DE LA SALLE – COLLEGE OF ST. BENILDE
Book Reviews
IT-ETHICS
BY: Janine Ko
2009
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Philippines License.
Book Reviews 2009
Table of Contents
Preface
Dedication
The Handbook of information and computer ethics
PART I: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS 1. Foundations of Information Ethics Luciano Floridi 2. Milestones in the History of Information and Computer Ethics Terrell Ward Bynum 3. Moral Methodology and Information Technology Jeroen van den Hoven 4. Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems atya Friedman, Peter H. Kahn Jr., and Alan Borning
PART II: THEORETICAL ISSUES AFFECTING PROPERTY, PRIVACY, ANONYMITY, AND SECURITY 5. Personality-Based, Rule-Utilitarian, and Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property Adam D. Moore 6. Informational Privacy: Concepts, Theories, and Controversies Herman T. Tavani 7. Online Anonymity Kathleen A. Wallace 8. Ethical Issues Involving Computer Security: Hacking, Hacktivism, and Counterhacking Kenneth Einar Himma
PART III: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS 9. Information Ethics and the Library Profession Kay Mathiesen and Don Fallis 10. Ethical Interest in Free and Open Source Software Frances S. Grodzinsky and Marty J. Wolf 11. Internet Research Ethics: The Field and Its Critical Issues Elizabeth A. Buchanan and Charles Ess 12. Health Information Technology: Challenges in Ethics, Science, and Uncertainty Kenneth W. Goodman 13. Ethical Issues of Information and Business Bernd Carsten Stahl
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PART IV: RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES AND RISK ASSESSMENT 14. Responsibilities for Information on the Internet Anton Vedder 15. Virtual Reality and Computer Simulation Philip Brey 16. Genetic Information: Epistemological and Ethical Issues Antonio Marturano 17. The Ethics of Cyber Conflict Dorothy E. Denning 18. A Practical Mechanism for Ethical Risk Assessment — A SoDIS Inspection Don Gotterbarn, Tony Clear, and Choon-Tuck Kwan
Bottom of the Pyramid
Chapter 1- Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Chapter 2-Products and Services for the BOP
Chapter 3-BOP: A Global Opportunity
Chapter 4-The Ecosystem for Wealth Creation
Chapter 5- Reducing Corruption
Chapter 6- Development as Social Transformation
CYBERETHICS
Chapters 1-44
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PREFACE
The book you’re about to experience is a proof of my dedication to my subject (IT- ETHIC).
The book most likely teaches you how to analyze and correct not mainly errors but also how you could changed it to a better company you can rely more on. I’ve spent many sleepless nights just to give you this work of mine so that many aspiring students like me can view the side of life of open. This would be the second book I’v made, and I am very excited about it, to hear all the reactions and suggestion, but I am more excited to here, frankly the errors for me to learn. In the I.T. side it seems that the errors have a large portion when we talk about systems. It is the main reason why a system is made to be a projectile that can be fixed and enhance in all aspects.
It contains 4 parts of book reviews; it is my own compilation of all the books I have read these term, the moral contents, and thoughts and acts that absolutely changed my sight to life. I’ve become a versatile person when I read the books I’ am more flexible. The first part is the Handbook of information and computer ethics which opens you to the different chapters of the book and the second part is the Bottom of the Pyramid which show all my deliverables and reflection required by our lovely professor to include in our book. The third part is the Cybernetics which contains 44 chapters. And the last part is my other book which is Contemporary moral Problems.
So I hope u will be amazed and glad after you experienced my book, I honestly made this book to be more efficient to the readers and created the parts to be more educational to the readers. I hope I could prove you that me as an I.S. student can prove something not in the computer side but also in your lives.
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DEDICATION
My Family
For being there for me when I needed them most, for giving me enough strength and guidance when I’m about to give up.
TO GOD
Who gave me all the opportunities to prove myself and anyone that I’ am someone.
To My Special Someone
For being a very regular person at my side, always gives a cheer when I am down and specially helps me believe in myself in what i am capable of doing.
To my Friends
For giving me enough reason to continue pursuing my dream.
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The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
Author: Luciano Floridi
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space.”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this part was more about the foundation of the information ethics. That what are some of the foundations and how does the author would discuss this foundations to this chapter. what are the things that we must know about the information ethics.
Review: Chapter 1: Foundations of Information Ethics
It says that we are now the information society, because of the role played by our intellectual and some assets from our society. That we people keep improving on. This new information technology has evolve through as time as same as the communication, this was all made possible by the new infrastructure that has been using by the society. And through this create an ethical problem that is also rapidly growing and evolving. This was all stated by the author of the book. And through these problems that came, they have created the idea of formulating an information ethics that can treat all the problems or information or data that we all need. But this should be able to solve ethical challenges that arrive.
With this they have also discuss some models that can be useful and to know why any technology radically modifies what they called “Life of Information”. With this they have discus some stages to map some different approach of IE.
Some of the stages were discuss like the first one was IE as an ETHICS OF INFORMATIONAL RESOURCES, this was about the journal of information ethics. This was used as general label regarding to information, confidentiality, reliability, quality and the usage. This was said that this information should be managed efficiently, effectively and fairly.
The second one was IE as an ethics of informational products. Because the IE has merge with computers late 1990 already, the revolution became so widespread. The third stage was IE as an ethics of the informational environment. Because of this more people have become accustomed to living and working within digital environments. And the fourth stage was information ethics as a macroethics, some of the environmental approach was discuss in this part like patient-oriented, ontocentric, and ecological mircroethics.
The four moral agents was also mention these were:
1. Entropy ought not to be caused in the infosphere (null law);
2. Entropy ought to be prevented in the infosphere;
3. Entropy ought to be removed from the infosphere;
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4. The flourishing of informational entities as well as of the whole infosphere ought to be promoted by preserving, cultivating, and enriching their properties.
This was listed to increase the moral value of IE. Since the approach of this share an ethics of care. And these only satisfy the null law.
And as the author said that “Without IE.s contribution, our understanding of moral facts in general, not just of ICT-related problems in particular, would be less complete and our struggle to escape from our anthropocentric condition, being this Plato.s cave or Einstein.s cage, less successful.”
What I have learned:
I have learned the four stages of the map of IE. And also the four laws. And what are the foundation of IE. And that without IE our understanding about moral facts are not just problems and that this would help us to be less complete in our struggle to escape from our conditions.
Integrative Question:
1. What are the foundation of information ethics? 2. What are the four moral agents? 3. What is moral value? 4. What are the stages discuss? 5. What is information Society?
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Part 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
Author: TERRELL WARD BYNUM
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
(Wiener, 1954, p. 96).
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this part is the history and the milestone of information and computer ethics. How this does was created and evolve through the time. And what are the important things that are mention about the invention or creation of this.
Review: Chapter 2: Milestones in the History of Information and Computer Ethics
The academic field of computer ethics was born unintentionally and almost accidentally as stated by the author. At this time philosophers are still working on inventing digital computers and etc. This computer ethics was made through the idea that the new science and technology would change the world just as much as the industrial revolution in the past centuries. But two decades had pass before the ethical and computer ethics brings impact of computing.
Wierner’s foundation of information ethics was based for information ethics upon a cybernetic view of human nature and society. This leads to readily to an ethically suggestive account of the purpose of human life. And although Wiener did not intentionally set out to create a new branch of ethics, this was emerge from the many ethical remarks. This were the cybernetics was made, for the new science that he and his colleagues had created. He also concluded the purpose of the human life as a kind of information processing organisms of human. And he understands and learns what the capable learnings of human individual are. And he also includes human as combination of two fundamental the mater energy and information.
Wierner has also an account of a good life, he said that we must be free to engage in creative and flexible action that would maximize the full potential as intelligent, decision making being in charge in their own lives. That what is the purpose of human life. That people have different various levels of personality and levels of talents that can be achieved. Thus, he created the principle of “Great principles of justice” that would determine the person’s ability through variety and flexibility of human actions.
With his principles he found an effective method of analyzing the issues of information ethics these are as mention on the book:
1. Identify an ethical question or case regarding the integration of information technology into society. Typically this will focus upon technology-generated possibilities that could significantly affect (or are already affecting) life, health, security, happiness, freedom, knowledge, opportunities, or other key human values.
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2. Clarify any ambiguous or vague ideas or principles that may apply to the case or issue in question.
3. If possible, apply already existing, ethically acceptable principles, laws, rules, and practices (the “received policy cluster”) that govern human behavior in the given society.
4. If ethically acceptable precedents, traditions, and policies are insufficient to settle the question or deal with the case, use the purpose of a human life plus the great principles of justice to find a solution that fits as well as possible into the ethical traditions of the given society.
Thus, Computer ethics was develop after wierner and befor maner. And since 1995 it is said that computer and information ethics developments have new conferences and series of new organizations. And compared to other the information and computer ethics was still very young.
What I have learned:
Computer and information ethics are still improving and still new to us. This was created by the study of how human being would evolve and would adopt with this study. They had made a great invention and study with this.
Integrative Question:
1. What are the principle mention? 2. What are the milestone of computer ethics? 3. How does information and computer ethics start? 4. Who is Wierner? 5. Who develop computer ethics?
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Part 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
Author: JEROEN VAN DEN HOVEN
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“The very possibility of moral thought and judgment depends on the provision of a suitable supply of moral principles.”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this chapter are the moral methodology of ethics. And more about the information technology how this would be discuss to us. And what are the things that we must remember with this methodology.
Review: Chapter 3: Moral Methodology and Information Technology
They discuss some methodology of computer ethics and some form that can be applied to ethics. The moral methodology of ethics has studied some moral questions that are associated with the development of the use of computer and computer science. Information Technology are used in lot more things and in different ways as a result of different ways. And it is said that as time evolves and if the children would know about the World Wide Web in their early days, their lives would be different from the others who play computer games etc. And it is said that the most important thing and the purpose of Information technology are the most forgotten. The information with the fair use.
The other thing that is discussed with this chapter is Generalism, it is about moral thoughts and judgements. And being able to think fairly and accurate moral rules. This was about generalizing everything from the information that was used and to think of something fairly and making decision accurately. Problems are stated with some of the paragraph but I would not discuss them all. But this was all about generalizing things in your own way, thinking more on what you could used to think of.
The other topic that was discussed was Particularism, It’s about defining the principles and ethics without principles. That person who is engaged in moral thinking, deliberation and decision making are typically discusses individual cases. They also exercise some practical wisdom. There are important objections with this particularism which deserve closer examination in the context. As mention in the Generalism there are problems that are stated in this part but I would not elaborate them all anymore. We just need to understand some key of Particularism. Being justify to others are requires at least the amount of transparency with moral justifications. They also argued on some basis of the abundance of exceptions to principles that is absurd ideas.
With this there is an idea that of methodological that both pure generalism and pure particularism that combines the strengths of both and accommodates in the model of generalizing modes of moral thingking. These models that are combines elements of both methodological extremes are approach that is referred to “Method of reflective Equilibirum”. There are some concepts of computer ethics concepts that are discuss in different ways.
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What I have learned:
I have learned the concept of generalism and particularism. And the idea of the methodological of both ideas. And what has information technology done and gives to us like the information that has been forgotten.
Integrative Question:
1. What Is Generalism? 2. What is Particularism? 3. How is information technology discussed? 4. What are the methodologies of information technology? 5. What would it be if children know early about World Wide Web?
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Part 1: FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
Author: BATYA FRIEDMAN, PETER H. KAHN JR., and ALAN BORNING
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Value Sensitive Design has emerged over the past decade and benefited from discussions with many people.”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this chapter the value of design and information systems. How we could value the technology of the new information systems. And how does people value or give importance to it.
Review: Chapter 4: Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems
In this chapter it is said that the value sensitive design is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values. That in a principle and comprehensive manner the design process was explicate value sensitive. The first study was concerns about information and control web browser cookies that implicate the value of informed consent.
But what is value in this they discuss this as simple refers to the economic worth of an object. Value that has a broader meaning that refers to something important more on the value of amount, but something that has value or importance.
They also argued that technology could make us better human beings and create us a more society. But we forgot to learn how to take control of the technology, we are the one who is being taken control of this new technology. We should be able to think first before using this technology if this would help us and we could control these things rightly. If this electronics are safe to use and valuable. If the information systems could help us and if we really need this things in our life.
In conceptualizing the value one part is investigation of philosophically informed analysis of the central value constructs. By developing criteria, like providing accurate information about some benefit or harms that it may occur. And being accurate with the interpretation of the value of design. In this there are lot of things that must be analyze or include first like disclosure, Comprehension, Voluntariness, competence and agreement. This was all the things that must consider in conceptualizing if the system has value that much. We must first take action to this things and analyze each part before saying that it has value. And also having a clear investigation of conceptual to analyze existing technical mechanisms.
This chapter is for conceptualizing and having a clearly analyze of the values of sensitive design and information systems. To provide enough information about conceptualizing and understanding it more and detailing things.
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What I have learned:
I have learn that we must first analyze and conceptualize each part of the information systems and knowing the right value. There are steps that we must learn first or understand to know if there is value in that design of information system.
Integrative Question:
1. What is value? 2. How would you conceptualize the value? 3. What are the approach of the design of technology? 4. How would we analyze a new technology? 5. How could we provide enough information?
