearly needed the full force of government sanctions for those eBay users bent on fraud -- that is mail fraud puts the matter in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service.

The over-riding point of this article is that Internet business entrepreneurs are not by themselves capable of doing the policing that is necessary. Big government may be the "bad guy" in some minds but government can "enforce trademark laws" and it also can

"regulate and support the capital markets" that helped eBay raise the billions it needed to expand its operations and "boost its marketing" (140). The authors extol the virtues of democratic systems, which are "the least-bad system known to history" (142). The

bottom line for the authors is that governments provide "…the elusive balance between anarchy and despotism" -- and they are 100% correct in their narrative. Without the full force of law (i.e., government regulation) a company like eBay doesn't stand a chance of staying in business on the Internet, which is why eBay opens up shop in smaller economies "with predictable legal systems" (144).

Gyorgy, Peter. (2002). The Tale of Cookies (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Social Research, 69(1),

239-245.

Although this article was published 11 years ago, it is relevant today because it delves in the subject of identities and how easily one's identity can be masked, stolen, or made into multiple identities. Subsequent to the publishing of this article, stolen identity issues have become very serious as thousands of people have had their identities copied.

The real point of this paper is about "the technology of control" and concerns about privacy; the sticking point in all of this is the invisible miniature "cookie" that allows seamless ordering from Amazon.com, and personalizes one's searches. The author seems to ramble between the lack of control, privacy, and the moral duties of the Internet

service providers; in the end, "Governance is in the hands of private actors and states."

Spinello, Richard A. (2011). CyberEthics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace. Sudbury, MA:

Jones and Bartlett Publishers. (Chapter 1).

Spinello discusses ethical frameworks that relate to cyberspace including: "moral ideals" that play a role in "responsible behavior" in cyberspace; "laws" (that when broken, cause

"coercive pedagogy"); "social norms" (which spring from the community); and "markets" (that regulate the price of goods and services) (3). For Spinello, the theories put forth by Larry Lessig raise highly relevant issues, including the notion that private codes written by software engineers/developers can "curtail freedom" more than any government regulation, and hence ethics should guide any and all code writers.

Chapter 1 offers a wide-ranging series of viewpoints all related to ethics and morality on the Internet. Spinello is searching for pertinent theories as to what kind of ethical reasoning is most appropriate when considering how to deal with "the thorny dilemmas" found on the Internet (10). Is utilitarianism the appropriate approach (actions that promote the general good are the correction ones) when a company is deciding whether or not to inspect private emails? Spinello defines "contractarianism" and "pluralism" and delves into justice, beneficence, autonomy and philosophical approaches to the theme of morality vis-a-vis the Internet, its architecture and the impact on users.

Spinello, Richard A. (2011 CyberEthics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace. Sudbury, MA:

Jones and Bartlett Publishers. (Chapter 2).

Who should regulate the Internet and how should they do it? These are the basic issues

Spinello deals with in Chapter 2. After providing a short history of the Internet, the World Wide Web and e-commerce, Spinello evaluates spam and how to deal with it

(and with other nagging Net problems) without asking the government to intercede.

Everyone who uses email knows how obnoxious unwanted solicitations can be; Spinello admits that the "Net cannot survive…" without some regulatory oversight and he is absolutely correct when he explains that "…moral values must be the ultimate regulator of cyberspace, not the code of engineers…" (47). The tricky part is instituting or otherwise encouraging moral values, which are themselves vague and open to whims.

Spinello, Richard A. (2011). CyberEthics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace. Sudbury, MA:

Jones and Bartlett Publishers. (Chapter 3).

In Chapter 3 Spinello delves into the free speech issue…