- IS enables massive data collection
- Can shift power, money, and rights
- Creates new ethical dilemmas and crimes
Ethics in IS
• Tiny files downloaded by Web site to visitor’s hard drive to help
identify visitor’s browser and track visits to site
• Allow Web sites to develop profiles on visitors
Cookies
• Tiny graphics embedded in e-mail and Web pages to monitor who is reading message
Web beacons/bugs
• Surreptitiously installed on user’s computer
• May transmit user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads
Spyware
Intangible property of any kind created by individuals or corporations
Intellectual Property
Intellectual work or product belonging
to business, not in the public domain
Trade Secret
Statutory grant protecting intellectual
property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years
Copyright
Grants creator of invention an exclusive
monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years
Patent
Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for
decisions
Responsibility
Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties
Accountability
Permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to
them
Liability
Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities
Due Process
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Golden Rule
If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value
Utilitarian Principle
Take the action that produces the least harm or least potential cost
Risk Aversion Principle
If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all
Descartes’ Rule of Change
Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise
Ethical “no free lunch” Rule
• Largest source is computer keyboards
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)
Repetitive stress injury (RSI)
– Technostress
– Role of radiation, screen emissions, low-level electromagnetic fields
Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS)