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Part 2: THEORETICAL ISSUES AFFECTING PROPERTY, PRIVACY, ANONYMITY, AND SECURITY
Author: ADAM D. MOORE
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Lockeans as well as others who seek to ground rights to property in the proviso generally set the baseline of comparison as the state of nature.”
Learning Expectation:
In this chapter I expect to learn about issues on the utilitarian and some justifications of intellectual properties. Issues that are affecting those factor, how could we say that we own the property that we are getting.
Review: Chapter 5: Personality-Based, Rule-Utilitarian, and Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property
In this chapter it is said that Personality theorists maintain that intellectual property is an extension of individual personality. And rule utilitarians ground intellectual property rights in social progress and incentives to innovate. They have argue that there are justified moral claims to intellectual works that claims that are strong enough to warrant legal protection.
There are three strategies for justifying property rights. Having the consent of the work that is being distorted is wrong. That before getting things that are not yours you must have consent with the creator of it. Like in information that you are gathering at least putting some reference would make it work. But sometimes the property of other are needed for their consent first. The rights for the property must take place and must not forget. Having moral is not copying others work.
They also discus about Rule-utilitarian that is said that “incentives-based justifications of intellectual property are stronger, although much depends on empirical claims that are difficult to determine.” Nevertheless, the rule utilitarian has the resources to defend moral claims to intellectual works. If these moral claims are to be codified in the law, then we have good reason to adopt a system of intellectual property protection. As quoted by the author.
And that this author even though some people said that they have already purchase the work that they are using they cannot say that they own it already, the author of the work are the one who has still the right to control over his own work.
What I have learned:
I have learned that getting others work must be analyze for the ownership of the work. That before we get others work we must learn how to be moral enough to address it to the creator or ask permission before getting those information or data.
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Integrative Question:
1. How would you know if you have the property rights? 2. What is utilitarian? 3. What is Lockean Justification? 4. How would you know an intellectual property? 5. What are the rights that you have if you created the property?
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Part 2: THEORETICAL ISSUES AFFECTING PROPERTY, PRIVACY, ANONYMITY, AND SECURITY
Author: HERMAN T. TAVANI
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Unique, unitary definition of privacy that covers all the diverse privacy interests”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this part is what is the concept of privacy, some theories and controversies about privacy that they are arguing. The issues that are made with different part with this privacy. And what are some factors that must be remembered or known by the people.
Review: Chapter 6: Informational Privacy: Concepts, Theories, and Controversies
In this part they discuss the concept of privacy that it has an evolving concept through with different approach of different country. Like in American history that claim the existence of concept of privacy. But they believe that their privacy now are being threaten by the technology that are now develop and used in the recent years. Because I think that this technology that we have now are too much. The information that we can see are beyond to what we must see. Privacy are being threaten that there would be no privacy anymore. That all the information are own through the technology now. This are the things that they tend to focus now.
They say that Thomson’s critics are correct in claiming that privacy is not deliverables from other or more basic concepts. The author said that they also believes that the view that privacy is totally derived from other interests is “equally untenable.” She suggests that privacy, which is a “broad and multifaceted” notion, is best understood in terms of a “cluster concept.”
That privacy is the one thing that people must have. Or if this can be view as a full pledge rights of individuality.
The other one that is discuss is the control privacy which is having privacy directly linked to one’s control over the information. There is a difference that they enumerated in this part that is said that there is difference in having a control over information that we have about our self and the ability to control the access of information about us and the ability to create different relationship.
There are different types or kinds of keeping the privacy of ones information. There are also many concepts and theories that are study about the controversies of privacy. Because of the technology there are controversies that cannot be control and cannot keep the privacy anymore.
What I have learned:
I have learn that privacy of ones individual are important. And we must know our limits that we could take and see with others individuality. There are things that must be kept private and we must be moral enough to know others privacy.
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Integrative Question:
1. What is privacy? 2. What are the controversies of privacy? 3. What are the theories of privacy? 4. What are the critics made of the privacy? 5. How can we respect ones privacy?
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Part 2: THEORETICAL ISSUES AFFECTING PROPERTY, PRIVACY, ANONYMITY, AND SECURITY
Author: KATHLEEN A. WALLACE
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Because there are many forms of anonymous communication and activity, and a variety of purposes that anonymity may serve, it may be important to distinguish what type of communication or activity is involved, rather than have a single legal policy or ethical stance toward anonymity”
(Allen, 1999)
Learning Expectation:
I want to know what is online anonymity, what does it relate to privacy or security. Of the online community. Does it also means like the last chapter about privacy of each ones information or other.
Review: Chapter 7: Online Anonymity
The first thing that comes to my mind is what is Anonymity it said that, Anonymity and privacy are also considered to be closely related, with anonymity being one means of ensuring privacy. Which I think means ensuring ones online anonymity or privacy. Because online information cannot be control now, we can almost see what we want to see with no limit. But there must be and Anonymity with the information that must be kept private.
There are what they called data mining or tracking, that can be used to avoid this plagiarism or using others work. Or getting to your privacy. You must take track on everything that may have been lost with you. There are databases that can record all the information that they are doing. This are the anonymity of online. Online people are irresistible and cannot be controlled. Thus we must take action about these things. There is an online tracking that is similar to electronic tracking, which track information that they get or made.
There are ethical issues that are involve maybe not directly to the Anonymity. Thus it depends on the other factors that we might consider.
It is said that other ethical theories might interpret anonymity as desirable, permissible, or perhaps even, in some context, obligatory.
What I have learned:
I have learned that even online are not safe enough, we must learn how to keep track to our information so not anybody can access or get it without any permission or copying it. Thus we must study some factors and consequences.
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Integrative Question:
1. What is Anonymity? 2. How does Anonymity said that it’s closer to privacy? 3. What does Online to do with Anonymity? 4. What are the consequences that we must consider? 5. Is Online safe enough to keep our information private?
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Part 2: THEORETICAL ISSUES AFFECTING PROPERTY, PRIVACY, ANONYMITY, AND SECURITY
Author: KENNETH EINAR HIMMA
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“If it is wrong to appropriate someone.s car without her permission to prevent waste, then there is no general moral principle that justifies infringing property rights to prevent waste and hence none that would justify hacking to prevent waste.”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this chapter is some ethical issues, the most common one computer security. And the hacking issues. Is all hacking bad or sometimes it can be useful in good things. some issues and how to solve those issues that can help us computer users to protect our personal information.
Review: Chapter 8: Ethical Issues Involving Computer Security: Hacking, Hacktivism, and Counterhacking
In this chapter because of some unauthorized computer hacking by other person there are some issues that are being made. There are different types of what they called hacking, not all hacking are bad. Sometimes it is done for good it depends on where to use this. Computer securities are important being moral enough to respects ones privacy.
They say that hacking is a trespass to ones territory. It depends on what kind of hacking is being used if it’s permissible there’s nothing wrong with it. There are some cases or issues that are being tackled about hacking. And this are the most usual things that we encounter. But the main point of this is we must know where and until where we can enter in ones information.
There are some cases that are made against the hacking, but as I can say we cannot control this now, because of the growing technology and information that we have. All now can be access with the use of technology if we want. But if we are moral enough to know our limit, we can control this all bad issues. Sometimes these things must only be used by the good ones or the good things the more important things.
Some people don’t realize the damage it takes to other people with this hacktivism and counterhacking. Because they only think of what they want and what they can get with this information or technology.
What I have learned:
Not all hacking are bad, but we must learn how to use it and to respect others privacy. This technology is only used for the good things that we must not harm other people. And it is stated on the 10 commandments that we must not do anything bad that might hurt or affect others people work.
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Integrative Question:
1. What is Hacking? 2. How does one can protect his computer? 3. What are the ethical issues involving computer security? 4. What is counterhacking? 5. What is hacktivism?
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Part 3: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS
Author: KAY MATHIESEN and DON FALLIS
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Books are for use,”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this chapter is what is the connection of information ethics to the library profession of information or technology. How would they connect each part and discuss some key factor that we must remember.
Review: Chapter 9: Information Ethics and the Library Profession information or technology.
It is said that librarians are the one who access information. But there are different goal for each type of librarian. But they all provide the access for all the information. They are the one who make information. These issues that are discussed are more about the people who work in the library or community of information. They help colleges for more information.
Thus, we must understand the ethical issues that librarians provides us. As for my review and understanding to this book, they want to tell us that information are very useful now, people can get information from different ways. But the most common and full of information are in library. They provides us what they need. It is ethical to use and use as well information. Most library are now using the new technology like computers etc.
They say that library promotes intellectual freedom. Because people are free to learn and get information by the use of the books. Books that are written by the great people. So we must understand the value of using this opportunity in learning more and learning from the basic. This allows the people to hear all arguments and being equal in what they read and see or hear. Librarians are the key to let the people know what they want to learn. This are by the use of the books.
For me people now don’t use this only few are getting from this things, because of the new technology it is more easier for people now to get information. But what we don’t realize is books are real one. It is written by the real person who has knowledge on that things. And that it is the key to our information that we must kept. And not throw away.
What I have learned:
I have learned that books are still important maybe new information are improving but library sources are the real ones that are bring by our authors. Who keep writing for our learning and we must use it well.
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Integrative Question:
1. Why library profession are information? 2. What are most technology that are being used? 3. How can we say that in library is ethical? 4. Is it right to throw away those books because of the new technology? 5. What does the importance of those libraries?
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Part 3: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS
Author: FRANCES S. GRODZINSKY and MARTY J. WOLF
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Where a mishap is the work of .many hands”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this chapter is what is an ethical interest about and open and free software. How would they argue with this things and what are the source or some things that we must know about this things.
Review: Chapter 10: Ethical Interest in Free and Open Source Software
In this chapter it is discuss the free and open source software. Many now are offering an open source software to the internet user. It would be an ethical for people who needs it. Because some software are costing too much that would be hard to buy. And some are being plagiarize already because of the cost of the software. This open source is giving the people freedom to install and use their creation.
They argue about if selling of software is moral or immoral. This was discuss through the chapter. but for my own opinion I think an open software would be better because selling your software to people it’s like forcing them to do bad things. Many store now are selling illegal copy of this software. At least with the open source people are free and they would not do bad things or unethical things against the creator or the provider of the software.
These are the things that is the benefit of having free and open source software:
1. Freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
2. Freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
3. Freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
4. Freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
So I think it is its better for free and open source software but with limit that people wouldn’t abuse the use of this that was created by the people who has credibility.
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Book Reviews 2009
What I have learned:
I have learned that using ones software must be with the consent of the owner like in open source it is giving you the freewill to install and use their creation that could help you so we should not abuse the use of it or sell it because it’s not yours and you are not authorize.
Integrative Question:
1. What is open source software? 2. What can you do with open source software? 3. What are the benefits of these? 4. What is an ethical interest? 5. Who is not open source software?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 3: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS
Author: ELIZABETH A. BUCHANAN and CHARLES ESS
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“The “justness” of subject selection relates both to the subject as an individual and to the subject as a member of social, racial, sexual, or ethnic groups.”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in this chapter about internet research ethics how would they discuss these things. And what are some arguments made from this chapter about the field and critical issues that we are facing in our society.
Review: Chapter 11: Internet Research Ethics: The Field and Its Critical Issues
Researcher are the source of our information and the application that we use now a days are formed by them. They are the one who made or see for new things that people would be interested to or learned new things. In this chapter it is said that a relatively young field at the intersections between applied ethics, information and computer ethics, and professional and research ethics, can now be seen as reasonably well established. It enjoys an extensive literature that helpfully collects historically important analyses along with contemporary considerations of specific issues; this literature, as our discussion of specific topics demonstrates, offers considerable guidance with regard to a range of issues that consistently emerge in the course of online research. Indeed, ethical guidelines such as those established by AoIR and NESH indicate the level of interest in IRE internationally. This was mentioned by the author.
And there were some arguments about critical issues that were brought by these researchers. Issued that are resolve as they argue with it. One example of the application was facebook, who is now on the hit with the people. It keeps on improving its site for more convenience and fun for people to enjoy doing. Researchers are the one who made this kind of applications for people to use and have fun with using.
Some critical issues were resolve as soon as they saw some problems with the research they made. And information source was the researchers.
As the author said the discussion of Facebook and the ongoing efforts to develop a genuinely global IRE make clear that IRE is still very young. Both as newvenues and technologies open up newresearch possibilities, and as researchers and philosophers participate in a growing global dialogue regarding the ethics of online research, philosophers and researchers interested in IRE will confront no shortage of intriguing new examples and issues.
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Book Reviews 2009
What I have learned:
I have learned some key factors that researcher are making a big effort with our life. They make our life easy. By finding ways on how we could improve our living with the use if the internet. They are the one who search for what people want.
Integrative Question:
1. Who are the researcher? 2. How does the facebook update its application? 3. What are some arguments that are made? 4. Who are mostly the researcher? 5. What do researcher made?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 3: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS
Author: KENNETH W. GOODMAN
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“This insight has helped lay out the ethical tension at the heart of the two most common ways computers can be said to assist, augment or even replace human decision making”
Learning Expectation:
With this chapter I expect to learn what is the health information technology. And what are the challenges in ethics and science that are being argued. How they discuss this and how would they explain this things.
Review: Chapter 12: Health Information Technology: Challenges in Ethics, Science, and Uncertainty
With these chapter they discuss some challenges in ethics, science and uncertainly. But there are some issues that were discuss like:
1. Privacy and confidentiality, 2. Use of decision support systems, and 3. Development of personal health records.
In privacy and confidentiality it is said by the author that morality and its relationship to the lawand society than privacy and its cousin, confidentiality. The demands of privacy are intuitively straightforward and the consequences of its violation obvious. Without a credible promise that privacy and confidentiality will be safeguarded, the task of fostering trust is frustrated.
They also mention that to meet these challenges, we turn to various forms of inquiry: science and ethics. There is of course no alternative. The very idea that use of a tool, in this case a computational tool, might be required or forbidden depending on facts and factors we are unsure of is exhilarating. Applied ethics is too often regarded as consisting in handwringing. In fact, it is among the most important things humans do. At our best, we progress: Science and ethics advance in ways that improve the human condition, generally speaking.
What I have learned:
I have learned some challenges that must be met. And must be analyze more about ethics and science. And the connection of these things. I learned that the there are more things to know about this challenges and how to resolve each of this.
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Book Reviews 2009
Integrative Question:
1. What are the challenges? 2. What is health information technology? 3. How these issues do would be resolve? 4. What is the connection of ethics into science? 5. What is privacy and confidentiality?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 3: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND THE INFORMATION-RELATED PROFESSIONS
Author: BERND CARSTEN STAHL
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Business is a central aspect of our lives and as such produces many ethical problems.”
Learning Expectation:
I expect to know what the ethical issues of information and business are. What are the arguments made by this issue. And how does this are being resolve as they discuss some topics about information and business.
Review: Chapter 13: Ethical Issues of Information and Business
In this chapter it is said by the author that the majority of work in these information societies is done in the services sector. Most employees nowadays require large amounts of knowledge and are even called “knowledge workers.” Information is becoming increasingly important in most aspects of our lives, and this is particularly true for our economic activities.
It is stated that businesses and the economic system work in have an important influence on ethical issues arising from information and information and communication technology.
And there are some approaches that are mention for the business. And some theoretical approach that are mention and being given issues and approach in different ways.
This chapter aims at providing an overview of the influence of businesses on ethical issues arising in the context of information and ICT. Using some established approaches to business ethics, which are reflected by computer and information ethics, they have tried to explore what the contribution of ethical thought can be to the issues raised by information and ICT in business and economic contexts. Without doubt, ethical theory can be helpful in raising awareness and shaping views on how ethical problems can be addressed. There nevertheless seems to be a blind spot that the ethical views share and that ethical thinking should aim to overcome.
What I have learned:
I have learn the issues some ethical issues of business and information. Some arguments and solution for the issue. And how to solve this problems.
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Book Reviews 2009
Integrative Question:
1. What are the ethical issues? 2. What is information and business? 3. How does they discuss this kind of businesses? 4. What are the aims of providing an averview? 5. What is ICT?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 4: RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES AND RISK ASSESSMENT
Author: ANTON VEDDER
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn in these chapter is to know what are the responsibilities of information on the internet. And how this does connects to people. What should we do to follow this and accept the responsibilities.
Review: Chapter 14: Responsibilities for Information on the Internet
With this chapter they tend to focus on about the responsibilities involve in the possible negative impact of the dissemination of information on the internet.
The author elaborate on moral responsibility as it is traditionally conceived of in the everyday moral debate as well as in ethical theory. Normally, the notion of moral responsibility is used in at least two ways that should be carefully distinguished. It can be used in a primarily retrospective sense and in a primarily prospective sense. The former refers to the possibility of rightfully ascribing or attributing actions or consequences of actions to agents.
They have distinguished reliability from functionality and significance. With regard to reliability, the author have distinguished content criteria from pedigree criteria. The author also have defined functionality as contributing to the realization of purposes of people. With regard to functionality, he have distinguished between functional information as such and functional information that is also essential, that is, a necessary condition for the realization of the purpose involved. Significant information is functional information that contributes to the realization of important purposes. Significance can be measured against highly individualistic purposes, but also against external standards, for example, those that represent a taxonomy of human needs.
Each action for the information on the internet must have connection between the people and the information. The responsibility of the information on the internet as of what I think is it brings the people information that they need. Thus they must have connection. But information must not take for granted by the people, they should also have a responsibility for the internet. As well as the responsibility of the information on the internet.
What I have learned:
I have learn that internet have some responsibilities and action that should take regarding the information they are realising. With regards t what they thought they discuss many function that could be informative to us students. As you read the review it gives me knowledge more.
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Book Reviews 2009
Integrative Question:
1. What are the responsibilities for information? 2. How does the author discuss this? 3. What are some functionality and significance of this information? 4. Why does internet need to be connected with people? 5. What kind of information they must give to people?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 4: RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES AND RISK ASSESSMENT
Author: PHILIP BREY
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Players do not just develop values on the basis of the structure of the game itself, they also develop them by interacting with other players”
Learning Expectation:
In this chapter I expect to learn about virtual reality and what does this all about. How they discuss this and how it is related to ethical. And about the computer simulation what is it all about. How they would discuss this matter.
Review: Chapter 15: Virtual Reality and Computer Simulation
In this chapter the author discuss something about virtual reality it said that these technologies raise important ethical questions about the way in which they represent reality and the misrepresentations, biased representations, and offensive representations that they may contain. In addition, actions in virtual environments can be harmful to others and raise moral issues within all major traditions in ethics, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.
According to Sherman and Craig there are four essential elements in virtual reality these are:
1. Avirtual world is a description of a collection of objects in a space and rules and relationships governing these objects. Invirtual reality systems, such virtual worlds are generated by a computer. 2. Immersion is the sensation of being present in an environment, rather than just observing an environment from the outside. 3. Sensory feedback is the selective provision of sensory data about the environment based on user input. The actions and position of the user provide a perspective on reality and determine what sensory feedback is given 4. Interactivity, finally, is the responsiveness of the virtual world to user actions. Interactivity includes the ability to navigate virtual worlds and to interact with objects, characters, and places.
These four elements were said that can be realized to a greater or lesser degree with a computer, and that is why there are both broad and narrow definitions of virtual reality. While a computer simulation is said a computer program that contains a model of a particular system. ‘
That these two both has something in connection with regards about ethical. These two are providing more challenge to ethics because more and new application are still being develop through the time.
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Book Reviews 2009
What I have learned:
I learned that this two virtual reality and computer simulation are both needed through the ethics of our information because of the developing technology that our information are building. These are the things that we must remember and know.
Integrative Question:
1. What is Virtual Reality? 2. What is Computer Simulation? 3. What are the four elements of virtual reality? 4. What is avirtual world? 5. What are the four element said to be?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 4: RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES AND RISK ASSESSMENT
Author: ANTONIO MARTURANO
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“Thinking of scientific theories by means of models is always as-if thinking”
Learning Expectation:
In this chapter I don’t know what to learn because I don’t understand what is Genetic information, but I hope this has something to do with and information technology. And I also expect to learn some ethical issues with this and some epistemological.
Review: Chapter 16: Genetic Information: Epistemological and Ethical Issues
In this chapter they discuss something about the concept of informatics. The concept that are being used in genetics. It is said that Genetic has taken the information central to the field of informatics.
There is some theory about the Genetic information that is connected to science it was formulated by Shannon. This becomes synonymous with a theory of knowledge that includes different aspects of the word information.
This idea of genetic information said that it is the genes containing an amount of information and able to buld human being up is today a seldom challenge. There is also a study that shows that two parallel processes have remained parallel, these are computer technology and information theory. The word information is the basic word that is being used by them to continue their study about these things. There are some notion that was discuss through the other part, but discussing them all here wouldn’t make this a review anymore. So I just mention some of it in the upper part of this paragraph.
There was several concern regarding genetic information. As the author said that this ethical problem is not directly related to the way biologists use the notion of information, nonetheless this problem is related to data banks in which genetic results are stored.
But some conclude that as the industry advances, there is a growing call among researchers to redraw the lines of intellectual property. Instead of simply learning to live with the current system, they want to upend it. This was stated by the author.
What I have learned:
I have learned the ethical issues regarding the genetic information. And some formulated studies about this and the information.
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Book Reviews 2009
Integrative Question:
1. What is Genetic Information? 2. What does Shannon found about this formula? 3. What was the idea of Genetic information? 4. What are the ethical issues? 5. What is Epistemology?
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Book Reviews 2009
Part 4: RESPONSIBILITY ISSUES AND RISK ASSESSMENT
Author: DOROTHY E. DENNING
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Information-Computer- Ethics/dp/0471799599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239715853&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“The hack back does not involve the use of indiscriminate or superfluous weapons.”
Learning Expectation:
In this chapter I expect to learn what the conflicts of the ethics are. What are some issues that would be mention and how this conflict does would be resolve.
Review: Chapter 17: The Ethics of Cyber Conflict
In this chapter the author discuss about some issues and areas of cyber conflicts that has ethical issues that are more problematic now. The first one was cyber warfare, it is said that a state level is conducted in the interest of national security. They discuss something about the attack of the ground rules. The second area was discussed to be the ethical dilemmas, which involves nonstate actors whose cyber attacks are politically or socially motivated. And the third one was hacktivism.
These hacktivisim is a counter of cyber attacks. Which two principles are being form. The first one which involves the use of invasive tracebacks to locate the source of attack and the second was to strike back at an attacking machine in order to shut it down or cause it to stop attacking.
This has explored the cyber attack with those three domains of conflict. It is said that the framework requires two determinations also. Which is whether a particular cyber attacks resembles force or whether the attacks follow the principles of the law of war. And as it said that the less attacks the more adheres to the law of war and it is easier to justify ethically.
What I have learned:
I have learn the three different issues of the area of cyber conflicts. And why does it become a problem or a conflict to cyber ethics.
Integrative Question:
1. What is Hacktivism? 2. What are the three issues? 3. Why there is cyber conflict? 4. How can this issue be resolve? 5. Explain the second area of issue.
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Book Reviews 2009
The Bottom of the Pyramid
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Book Reviews 2009
Book: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238851102&sr=8-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“The dominant assumption is that the poor have no purchasing power and therefore do not represent a viable market”.
Learning Expectation:
I expect to learn how does the market make actions or what does the market represent with the bottom of the pyramid. And what is on the top and the bottom of the pyramid that we must learn how come that they say that in the bottom there are more population. Why this was called as the bigger poverty.
Review: Chapter 1: The Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid
In the first part of this chapter, it talks about the markets on the televisions to change its image. Because they illustrate it as the typical pictures of poverty mask the fact that the very poor represent resilient entrepreneurs and value of consumers. They say that the wide spread of entrepreneurship is at the heat of the solution to poverty.
At this Bottom of the pyramid as we illustrate them we can say that the top of it were the wealthy ones which has a numeric opportunity. And has less population. But what does this at the bottom of the pyramid has, is it the poverty that we are all suffering on. There are some solutions that they take actions on to solve this kind of problems that everyone is encountering, Like they create opportunities for the poor by offering them choices and encouraging self-esteem.
They start with the basic consumptions to make us all understand these solutions that we must take actions on. They say that “The poor cannot participate in the benefits of globalization without an active engagement and without access to products and services that represent global quality standards”. This poor represent as the Latent market.
How can we say that there are markets at the bottom of the pyramid if there are not the target customers because they can’t afford the products, and that they do not have use for product. So we can’t say that BOP is a market.
As for the developing markets or country we can say that we kind find some market at the bottom of the pyramid. They are the one who is consuming.
And we can say that there are markets at the bottom of the pyramid. That they can also help in the economic market that could help in growing the market.
Lessons Learned
Although it has not been given much attention, we find that multinationals are reinventing the consumer markets. They are now reaching the market at the bottom of the pyramid.
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Book Reviews 2009
Integrative Questions
1. What is the condition of people at the bottom of the pyramid?
2. What are reasons why poverty alleviation programs of the World Bank and other nongovernment organization do not succeed in resolving this problem?
3. What is the attitude of big companies of the markets in the BOP?
4. How can big companies benefit from the opportunities present in the markets at the lowest economic pyramid?
5. What are the opportunities in the BOP markets according to Mr. Prahalad?
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Book Reviews 2009
Book: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238851102&sr=8-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote :
“As a result the promise of emerging BOP markets has been largely illusionary ”- C.K. Prahalad
Learning Expectations
I also enlightening to know about the challenges and innovations for companies.
Review: Chapter 2: Products and Services for BOP
He believes that this market represents an opportunity to create economic value in a fundamentally new way. The companies have found their way to innovate in consideration of the realities of their poor consumers. What is also interesting to note from the chapter is that the needs of the consumer might not be even obvious to them nor to the companies. But companies through their managers need to invest in research to understand the needs of this market. They are gigantic which might surprise them. In summed, the writer says that companies need a new philosophy of innovation and product and service delivery to the BOP markets. It is required that companies start from zero-based view of innovations for these markets.
Lessons Learned
The writer clearly pointed out that companies need also to throw away their prejudices against the people at the bottom of the pyramid since they represent a latent market force.
Integrative Questions
1. Why is it important for the companies to understand about the realities and needs of BOP markets? 2. What are the 12 principles of innovation formulated by Prahalad? 3. What is meant by zero-based view? 4. What makes BOP market attractive ? 5. To be involved at BOP markets what is required of the companies’ managers?
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Book Reviews 2009
Book: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238851102&sr=8-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“ BOP markets are great source for experimentation in sustainable development”- C.K. Prahalad
Learning Expectations:
Through this chapter, we wish to understand the principles of innovation needed in developing the market at BOP.
Review: Chapter 3- BOP: A Global Opportunity
The enthusiasm for BOP markets is based on the opportunities that are presented. First, markets in most countries at BOP are large and attractive and stand-alone entities. He also believes that many local innovations can be leveraged across other BOP markets creating a global opportunity for local innovations; some innovations from these markets may be applied in developed markets; and lessons from the BOP markets can influence the management practices of global firms.
Lessons Learned:
We learned about what companies must do in order to engage in BOP markets.
Integrative Questions:
1. How do companies engage at the BOP market? 2. What are the sources of global opportunities in the BOP market? 3. What are the global opportunities that are present in the BOP market? 4. What are the principles of innovation needed for developing BOP markets? 5. What is meant by value-oriented innovation?
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Book Reviews 2009
Book: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238851102&sr=8-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“It is reasonable to expect that 4 billion people in search of an improved quality of life will create one of the most vibrant growth markets we have ever seen”-C.K. Prahalad.
Learning Expectations:
We expect to learn about the market-oriented ecosystem.
Review: Chapter 4- The Ecosystem for Wealth Creation
A nodal firm in the ecosystem is that which facilitates the entire functioning of the network. It provides expertise and establishes technical standards for a wide variety of private-sector enterprises from supplier factors to individual entrepreneurs in remote villages. The impact of the market-based ecosystem and that of the nodal firm is very important in developing the disciplines of the market that includes: respect for contracts, understanding mutuality of benefits, being local and at the same time getting the benefits of being national and global. But most important of all both parties recognized the benefits of transparency in relationship. Respect for the contract must transcends to people everyday. The private sector can reduce the asymmetries in information, choice, ability to enforce contracts and social standing like using information technology to build a network can create a powerful motivation to be part of the system; understanding the rationales for the contracting system: the hows and the whys- reduce the cost of capital and increases access to capital.
Lessons Learned
The market-oriented ecosystem includes the BOP markets and the private sector and other social groups co-existing with each other despite their diversity.
Integrative Questions:
1. What comprised the market-oriented ecosystem?
2. What is the significance of symbiotic relationship among the groups in the ecosystem?
3. What can the market-oriented ecosystem does for the poor?
4. What is the nodal firm?
5. What is the importance of contracts wealth creation in the market-oriented ecosystem?
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Book Reviews 2009
Book: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238851102&sr=8-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“ Poor countries could often be asset-rich but capital-poor”- C.K. Prahalad.
Learning Expectations:
The readers also expects to know the different spectrum of TGC and the four requirements in building TGC.
Review: Chapter 5- Reducing Corruption: Transaction Governance Capacity
It is about creating transparency and eliminating uncertainty and risks in commercial transactions. TGC is the capacity of a society to guarantee transparency in the process of economic transactions and the ability to enforce commercial contracts.TGC reduces the frictional losses in doing business at the BOP. Transparency is the fundamental in TGC. It results from widely understood and clearly enforced rules. Transparency in the process reduces transactions costs. There are four specifications for TGC. First there must be a system of laws that allows for ownership and transfer of property. There should be a process for changing the laws governing property rights that is clear and unambiguous. And third, as societies become more complex, a system of regulations that accommodates complex transactions. And the last, there should institutions that allow the laws to be implemented fairly in a timely fashion and with transparency.There are three spectrum of TGC: countries that are arbitrary and authoritarian where laws do not exist; and if exist are not enforced; countries where laws and institutions of a market economy exist and yet the country does not reach its potential; and countries with well-developed laws, regulations, institutions and enforcement systems.
Lessons Learned
It is for this reason that transactions in the government is not only costly for the people but even for investors.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is the importance of TGC in the fight against poverty and corruption? 2. What are the criteria for transaction governance capacity? 3. What are the specification for TGC? 4. What are the different spectrum of TGC? 5. What are the lessons drawn from the experiences of Andhra Pradesh on TGC?
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Book Reviews 2009
Book: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Author: C.K. Prahalad
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Fortune-Bottom-Pyramid-Eradicating- Publishing/dp/0131877291/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238851102&sr=8-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
“ When the poor are treated as consumers, they can reap the benefits of respect, choice, and self- esteem and have an opportunity to climb out of the poverty ”-
Learning Expectations:
We also expect to understand the role of government in making social transformation for people at the BOP a reality. Further, we intend to understand the effects of social transformation on the people at the BOP.
Review: Chapter 6- Development as Social Transformation
The perennial problem of poverty through profitable businesses at the BOP are now available to most nations. But converting the poor into a market require innovations and the methodologies for innovation BOP are different from and more demanding from the traditional approaches. The writer has enumerated the transitions toward social transformation: the first is to demonstrate that BOP can be a market; then we need to accept that BOP is a market and innovations must be accompanied by increased TGC making government accountable to the citizens and making it accessible and transparent. It is expected that once BOP consumers get the opportunity to participate in and benefit from the choices of products and services made through market mechanisms, the accompanying social and economic transformation can be very rapid. As sign of transformation BOP consumers constantly upgrade themselves.
Lessons Learned
These transformation presupposes that the government and those within the system build up TGC. The poor people will no longer belong to the bottom of the pyramid but inside the diamond as middle classes.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is the role of government in the social transformation of people at BOP? 2. How are the people transformed at the BOP? 3. How are women empowered at BOP? 4. What happened to the people at the bottom of the pyramid ? 5. What does diamond as measure of development implied?
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Book Reviews 2009
CyberEthics
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The internet Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
For human beings to flourish they must be free to engage in creative and flexible actions and thereby maximize their full potential as intelligent, decision-making beings in charge of their own lives (Weiner)
Learning Expectation:
I am hoping to further understand the importance of computer ethics as it applies to the modern world. The impact it made to the world as the predominant technology that has invaded the territory of mankind.
Review: Ethics and Information Revolution:
In most countries of the world, the “information revolution” has altered many aspects of life significantly: commerce, employment, medicine, security, transportation, entertainment, and so on. Consequently, information and communication technology (ICT) has affected — in both good ways and bad ways — community life, family life, human relationships, education, careers, freedom, and democracy (to name just a few examples). “Computer and information ethics”, in the broadest sense of this phrase, can be understood as that branch of applied ethics which studies and analyzes such social and ethical impacts of ICT. The present essay concerns this broad new field of applied ethics.
The more specific term “computer ethics” has been used to refer to applications by professional philosophers of traditional Western theories like utilitarianism, Kantianism, or virtue ethics, to ethical cases that significantly involve computers and computer networks. “Computer ethics” also has been used to refer to a kind of professional ethics in which computer professionals apply codes of ethics and standards of good practice within their profession. In addition, other more specific names, like “cyberethics” and “Internet ethics”, have been used to refer to aspects of computer ethics associated with the Internet.
Computers are logically malleable in that they can be shaped and molded to do any activity that can be characterized in terms of inputs, outputs and connecting logical operation. Because logic applies everywhere, the potential applications of computer technology appear limitless. The computer is the nearest thing we have to a universal tool. Indeed, the limits of computers are largely the limits of our own creativity.
The logical malleability of computer technology, said Moor, makes it possible for people to do a vast number of things that they were not able to do before. Since no one could do them before, the question never arose as to whether one ought to do them. In addition, because they could not be done before, no laws or standards of good practice or specific ethical rules were established to govern them. Moor called such situations “policy vacuums”, and some of them might generate “conceptual muddles”:
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Book Reviews 2009
Learning Learned:
A typical problem in computer ethics arises because there is a policy vacuum about how computer technology should be used. Computers provide us with new capabilities and these in turn give us new choices for action. Often, either no policies for conduct in these situations exist or existing policies seem inadequate. A central task of computer ethics is to determine what we should do in such cases, that is, formulate policies to guide our actions. One difficulty is that along with a policy vacuum there is often a conceptual vacuum. Although a problem in computer ethics may seem clear initially, a little reflection reveals a conceptual muddle.
5 Integrative Questions: 1. What are the policies being mandated in order to protect consumers in the heights of computer technology? 2. How the computer technology could manipulate our lives? 3. Is computer technology a threat? Or an ally? 4. What are the potential harmful effects of computer? 5. As consumer of the computer technology, how can we avoid violating the law regarding computer ethics?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The internet Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
Computer ethics today is rapidly evolving into a broader and even more important field, which might reasonably be called “global information ethics. (Krystyna Gorniak-Kocikowska)
Lesson Expectation:
I am expecting that online privacy will be tackle in this selection. Furthermore, I would like to know if free electronic mail services are free from invasion as well.
Review: ETHICS ON-LINE
Email is not a secure tool, and your boss, your friend, or even the government can intercept any message that you send years later. Every time you press the 'send' button, you are effectively telling everyone online that they can read your message. Without computer ethics, who would feel comfortable sending private information online? That is why it is important that we respect everyone's online privacy. As of now, the only way to ensure that anything you send be kept confidential is the use of an encryption program such as PGP, or something of that nature. With an encryption program, you run your message through a filter that translates it into garble. You send it to a friend whom you give a code to, and with that code they can read what you sent. Anyone else will only see gibberish. Many times the FBI and Government have tried to pass laws to counter this, laws saying that the FBI should have the right to read anything sent online, or laws saying that the government should have a key that would open all encrypted messages, but so far privacy online is safe from being overly regulated by the government. The best way to solve this problem is not regulation, however, but for individuals to stop prying into other peoples' business. If people respect the online privacy of others, there would be no need for encryption or fear.
This issue Computer Ethics show how important it is for people to follow good computer ethics at all times. If people don't obey these basic rules, the Internet will become either an anarchic wasteland, or a super regulated government tool without the freedom that the Internet needs to grow and improve. The Internet is a useful tool, and amazing communication device, but it will only stay this way with good computer ethics. It is important that all of us, and regular users of the Internet, obey computer ethics and make sure that it will continue to stay such a wonderful place for years to come.
Lesson Learned:
I have learned that we should be careful in conveying our personal information through on-line. We should be aware that from time to time, we are ask to identify ourselves through on-line. It is vital that we give information that could not harm us in any way.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is on-line privacy? 2. What is computer ethics? 3. What is internet? 4. Is there assurance that the information we sent through e-mails are read only by intended recipient? 5. What is the government law concerning on-line communication?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The Internet, Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
We are entering a generation marked by globalization and ubiquitous computing. The second generation of computer ethics, therefore, must be an era of “global information ethics.” The stakes are much higher, and consequently considerations and applications of Information Ethics must be broader, more profound and above all effective in helping to realize a democratic and empowering technology rather than an enslaving or debilitating one.
Learning Expectation:
I am also aware that computers made impacts in the modern world and I would like to have that known. It is necessary to understand the impact made by the computers in order to assess the kind of laws that should be taken up in order to preserve people from harm.
Review: The REASON, RELATIVITY, AND RESPONSIBILITY AND COMPUTER ETHICS
I maintain that computer ethics is a special field of ethical research and application. Let me begin by describing computer ethics and then making a case for its special nature.
Computer ethics has two parts: (i) the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and (ii) the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology. I use the phrase “computer technology” because I take the subject-matter of the field broadly to include computers and associated technology, including software, hard- ware, and networks.
Although we need to analyze before we can formulate and justify a policy, the process of discovery often comes in the reverse order. We know that computing technology is being employed in a given situation, but we are puzzled how it should be used. There is a policy vacuum. For example, should a supervisor be allowed to read a subordinate’s email? Or should the government be allowed to censor information on the Internet? Initially, there may be no clear policies on such matters. They never arose before. There are policy vacuums in such situations. Sometimes it may be simply a matter of establishing some policy, but often one must analyze the situation further. Is email in the workplace more like correspondence on company stationery in company files or more like private and personal phone conversations? Is the Internet more like a passive magazine or more like an active television? One often finds oneself in a conceptual muddle. The issues are not trivial matters of semantics. If someone’s health status is discovered through email or an impressionable child is exposed to distressing material on the Internet, the consequences may be very damaging. Obtaining a clear conception of the situation from which to formulate ethical policies is the logical first step in analysis, although chronologically one’s uncertainty about the appropriate policy may precede and motivate the search for conceptual clarification.
Lesson Learned:
I became aware of the much information being lodged into the computers, particularly to different links and sites. Should the people become aware of how the information being utilize by these several web sites, would they be careful on what information to relay? It is important that we become aware of the information being conveyed in order to protect ourselves from various harm computers might inherently have.
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Integrative Question:
1. What is computer ethics?
2. Why it is important to choose the information you wish to convey very carefully?
3. What is the special nature of computer?
4. Who is James Moor?
5. What is relativity in computer ethics?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The Internet, Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
Technology is political (Winner 1980).
Learning Expectation:
The paper argues that the politics of information technology is particularly powerful politics since information technology is an opaque technology--i.e. relatively closed to scrutiny. It presents the design of technology as a process of closure in which design and use decisions become black-boxed and progressively enclosed in increasingly complex socio-technical networks. It further argues for a disclosive ethics that aims to disclose the nondisclosure of politics by claiming a place for ethics in every actual operation of power--as manifested in actual design and use decisions and practices
Review: Disclosive Computer Ethics
We would argue that information technology is mostly not evident, obvious, transparent or open to inspection by the ordinary everyday person affected by it (Brey 2000). It is rather obscure, subsumed and black-boxed in ways that only makes its 'surface' available for inspection. Imbedded in the software and hardware code of these systems are complex rules of logic and categorization that may have material consequences for those using it, or for the production of social order more generally (Introna and Nissenbaum 2000; Feenberg 1999; Latour 1992). However, often these remain obscured except for those experts that designed these systems--and sometimes even not to them as we shall see in our analysis of facial recognition systems below. Simply put: they are most often closed boxes unavailable for our individual or collective inspection and scrutiny. This problem of 'closure' is made more acute by the fact that these systems are often treated as neutral tools that simply 'do the job' they were designed to do. Differently put, we do not generally attribute values and choices to tools or artifacts but rather to people. Nevertheless, Winner (1980) and Latour (1991, 1992) has shown convincingly that these tools have inscribed in them value choices that may or may not be very significant to those using them or affected by them--i.e. software programmes are political in as much as the rules of logic and categorization they depend on reflect or included curtain interests and not others. Enclosed in these 'boxes' may be significant political programmes, unavailable or closed off from our critical and ethical gaze.
Many authors have realized this and have done a variety of analysis to disclose the particular ways in which these technologies have become enrolled in various political programmes for the production of social order (Callon 1986; Latour 1991, 1992; Law 1991). However, in this paper we would like to ask a different question--the normative or ethical question. How can we approach information technology as an ethical problem? In response to this question we will propose, in accord with Philip Brey (2000), but in a rather different way, that the first principle of an information technology ethics should be disclosure. Thus, we want to propose a form of disclosive ethics as a framework for information technology ethics. We will aim to show how this may work in doing a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems. Thus, this paper will have three parts: First, we will discuss the question of the politics of information technology in general; second, we will present our understanding of disclosive ethics and its relation to politics; and finally, we will do a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems.
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Lesson Learned:
Most everyday technologies depend on microprocessors for their ongoing operation. Most organizations have become entirely reliant on their information technology infrastructure. Indeed information technology seems to be a very cost-efficient way to solve many of the problems facing an increasingly complex society. One can almost say it has become a default technology for solving a whole raft of technical and social problems. It has become synonymous with societies view of modernization and progress. In this paper we will consider facial recognition systems as one example of such a search for solutions.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is disclosive computer ethics?
2. What is information technology?
3. Who is Phillip Brey?
4. What is the first principle of information technology ethics?
5. What are the laws concerning disclose computer ethics?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The Internet, Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
The challenge is to retain a balance between the utopia/dystopia seesaw, a rhetoric which has tended to attach to studies of ICTs, and especially to the internet. This imbalance seen through the lens of feminist concerns translates into, on the one hand, a view which argues that women have taken over the internet and are subverting it to their own ends.
Lesson Expectation:
To be able to learn how computer ethics shapes the lives of male and female. Be able to understand further the role of the female in the computer genre.
Review: Gender and Computer Ethics
Despite the increasing theoretical sophistication of research on gender and ICTs, few authors have yet chosen to take on the domain of computer ethics. Unfortunately one of the most prominent recent studies is problematic in several ways. Jennifer Kreie and Timothy Paul Cronan (1998) have looked at men's and women's moral decision making in relation to a set of computer ethics cases. Surprisingly, these authors make no reference whatsoever to the large body of writing in feminist ethics which might have helped them explain their results, all the more surprising given that the work of Carol Gilligan (1982) is very widely known over a number of domains. It makes it very difficult for them to explain their results in conceptual terms. A more convincing approach towards gender and computer ethics is to be found in the research of Marja Vehvilainen (1994) who argues that codes of professional ethics serve to enshrine male expertise at the expense of women making their voices heard. In addition to the studies outlined above, the relatively few papers which have tackled ethical questions from a feminist point of view tend not to take a consistently philosophical approach to the ethics they question. In other words the question posed is rather whether it is ethical, in a broad sense, to treat women in the computer industry in one way or another (Stack et al., 1998; Turner, 1998)) This is certainly a start and, importantly, it recognizes that feminist concerns have some part to play in the continued development of computer ethics. It also brings these issues to a mainstream computing audience. However I argue that calls for ethical conduct in relation to women's issues will not carry the debate as far as it could fruitfully be taken. A potentially more far reaching approach would be to ask how far the development of feminist ethics could be applied to computer ethics, to use feminist ethics to criticize the traditional ethical view implicit in computer ethics, and to see what alternatives may be offered.
Lesson Learned:
I have learned that morality have some connection to environment and upbringing of a person, disregarding of the gender issue. It is important that a person must be brought up with morals.
Integrative Questions:
1. Does morality have some connection to environment and upbringing and there-for is not necessarily comparable across people? 2. What relation do you think the morality of Men vs. Women has to the gender diversity in the CS/IT professions? 3. Why does Adam think that the morality of Men vs. Women is important? 4. What are the problems that Adam identifies with modern Gender and Ethics studies within the fields of Computer Science and Information Technology? 5. What does she concede in identifying these problems? Do impacts do these concessions (if any) have on her argument?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The Internet, Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote
Trends toward media consolidation and convergence call for new frameworks for addressing media access
Lesson Expectation:
To learn the importance of global information infrastructure in the economy. Furthermore, to be able to learn how is global information infrastructure being govern by laws of the concerned parties.
Review: Is the Global Information Infrastructure a Democratic Technology?
A Global Information Infrastructure (GII) is inevitable going to evolve from existing technologies. The networks encompassed by the GII will be diverse, innovative and creative, in contrast to the seeming trend toward dominance by a few companies. Concentration of power should be avoided, and communications and information technology used to promote values conducive to democratic society. The interactive possibilities of networks could have a profound impact on political choices, in that communication networks encourage an active informed approach and connect the private and public realms via information and exchange. Developing the GII is a complicated undertaking involving global social, cultural, economic and political structures as well as technical challenges. There is much debate about whether a digital divide still exists within the United States. While some believe that Internet access is now widely available and affordable, others warn divides will continue to expand unless more government resources are made available to offset this recurrent social problem (Compaine 2001, Bertot 2003, Rowe 2003). The tension between these two oppositional positions lies within the broader issue of how speech rights are framed within the U.S. While the First Amendment guarantees freedom from censorship in some cases, it does not necessarily guarantee that the means to communicate are available to all citizens. Historically, the government’s role is to protect a “marketplace of ideas,” allowing conditions for the best ideas to prevail. However, there are differing ideas about how best to promote the marketplace. In relation to media regulation, Supreme Court rulings on speech rights focus on media specificity, balancing access, such as interpreting how airwaves should be used for the public interest in broadcast policy, and content, such as protecting commercial speech over individual speech as in the case of print media. Framing speech rights in this economic context fails to address why communication is a crucial component to democratic processes (Kairys 1990, Mensch 1990, Sunstein 1993). Since the 1990s, policymakers apply this ideology of the marketplace to address the digital divide. Funding for initiatives such as the E-rate program and public access centers assumes that providing infrastructure will necessarily lead to community development, with little understanding of why citizens should have the means to communicate. The technological determinism present in these policies not only overshadows the underlying role of communication in sustaining democracy, but also fails to make provisions for technological change. Lesson Learned:
In this paper, I argue for a re-conceptualization of digital divide policy based on the emerging notion of the right to communicate which is present in international social movements. I highlight some of the shortcomings of U.S. approaches to the digital divide. U.S. involvement in these projects is limited because of conflicting ideologies of how governments should intervene to develop media access policies. However, incorporating communication rights into U.S. interpretations of speech rights helps to reveal what is at stake in addressing the digital divide both nationally and internationally.
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Integrative Questions:
1. What is global information infrastructure? 2. How does global information infrastructure shape the economic trend of the country? 3. What is the adverse effect of global information infrastructure to humanity? 4. Is global information infrastructure necessary? 5. Are the uses of global information infrastructure do not violate any existing laws?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The Internet, Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote:
Cybernetics takes the view that the structure of the machine or of the organism is an index of the performance that may be expected from it (Weiner, 1954).
Learning Expectation:
Understanding the use of computers and the utilization of information in various workplaces. It is also to undermine the impact of computers on the users and the safety measure being adopted. Furthermore, to be able to learn the use of computer conscientiously.
Review: Applying Ethical and Moral Concepts and Theories to IT
As a “universal tool” that can, in principle, perform almost any task, computers obviously pose a threat to jobs. Although they occasionally need repair, computers don't require sleep, they don't get tired, they don't go home ill or take time off for rest and relaxation. At the same time, computers are often far more efficient than humans in performing many tasks. Therefore, economic incentives to replace humans with computerized devices are very high. Indeed, in the industrialized world many workers already have been replaced by computerized devices — bank tellers, auto workers, telephone operators, typists, graphic artists, security guards, assembly-line workers, and on and on. In addition, even professionals like medical doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants and psychologists are finding that computers can perform many of their traditional professional duties quite effectively.
The employment outlook, however, is not all bad. Consider, for example, the fact that the computer industry already has generated a wide variety of new jobs: hardware engineers, software engineers, systems analysts, webmasters, information technology teachers, computer sales clerks, and so on.
Even when a job is not eliminated by computers, it can be radically altered. For example, airline pilots still sit at the controls of commercial airplanes; but during much of a flight the pilot simply watches as a computer flies the plane. Similarly, those who prepare food in restaurants or make products in factories may still have jobs; but often they simply push buttons and watch as computerized devices actually perform the needed tasks. In this way, it is possible for computers to cause “de-skilling” of workers, turning them into passive observers and button pushers. Again, however, the picture is not all bad because computers also have generated new jobs which require new sophisticated skills to perform — for example, “computer assisted drafting” and “keyhole” surgery.
Lesson learned:
The computer is important in the utilization of information among various work place. It made the work easier and more enjoyable. In addition, through computer, errors if not totally eradicated, were reduced tremendously. The use of computer also helps the utilization of information in a more processed way.
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Integrative Questions:
1. Why is computer a universal tool? 2. Who invented the computer? 3. What is the use of computer to ordinary people? 4. How computers can affect lives? 5. What are the benefits of having a computer?
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Book Reviews 2009
Chapter1: The Internet, Ethical Values, and Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Terrell Ward Bynum
Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberethics-Morality-Cyberspace-Richard- Spinello/dp/0763737836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239740348&sr=1-1
Library Reference: N/A
Quote
Computer ethics is a field of professional ethics concerned with issues of responsibilities and conduct for computer professionals, Gotterbarn (1991).
Lesson Expectation:
Because of the global impact of computing in recent years, and because of the merging of computing and communications technologies that has also recently occurred, the field of computer ethics might be perceived as one that is currently in a state of flux or transition.
Review: Just Consequentialism and Computing
One aspect of this challenge is apparent in an ongoing debate over whether there is anything unique or even special about the moral problems considered by computer ethicists. At one end of the spectrum are those who believe that, essentially, there is nothing new or special about ethical issues involving the use of computers. Proponents of this view claim that privacy violations are privacy violations and that theft is theft whether or not the particular privacy violations or particular thefts happen to involve the use of computers. At the other extreme are those such as Walter Maner (1996) who hold that computer use has generated a series of new and unique ethical issues that could not have existed if computer technology had not been invented. Maner argues that the "failure to find satisfactory non-computer analogies" for moral issues involving computers "testifies to the uniqueness of computer ethics." Deborah Johnson (1994) has taken what could be viewed as a middle ground in this debate. Using a genus-species analogy, she suggests that ethical issues raised by computer technology can best be understood as a "new species" of (existing) generic moral problems. Johnson has also suggested that one’s perspective on this debate is often influenced by one’s starting point. She notes that if one starts from the vantage point of technology, for example, one is drawn to the uniqueness of many of the features of computers. On the other hand, if one starts with ethics, one focuses more broadly on human behavior and human values.
A somewhat different approach to the question of uniqueness has been taken by James Moor (1985) who argues that because computer technology, unlike previous technologies, is "logically malleable," it gives rise to "new possibilities" for human action. These new possibilities can, in turn, create certain "vacuums"—i.e., vacuums regarding normative rules and policies ( viz ., "policy vacuums") to guide the new choices for action made possible by computers, and vacuums regarding conceptual frameworks that enable us to understand clearly the nature of certain normative issues that emerge. Moor claims that even after the "conceptual muddles" are resolved and the emergent issues have become more clearly understood, we sometimes discover that existing policies cannot be applied easily to those issues. On Moor’s analysis, then, computer ethics is the specialized field of identifying policy vacuums created by computers, clarifying conceptual confusions surrounding those issues, and then formulating and justifying new policies for those areas in which either there are no existing policies or where existing policies cannot be adequately extended. The field of computer ethics is needed, Moor (1998) argues, because "routine ethics" is not able to handle adequately many of the normative issues that can and do arise from the use of computing technology.
Lesson Learned:
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Book Reviews 2009
In claiming that computers are "logically malleable," points to the fact that computers "can be shaped and molded to do any activity that can be characterized in terms of inputs, outputs and logical operations." He goes on to note that "because logic applies everywhere, the potential applications of computer technology appear limitless."
Integrative Questions:
1. Who is James Moor? 2. What is computer ethics? 3. Why are computers malleable according to Moor? 4. Who is Deborah Johnson? 5. What are the uses of computer?
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Name of the book: Cyber Ethics
Name of the Chapter:
The Internet as Public Space: Concepts, Issues and Implications in Public Policy
Quote:
The welfare of others should be uppermost in their minds. The rank they hold in the moral development stage determines how they decide. (Kohlberg, 1971)
Learning Expectation
It is very important to teach everyone about moral values and ethics. The Internet can educate the public on the importance of respecting privacy, property and learning to be critical of negative information. It is important for everyone to learn what is morally right and wrong and act accordingly
Review:
We have seen, then, a pattern of convergence in the broader literature of Internet research ethics, the literatures of both CMC and philosophy of technology, and in the specific contributions collected here. These convergences, moreover, are supported by structures of ethical pluralism that help articulate both important differences and agreements in Internet research ethics.
These various points of convergence, finally, make it possible to begin articulating a series of guidelines for Internet research that appear to reflect both shared agreements on basic norms and values and a recognition of the ethical legitimacy of more than one interpretation or application of those norms and values. Indeed, Elgesem¹s "ethical rubric" (my term for his algorithm of ethical questions intended to help researchers decide whether or not a given research project fulfills the ethical requirements of the NESH guidelines) is but one example of several efforts to articulate the guiding ethical questions that researchers and their oversight boards should ask of a proposed research project. So, for example, the University of Bristol has published such a questionnaire (n.d.), based on the E.U. Data Privacy laws (Directive 1995; cf. Suler 2000). Similarly, Dr. Chris Mann (Cambridge / Oxford) is developing a list of guiding questions likewise designed to help researchers sort through the primary ethical concerns of online research (2002): her work, along with Elgesem's and Bruckman's (see also Bruckman, 2002) will be incorporated in the forthcoming report of the AoIR ethics working committee.
While a complete guide to Internet research ethics that reflects these convergences is beyond the scope of this introduction, it may be helpful to close with a brief indication of at least five elements such an ethics will likely include.
Lesson Learned:
Information is offered to us for the purpose of being read and internalized. It is intended to be merged with our previous knowledge and attitudes. What is not intended is the copying and reiterating of the information as if it were our own creation. Students need to have early practice in acknowledging what others say and do. Then they can concentrate on expanding this information or using it to justify their own ideas.
Integrative Questions:
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1. What is internet ethics? 2. What is information technology? 3. What is privacy? 4. What are the common violations in the internet? 5. What is computer ethics?
Name of the book: Cyber Ethics
Name of the Chapter: The Law of Cyberspace
Quote:
For a truly intercultural information ethics, one must take seriously the diverse cultures of the world and their own historical traditions. (Rafael Capurro)
Learning Expectation
This is to make students aware that as computer professionals designing, using and maintaining computing technologies they have a special responsibility to understand the ethical issues that those technologies raise. This concern extends to users of the technology as well. To enable a systematic assessment of arguments made in this sphere, we will apply traditional ethical theories such as virtue ethics, utilitarianism, or deontological theories to debates in computing technology.
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Review:
While the website developer may know what he or she wants to be available to the public, this may not always be the same as what had been made available to the public. Even an innocent surfer may not always know whether information floating around is intended to be public, or just happened to become so. The ordinary rules of behavior tend not to apply in cyberspace. For some reason, because we are merely sitting at a computer screen in our own den just typing, we aren't doing anything "wrong" or criminal. There is a huge tendency to blame the victim -- if they didn't WANT me to break in, why didn't they have better security? And, like steroids in baseball, there is a tendency to say, "everybody is doing it" so it must be OK. For example, an individual claiming to be one of the HBS rejected applicants posted to Slashdot, stating, "Personally, I'm glad I checked my own status. Do I think I'm unethical? I'm willing to bet 90%+ of the people who actually saw the technique and applied to HBS in Round 2 (the round currently awaiting decisions) tried it."
It seems pretty clear that the applicants knew -- or reasonably should have known -- that they weren't supposed to see the status of their applications, and that the portion of the ApplyYourself website they went to wasn't supposed to be accessed by the public. In that regard, not only did they open themselves up to ethical retribution, but to potential criminal prosecution under both federal and local law. But that doesn't answer the entire question. Indeed, in the 1973 movie The Paper Chase, the protagonist Harvard Law student breaks into the law library with a friend to satisfy his curiosity about a contracts professor's unpublished writings. The scenario is not presented as illegal (trespass) or particularly unethical -- indeed, it is almost heroic.
Learned Lesson:
The approach taken by Stanford is, in my opinion, more reasoned and ultimately morally more defensible that that taken by Harvard. It is OK to treat this incident as a black mark against the applicants -- and a major one at that. But an unethical act does not necessarily make an unethical person. It is easy to publicly proclaim your ethical standards on the backs of others -- would Harvard dismiss tenured faculty for a similar breach? Or better yet, disclaim a large grant from a donor who had done the same thing? Probably not. But most ethical breaches in business are likely crimes of opportunity. First you convince yourself that you did nothing wrong, or that what you did was morally justified.
Integrative Questions:
1. Where do morality and ethics end, and criminality begin?
2. What is the appropriate "punishment" for the crime of curiosity coupled with the act of snooping?
3. How should the law and society deal with these individuals, and how do we build a society in cyberspace that is not only legally compliant but moral and ethical?
4. Have we yet established a sufficiently coherent set of rules of right and wrong in cyberspace to pass moral (as opposed to legal) judgment on others?
5. What is the law of cyberspace?
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Name of the Chapter:
Of Black holes and Decentralized Law-Making in Cyberspace
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Workers were offered a means of claiming authorship and receiving bonuses for useful ideas. To promote worker participation in innovation, 'complex brigades' of workers, engineers, and others were assembled to draft blueprints, test solutions, and refine original ideas. Several mass organizations mobilized large voluntary support networks to help worker-innovators overcome the bureaucratic obstacles to success. ... Capitalist management and product design aims to limit and channel the little initiative that remains to workers and consumers. Their margin of maneuver is reduced to occasional tactical gestures.
Lesson Expectation:
The Internet has gone through the process of metamorphosis to become something much more transcendent and abstract called the Cyberspace. In this cybernetic space, virtually no rules and no limits exist. Even human attain an ever ability to escape from the prison of the bodies and be free. Different from its sci-fi origins, cyberspace embraces ambiguity and contingency, one can navigate and control the interface but not the space, and the path they take in cyberspace.
Review
A more effective way to facilitate the “just ignore it” strategy is to filter or block spam through technological means. Filtering works by configuring the Mail Filter Agent (MFA) to the automatically delete unwanted spam based on pre-set rules. Filtering can be done by end users at the Mail User Agent (MUA) or by the email service providers at the Mail Storage Agent (MSA).
End user filtering however is not particularly effective. As spammers rarely use the same sender’s address twice, filtering by identifying the sender is hardly successful. ESP-level filtering may yield a better result. When a spam has been identified, the ESP could use evoke his MFA to scan the MSA for the spam and delete it, saving users the anguish of downloading it.
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Blocking is the refusal of servers to allow relaying of emails coming from certain IP addresses.
Blocking are normally done by the email service providers at the Mail Transport Agent (MTA) level. Collective efforts to maintain a Realtime Blackhole List (RBL) has proved to be effective in blocking spam at its source.
A blackhol blackhole list is a list of IP addresses which are known to assist or friendly to spammers.
Under this system, a receiving MTA server will first check the RBL for the connecting IP address. If the IP address of the sender matches one on the list, then the connection gets dropped before any traffic from the spammer gets through.
However, of late use of blackhole lists seems be considered illegal by some courts. In a recent case in New Zealand, a high court has issued an injunction against the administrator of a blackhole list, the Open Relay Behavioural Modification System (ORBS), for including one Xtra’s IP address in its blackhole list.
Lesson Learned
Cyberspace allows for an “imitation indistinguishable from the ‘real thing,’ yet completely separate from it.” Compensatory heteropias are ordered, perfect, and meticulous. Cyberspace does not adequately protect users from becoming spectacles; rather, it focuses their “gaze away from its own vulnerability and toward others as spectacle.” Whereas the flâneur is an impartial, unobserved observer, independent from the scene he/she witnesses; the gawker is not independent, “disappears, absorbed by the external world,” and becomes an impersonal being. TCP/IP is now a technical cornerstone of global telecommunications networks, as it makes it possible for networks that run on different physical media, and that use networking standards to communicate with each other. The Internet cannot be completely censored; however, its censorship depends on local configurations and routing protocols.
Integrative Question:
Could any scholar imagine being deprived of the right to reference his or her past work after leaving a particular institution?
Can technological solutions solve the spam problem?
What harm, if any, could they cause to innocent parties?
Even if they do harm innocent parties, should we still use these technological solutions?
Do content or technology companies have the right to control content that consumers purchase and use in the privacy of their own homes?
Name of the Chapter:
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Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Any content-based regulation of the Internet, no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village to roast the pig." U.S. Supreme Court majority decision, Reno v. ACLU (June 26, 1997)
Lesson Expectation:
To begin with, the notion that citizens should "self-rate" their speech is contrary to the entire history of free speech in America. A proposal that we rate our online speech is no less offensive to the First Amendment than a proposal that publishers of books and magazines rate each and every article or story, or a proposal that everyone engaged in a street corner conversation rate his or her comments.
Review:
We welcomed, for example, the American Library Association's announcement at the White House summit of The Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace for Parents and Kids, a "comprehensive brochure and Web site combining Internet terminology, safety tips, site selection advice and more than 50 of the most educational and entertaining sites available for children on the Internet."
In Reno v. ACLU, we noted that Federal and state governments are already vigorously enforcing existing obscenity, child pornography, and child solicitation laws on the Internet. In addition, Internet users must affirmatively seek out speech on the Internet; no one is caught by surprise.
In fact, many speakers on the Net provide preliminary information about the nature of their speech. The ACLU's site on America Online, for example, has a message on its home page announcing that the site is a "free speech zone." Many sites offering commercial transactions on the Net contain warnings concerning the security of Net information. Sites containing sexually explicit material often begin with a statement describing the adult nature of the material. Chat rooms and newsgroups have names that describe the subject being discussed.
The preliminary information available on the Internet has several important components that distinguish it from all the ratings systems discussed above: (1) it is created and provided by the speaker; (2) it helps the user decide whether to read any further; (3) speakers who choose not to provide such information are not penalized; (4) it does not result in the automatic blocking of speech by an entity other than the speaker or reader before the speech has ever been viewed. Thus, the very nature of the Internet reveals why more speech is always a better solution than censorship for dealing with speech that someone may find objectionable.
Lesson Learned:
It is not too late for the Internet community to slowly and carefully examine these proposals and to reject those that will transform the Internet from a true marketplace of ideas into just another mainstream, lifeless medium with content no more exciting or diverse than that of television.
Civil libertarians, human rights organizations, librarians and Internet users, speakers and providers all joined together to defeat the CDA. We achieved a stunning victory, establishing a legal framework that affords the Internet the highest constitutional protection. We put a quick end to a fire that was all but visible and threatening. The fire next time may be more difficult to detect and extinguish.
Integrative Questions:
What are the problems with user-based blocking software in the home?
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How do Internet Rating System work?
Is cyberspace burning?
What is Fahrenheit?
What is cyberspace?
Name of the Chapter:
Filtering Internet in the USA: Is Free Speech Denied?
Name of the Book:
Quote:
To give up the fight, without exhausting our defenses, could cost the surrender of our "soul". (Leo Tolstoy)
Lesson Expectation:
Treasures of the Internet believe in the principle that anyone who has something to say must be willing to stand by it. Otherwise, a person does not deserve the right to participate in a public forum.
Review:
Advocating free speech and opposing censorship are very difficult issues to deal with -- partly because many members of our society have forgotten that the freedom to speak our mind also requires the responsibility to be sensitive to the feelings and rights of others.
Invasion of our privacy is motivated mainly by the increasing competition among various entities who view us mainly as consumers of their products or services.
All those freebies that we get from the internet -- free e-mail, calendars, webpages, etc. -- are in exchange for a more invaluable information, the most important details about our person. It has become such an economic necessity to know information about individuals such that "data gathering
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(or mining) and selling of information" is one of the booming sectors (if not the backbone) of the internet economy.
If you consider these "trade-offs", what we assume to be free (e-mails, webpages, etc.), in fact, comes at a much greater price -- the lost of our freedom to control how the most intimate details about our humanity is used.
The internet is still at its infancy; and yet, if you look closely, you will find that the "800-pound gorillas" in each sector of the industry want to annihilate the competition.
In many instances, the strategy worked to the detriment of the consumer. Many internet sites may no longer be available to you because of self-serving monopolistic collusions among these giants to get a greater share of the market. Some search-engines nowadays would place at the top of your search results the names of companies that have paid them "fees" to be given such priority.
Lesson Learned:
If some forces in our society will have their way, they would want to take our right to free choice. In fact, to a certain extent, these forces have succeeded -- many of the search engines nowadays employ some sort of "filtering" -- so that many sites may not be accessible to you already, without your knowledge.
The "guardians of morality" are the main advocates of censorship; but even some of the more liberal forces in our society can be guilty in advocating for censorship. [
Integrative Questions:
What is freedom of speech?
What is trade-off?
What is Internet?
What is privacy?
What is treasure of the internet?
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Name of the Chapter:
Censorship: The Internet and the Child Pornography Law of 1996: A Critique
Name of the Book:
Quote:
"the only ground on which intervention is justified is to prevent harm to others; the individual’s own good is not a sufficient justification
Lesson Expectation:
Before discussing pornography on the Internet, it is useful to discuss what is meant by the term pornography. Defining pornography is complicated mainly because the way it is used in common language or defined in dictionaries is much different than the legal definition of the term.
Review:
The most important development in the United States in regards to censorship and the Internet has been the Communications Decency Act (CDA ). The CDA was voted overwhelmingly into law in 1996, and made it a criminal offense to send "indecent material by the Internet into others computers" (Wilkins 1997). The law was attached to the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 and passed by congress on February 1 st of the same year. It was signed by President Clinton the following week. On the same day the bill was signed the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in Philadelphia on the ground that that the statute banned speech protected by the First Amendment and subjected the Internet to restrictions that were out of line with regulations faced by other mediums (Wilkins 1997).
One way to evaluate this case is by trying to find an existing communications medium that could serve as an analogy for the Internet and using its treatment as a precedent (Simon 1998). In Reno V. ACLU, the government argued that broadcast media was a good analogy and the plaintiffs argued that the "dial-a-porn" telephone communications case would be a good analogy (Simon 1998). The implications of these analogies is quite different. If the government analogy is adopted, then they would have a wide range of powers to censor the Internet,while the plaintiffs analogy would severely limit the ability of government to censor the Internet if it were adopted (Simon 1998). The telephone communications analogy was the one most often cited by the judges in the Supreme Court and in the earlier district court case. The reason for the use of this analogy over the other was the acceptance that clicking on a hyperlink is like dialing a telephone number; in other words, positive steps on the part of a person must be made to access the information (Simon 1998). This analogy also leaves the option open that the Internet could be regulated as a common carrier, that is, as a telephone company (Simon 1998).
Lesson Learned:
It is important to note that this decision was over pornography, not obscene materials, which have no First Amendment protection. United States common law distinguishes between offensive speech,
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indecent speech and obscene speech. Indecent Speech has first amendment protection, but can be limited with a compelling government interest (as in the case of minors). However, Obscene speech has no first amendment protections. This was confirmed in the 1957 case of Roth v. United States, which reaffirmed the previous belief that obscenity laws have no implication on the first amendment. However, any ideas with redeeming social importance or literary merit could not be labeled as obscene.
Integrative Question:
What is Pornography?
What is Communication Decency Act?
What is Telecommunication Reform Act?
What is child pornography?
What are the laws that protect children from pornography?
Name of the Chapter:
PICS: INTERNET ACCESS CONTROLS WITHOUT CENSORSHIP
Name of the Book:
Quote:
The nation's most widely read newsweekly got snookered -- or, more precisely, snookered itself -- in a frenzy to beat the competition with a racy cover story about pornography on the Internet. -- Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
Lesson Expectation:
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Much of the literature on such endeavors is pitched in terms of 'technologies of freedom', with an expectation that public-spirited experts in advanced economies will provide tools for use by human rights activists and ordinary people in repressive economies.
Review:
There seemed no doubt that the PICS developers were as opposed to censorship of the Net as those opposed to the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The theory was that PICS, in facilitating the development of technologies to empower Net users to control their own access to Net content, and that of their children, would reduce the risk of government censorship. PICS was, many thought, the Net community's savior from censorship.
At a time when attention was focused on the US Communications Decency Act (CDA), the theory was generally accepted without question. Few people stopped to consider the power of the technology; that, in fact, technology which empowers parents to control the access of their children, equally empowers governments to control the access of their adult citizens.
Less than twelve months after PICS was announced, indications arose in Australia and shortly thereafter in the UK, that governments would enforce or coerce the use of PICS facilitated systems . The probability of mandatory self-rating and prosecution for inadvertently mislabeling, or failing to label, became obvious.
Since that time, many of the original PICS advocates have become alarmed by the extent to which PICS makes the Web censor friendly. Increasingly, PICS is said to be the devil.
By late 1997, PICS developers had become less inclined to attempt to gloss over the fact that PICS provides a helpful tool for government censorship. Nevertheless some, if not all, of those people regard the issue as being neither their concern nor responsibility. That, however, is cold comfort to the people who are forced to use the technology they have created.
Lesson learned:
The advantages of a PICS-based system come with the standardized vocabulary and scales which could be imposed on quality judgments. Users would no longer have to interpret the meaning behind a site designated as "cool" or guess how current they could expect a three-star site to be; the quality vocabulary would include scales for these and other quality criteria. PICS quality vocabulary could be adopted by subject gateways as a standard means of evaluating the sites they include. Such an access mechanism would be immediately useful to users, providing a meaningful comparative evaluation of the resources to which they point.
Integrative Question:
What is PICS?
What is Communication Decency Act?
Who is Paul Resnick?
What is labeling?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of PICS?
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Name of the Chapter:
INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS AND DEFAMATION: NEW STANDARD OF LIABILITY
Name of the Book:
Quote:
A computerized database is the functional equivalent of a more traditional news vendor, and the inconsistent application of a lower standard of liability to the electronic news distributor such as CompuServe than that which is applied to a public library, book store, or newsstand would impose an undue burden on thefree flow of information. Pete Leisure
Lesson Expectation:
Where there is neither actual knowledge of the defamation nor awareness of any facts or circumstances from which a certain institution could reasonably have been expected to be aware of the defamation, and the institution has taken reasonable care in relation to publication of the statement in question, the defense is likely to be available to the institution. Upon receipt of notice of a claimed defamation, the institution should, of course, remove the posting straight away.
Review:
Providing computers and internet access to students and staff means that responsibility for what they do online can, in certain circumstances, rest with the institution. This Internet Service Provider (ISP) Liability Overview paper considers the extent to which institutions are responsible for content which is made available on their computer systems.
It has been in the highly confrontational area of defamation law where litigation has determined where legal responsibility lies for the online hosting, publishing and possession of unlawful and illegal content.
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Defamation is, essentially, concerned with the publication of lies, or untruths and a defamatory statement is one which lowers the claimant in the estimation of right thinking members of society. The general rule of UK defamation law is that the publisher of defamation faces liability and this applies to institutions as publishers in the same way as to any other publisher. So where an institution maintains control over what its users publish, it is likely to be considered a "publisher" of this material for the purposes of defamation.
Liability for a defamatory statement may also be extended to an institution under the principles of vicarious liability or because, in providing online access facilities, the institution is directly liable as a publisher or disseminator of the offending statement.
If the institution exercises any kind of editorial control over the content of its users then the institution is likely to be classified as an author, editor or publisher and will be potentially liable accordingly if the content is defamatory.
Unfortunately, if the institution decides not to monitor its content or respond to complaints, whilst it is not be likely to be classed as a primary publisher it is likely to be treated as not having taken reasonable care in relation to the publication and may therefore be treated as a secondary publisher.
Lesson learned:
Although it is usually the offenders, as individuals, who would face criminal prosecution or a civil action, an institution could suffer reputational damage if it is not seen to be acting responsibly.
For institutions, as dispersed organizations, and, in an environment where electronic content can change every second, exercising control over the activities of staff and students in terms of what is published by them is likely to prove difficult.
At its simplest, the more control the institution exercises over those who publish and upload information onto websites and online interactive forums, the more likely the institution will be held liable for any injury which those individuals cause.
Integrative Question:
What is Internet Services Provider?
What is defamation?
Should an institution moderate content?
How responsible am I going to be if someone libels someone else on my system?
When can you knowingly republish defamatory statements without risk of liability?
Name of the Chapter:
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Name of the Book:
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Quote:
The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders — and the technology companies that distribute their content — the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates . Timothy B. Lee
Lesson Expectation:
This article will further expand the meaning of Digital Millennium Copyrights Act. It will also highlight the importance of DMCA for the mankind. Likewise, it will also enumerate the disadvantages of the said act.
Review:
The DMCA has had an impact on the worldwide cryptography research community, since an argument can be made that any cryptanalytic research violates, or might violate, the DMCA. The arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov in 2001, for alleged infringement of the DMCA, was a highly publicized example of the law's use to prevent or penalize development of anti-DRM measures. While working for Elcomsoft in Russia, he developed The Advanced eBook Processor, a software application allowing users to strip usage restriction information from restricted e-books , an activity legal in both Russia and the United States. Paradoxically, under the DMCA, it is not legal in the United States to provide such a tool. Sklyarov was arrested in the United States after presenting a speech at DEF CON and subsequently spent nearly a month in jail. The DMCA has also been cited as chilling to legitimate users, such as students of cryptanalysis (including, in a well-known instance, Professor Edward Felten and students at Princeton ), and security consultants such as Niels Ferguson , who has declined to publish information about vulnerabilities he discovered in an Intel secure-computing scheme because of his concern about being arrested under the DMCA when he travels to the US.
Lesson Learned:
The DMCA has been criticized for making it too easy for copyright owners to encourage website owners to take down allegedly infringing content and links which may in fact not be infringing. When website owners receive a takedown notice it is in their interest not to challenge it, even if it is not clear if infringement is taking place, because if the potentially infringing content is taken down the website will not be held liable.
Integrative questions:
What is DMCA?
What is copyright?
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What is cryptography?
What are the provisions of DMCA?
What are the advantages of DMCA?
Name of the book:
Name of the Chapter:
Note on the DeCSS Trial
Quote:
"Our main goal," said Gross, "is to build a strong, solid record to take to the appeals court, where civil liberties are taken more seriously."
Learning Expectation:
Linux came to the forefront of the ongoing DeCSS trial late last week. That's because, in a very real way, Linux started the uproar that has resulted in eight movie studios suing Eric Corley.
Journalist Eric Corley -- better known as Emmanuel Goldstein, a nom de plume borrowed from Orwell's 1984 -- posted the code for DeCSS (so called because it decrypts the Content Scrambling System that encrypts DVDs) as a part of a story he wrote in November for the well-known hacker journal 2600. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) claims that Corley defied
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anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by posting the offending code for anyone to download from his Website.
Review:
The whole affair began when teenager Jon Johansen wrote DeCSS in order to view DVDs on a Linux machine. The MPAA has since brought suit against him in his native Norway as well. Johansen testified on Thursday that he announced the successful reverse engineering of a DVD on the mailing list of the Linux Video and DVD Project (LiViD), a user resource center for video- and DVD-related work for Linux. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization based in San Francisco which supports civil liberties in digital arenas, is providing a legal defense that cites, among other issues, fair use. After all, the EFF argues, if you buy a DVD, why can't you play it on any machine you want?
Lessons Learned:
The judge in the case, the honorable Lewis Kaplan of the US District Court in southern New York, issued a preliminary injunction against posting DeCSS. Corley duly took down the code, but did not help his defense by defiantly linking to myriad sites which post DeCSS.
By taking his stand, Corley has brought key issues of the digital age to trial. Among them is the right to experiment and to share knowledge, he said. The case also points to the DMCA's broad protections, which for the first time not only give copyright to creative work but also to the software -- or any other technology -- that protects it.
Still open is the question of whether the injunction against Corley, or the fight against DeCSS itself, is not a vain struggle in the face of inevitable change. Judge Kaplan, whom the defense requested recuse himself based on conflict of interest, said last Thursday to Mikhail Reider, the MPAA's chief of Internet antipiracy, "You are asking me to issue an injunction against the guy who unlocked this barn, [telling him] not to unlock it again --- even though there is no horse in it." "It's good to see that [the judge] is realizing the futile nature of dealing with these issues this way," said Robin Gross, an EFF attorney and a member of the defense team.
Though the MPAA may not be able to stop DeCSS, there are other issues at stake that are unrelated to digital piracy.
Copyright is not the issue to supporters of the defense in this trial. "I think that anyone who holds First Amendment rights dear, in addition to Linux users at large, are interested in satisfying the copyright of
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entertainment properties, as long as fair use and freedom of speech is not inhibited," said Jim Gleason, president of the New York Linux Users Group, which plans further protests should Corley lose the case.
Integrative Questions:
What is DeCSS? What is Trial ? What is the copyright issue of the defense trial? Who is the Judge? What is the plans ?
Name of the Chapter:
A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Without that balance, there is a danger of absolutizing the claims to ownership and control to the detriment of other interested parties, something we have noted in recent legislative proposals. Samuelson, 1997)
Lesson Expectation:
The question is, how much protection is required, and when and to what extent should it apply?
This paper addresses that question. First it presents some cases that illustrate the range of possible intellectual property rights. Next it examines the traditional justifications for such rights. It then critiques those justifications, not to refute them, but to show their limits
Review:
Property usually refers to tangible assets over which someone has or claims control. Originally it meant land. Now it could also refer to a car, a milling machine, a jacket or a toothbrush. In all these cases the property claim is of control of the physical entity. If I claim a plot of land as my property, I am saying I can control who has access to that land and what they do there. I can build a fence around it, rent it out, or drill for oil on it. If a car is my property, I get the keys to it. I can exclude others from using it and use it myself for whatever I want, as long as I do not threaten the lives or property of others. Intellectual property is different because its object is something intangible, although it usually has tangible expression. The intellectual property in a book is not the physical paper and ink, but the arrangement of words that the ink marks on the paper represent. The ink marks can be translated into regions of magnetic polarization on a computer disk, and the intellectual property, and whatever
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claims there are to that property, will be the same. The owner of a song claims control, not of the CD on which the song is recorded, but of the song itself, of where when and how it can be performed and recorded. But how can you build a fence around a song? What does it mean to "own" an idea? Where are the locks that keep other people from "driving" it?
But technology also supports intellectual property by providing new, more powerful and more efficient ways of creating and disseminating writing, musical composition, visual art, and so on. In fact it was the technology of the printing press that originally gave rise to intellectual property as a legal and moral issue. Before, when it took almost as much of an effort to reproduce a document as it took to create it, there was little need to impose limits on copying.
Lesson learned:
Computer technology has created a new revolution in how intellectual property is created, stored, reproduced and disseminated; and with that has come new challenges to our understanding of intellectual property and how to protect it. Of course computers have given rise to a whole new category of intellectual property, namely computer software. A major commercial program can take a team of one hundred or more highly skilled and highly paid programmers years to create and can sell for hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars per copy.
Integrative Question:
What is intellectual property?
What is information?
What is copyright?
What is plagiarism?
What is computer technology?
Name of the Chapter:
Intellectual Property, Information and the Common Good
Name of the Book:
Quote:
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It seems that there must be a balance between the legitimate claims of the developers of intellectual products and the public's interest in their widest possible availability
Lesson Expectation:
For example facts that are commonly accessible cannot be owned by a few individuals just because they record them in a database. As another example, the sharing of design ideas and knowledge can increase efficiency in the integration and interoperation of different products, promote healthy competition, and lead to new ideas and greater creativity.
Review:
Justin Hughes, in his masterful article, "The Philosophy of Intellectual Property" (Hughes, 1988), gives two basic justifications for intellectual property rights. The first, which he calls the Lockean justification, is often called the labor theory of property. According to Locke, a person acquires property rights to something by investing labor in it. For example if someone goes out into the forest, cuts down a tree and saws it into firewood, that wood becomes his property. Even though he did not own the tree or the land it was on and did nothing to plant the tree or make it grow, by putting the work into turning the tree into something useful, the product becomes his. He can use it as he wants, whether to sell or to heat his house, and, more importantly, he can exclude others from its use. This theory works well in a commercial environment.
It is interesting that Locke never applied this line of reasoning to intellectual property; but the extension is obvious. It takes much thought, time and effort to create a book, a musical composition, or a computer program. Those who worked to create it have the strongest claim to the benefits of its use, over anyone else who contributed nothing to the project.
The labor theory is often used today, implicitly at least, to justify claims to intellectual property rights. For example software developers who want to discredit "pirates" who use their products without paying, cite the enormous time and effort that goes into developing a piece of commercial software and the unfairness of others benefiting from it without compensating the developer.
The other justification Hughes discusses is what he calls the Hegelian, or personality theory of intellectual property. In this view an essay, book, musical piece, or other creative work is an act of self-expression or self-realization, and thus is an extension of the creator's person. As such it belongs to the creator, not just as an object of possession, but as a part of the self. Thus basic human freedom demands that creators be able to control what is done with their creations, just as they should be able to determine other aspects of their personal lives. If someone writes a very personal poem for a special friend, for example, it should not be published or, worse yet, sold without the author's consent. That would seem like a violation of the author’s person, rather than just an unfair business deal.
Lesson learned:
The personality theory does figure in some current claims to intellectual property. For example, Richard Stallman, hacker supreme and passionate advocate of free software, has copyrighted his Emacs text editor and other parts of the GNU software project. The purpose of the copyright (or copyleft, as he likes to call it) is not so that he can sell it and be compensated for his labor, since he does not believe software should be sold, but to prevent others from selling it. He claims control over the conditions of use and distribution of his code to guarantee that a company does not incorporate it into a product that they then sell for profit. That would be taking Stallman's creative work and using it
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in a way that subverts his own values, which he sees, quite rightly, as a violation of his person. As another example, a songwriter who is an ardent environmentalist, might object strenuously to one of her songs being used in a commercial for, say, a logging company, even though the company was willing to pay royalties, because she did not want to be personally identified with the company's abuse of the environment.
Integrative Question:
What is intellectual property?
Who is Justin Hughes?
What is Hegelian?
What is the philosophy of intellectual property?
What is copyright?
Name of the Chapter:
Is copyright unethical? An examination of the theories, laws and practices regarding private properties of intellectual work in the United States
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Not only is the enforcement of copyright more difficult but the non-consumable and non-exclusive nature of intellectual property becomes evident, along with its low marginal cost of reproduction (Hettinger, 1993).
Lesson Expectation:
This calls into question whether the extension of rights is based on an ethical position or in reaction to pressures exerted by those whose profits depend on the protections granted by copyright. Copyright was created as policy not an ethical construct, but many treat the law as if it is, or should be, such a construct. Copyright law as currently constituted does not appear to have a consistent ethical basis nor to provide a consistent policy to promote learning and the useful arts.
Review:
Copyright, in as much as it attempts to balance the interests of creators and society could be considered based on ethics. However, while such ethical considerations might have been present in the minds of those who crafted copyright law they were never stated either in the Constitution or in the law. This discussion becomes more complex when applied to factual works. Copyright has never protected facts or ideas. It only protects expression. Therefore a scholar who has labored for years to research a subject such as Lincoln’s death may find his work utilized without credit and have no
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recourse under law ( Eisenschiml v. Fawcett Pub ). As the judge observed “Whatever we may think of the ethics of Millard [the second author] in utilizing various portions of plaintiff's [first author] works with only a scant credit reference, or the ethics of the defendant [the publisher] in publishing the article after first eliminating the credit reference, we conclude, in view of the findings we must hold there was not a sufficient copying to amount to an infringement.” In short, plagiarism may be unethical but it is not illegal if it can be justified by fair use, which does not specify that the source of work used by must be cited.
If copyright does not protect facts it also does not protect labor. While many circuit courts incorrectly interpreted the 1909 Copyright Act as protecting compilations of information based on labor this was clearly found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Feist v. Rural Telephone , which ruled that unoriginal arrangements of facts had no more protection than a single fact. In light of this decision there has been a major effort by information compilers and database developers to have a law passed in the United States that would protect compilations of fact based on labor and investment. The current proposal (H.R. 354, The Collections of Information Privacy Act) would prohibit even legitimate purchasers and subscribers of compilations from using substantial amounts of data in the resource. It would also allow renewal of the protection as long as the compilation received new inputs of either labor or investment. This protection mimics protection already granted in the European Union by the EU Database Directive (European Parliament 1996).
Lesson learned:
Once moral rights are recognized as distinct from economic rights a possible way out of the copyright maze presents itself. One could declare that society owns the economic rights of creative works while the author retains the moral rights. Then society, in the form of the United States government would be taking a consistent ethical position even if it choose to craft a policy of providing an inducement to create more works by providing economic incentives in the form of economic copyright protection. Though if one was going to analyze copyright as an inducement to create more works it would be sensible to find out how many more works, if any, were created only because a longer period of copyright protection was available. Surely there are other, and perhaps more effective, means to induce the protection of creative works. However there is a constitutional problem.
Integrative Question:
What is copyright?
What is Copyright Act 1909?
Is copyright unethical?
Is it true that copyrights have never protected facts and ideas?
What is a property right?
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Name of the Chapter:
On the Web, Plagiarism Matters More Than Copyright Piracy
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Few students enter college fully understanding the relationship between plagiarism and the rules about quoting, paraphrasing and documenting material”
Lesson Expectation:
As scholars are more exposed to the web environment, and use more online resources for research, the need for protections against plagiarism increases. Because of the volatility characteristic of the web environment, it is usually difficult to establish or preserve the provenance.
Review:
This section is not written to play down the role of copyright on the Internet. It instead examines the negative effects of plagiarism and copyright piracy, and leads to a conclusion that somehow cyber- plagiarism causes more harm to the society than the infringement of copyright does. There have been many reports of huge losses due to piracy around the world. According to Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia ranked 16th in the world for software piracy with losses totaling $341m in the year of 2003. Other countries’ statistics even far exceeded losses experienced by Australia. For instance, the figure is $6,496m in the United States; and is $2,311m in France. However, there are always questions about the reliability and the precision of those figures as they are usually exaggerated. An example is that a common Chinese who buys a pirated American CD at the price of $0.50 may not pay $20 for the original copy (Lessig, 2004). Thus the publishers or the owners of the works may not suffer losses from such pirates.
Lessig also stated that from 1999 to 2001, about 803 million CDs were sold; but more than 2,100 million CDs were downloaded for free. Thus about 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold are pirated, but the sale revenue fell by only 6.7 percent for that period. The above figures show that to some extend, the harms that piracy bring are not as critical as the owners claimed. In other words, the potential losses that industries suffer from piracy are usually not as much as
they are reported. Moreover, while copyright infringement only causes direct harms to the producers or the authors, plagiarism harm the whole society. If plagiarism is not under control, the academic integrity will be seriously damaged. It can also lead to very severe consequences. For a student, plagiarism may result in failing grade for an assignment or even dismissal from a course, as in the above case study. For a professional, it can lead to a ruined reputation or the loss of one’s job.
This is a form of cheating the public which is similar to creating false histories. It is easy to see that copyright piracy just harms the owner alone and for some limited period of time. While plagiarism harms all the readers and the whole academic and journalistic communities, and the negative effects may last very long or they even cannot be solved. Thus, plagiarism should be avoided and prevented even without the presence of the victimized author (Snapper, 1999).
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Not only the plagiarist but also other academia and the whole public community suffer from plagiarism harms. When one plagiarises to gain advantage over others, he treats unfairly those who obey the rules.
Lesson learned:
The Internet has greatly reduced the efforts to plagiarise among students and scholars. The integrity of the Internet and academic communities is severely damaged. The main reason why students get away with internet plagiarism is that we lack of resources to monitor cheating, and the examiners have to mark too many papers thus cannot give enough attention to each submitted work. Tools that provide automatic detection of plagiarised works can greatly improve the situation. Therefore, computer professionals can provide great help. Firstly, they can implement new algorithm and create new effective software to identify plagiarised papers. Softwares which can detect plagiarism in students’ works have proved to be effective.
Integrative Question:
Why do students plagiarized?
What are the harmful effects of plagiarism?
How to combat plagiarism?
What are the laws implemented to prevent plagiarism?
What is cyber-plagiarism?
Why do students plagiarise?
Name of the book:
Name of the Chapter:
An Ethical Evaluation of Web Site Linking
Quote:
“It is important to our company that you know our exact process we take for the education and understanding on how is the ethical evaluation on web site Linking”
Learning Expectation:
Web Site linking we use this SEO strategy to navigate people to other pages within the website for the relevant information they are looking for. This improves navigation and link back popularity as
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well. This procedure is not a huge factor in our search engine optimization services but we have found it very functional for the end user getting them where they want to be in a site for information they may be looking for and possibly get the website owner the sale or lead in that specific area.
Review:
For the most part we consult with the person or team of people for that company on the most important keywords they would like to rank high for. Nine out of ten times we find that the keywords the companies like to see are not their only main or lateral phrases for keyword placement and top search engine rankings. In fact I have had keywords come across to me that really have no relevancy to their web sites goals for success. Scam and Spam search engine optimization companies eat this up because they realize that some words have no competition to them and can be achieved with very little effort, and if you're locked into their contract, you will sometimes have to shell out more money because they claim they have much more to do. Which from an ethical stand point Keyword Performance has a problem with that especially because they are not looking at your company with ethical standards just their bottom lines.
Lessons Learned:
Each category will be built for a unique area targeting links that compliment the website services as well as other high Google page ranking directories. The Directory is developed to increase traffic and search engine popularity by targeting other websites to point back to your website. This will also help to improve traffic by other audiences finding your website through another site on the World Wide Web.
Integrative Questions:
What is ethical evaluation?
What is Web Site Linking?
What is the Strategy of Web Site Linking?
Why Ethical Evaluation is important?
What are the different kinds of Web Site Linking?
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Name of the book:
Name of the Chapter:
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Quote:
"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"
Learning Expectation:
The Cathedral and the Bazaar (abbreviated CatB ) is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail .
Review:
Raymond's standard talk begins with references to himself as an ordinary but experienced IT guy of sorts who, without any sort of formal training in sociology, psychology, marketing, business, or the like, has become the chronicler of the "gnu generation" (not his quote, just a common one) and predictor of open source things to be. Then, he drones on for an hour or two about sociology, psychology, marketing, business, and the like. I've seen him give this talk in front of academics. Thankfully, he has little shame, or he'd have dropped dead long ago from the subtle looks and snickers that inevitably result from his bombast.
It's rather to warn you, the lay reader--this guy may have attained some sort of status in the open source community which needs such figures, but it doesn't mean that what he has to say is any good or even true. In his works (including "Cathedral"), Eric makes a very one-sided analysis of software engineering methodologies. It's a complete ra-ra piece which fails to seriously address the very many shortcomings of open-source development, including, most critically, the inability to scale timewise as
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well as commercial software (while not under the GNU licence, two years ago Raymond was predicting the success of the open-source Mozilla browser initiative, which is at this point a complete fiasco). Instead, he talks about obscure supporting sociological constructs such as that of "gift cultures" that would only convince the already converted.
Lessons Learned:
What people should be getting out of this book (or a book like this) is a balanced, informed view of open source vs commercial software, undertaken with sound research on various cost/effectiveness metrics and some case studies. What we have here is a bible for a community that desperately needs one, because, as Eric's whole thrust implies, it is largely ego driven.
Integrative Questions:
What is Cathedral and the Bazaar?
What is the cathedral model?
What is Linux Kernel?
Who is Raymond?
Why is this book worth reading?
Name of the Chapter:
Towards a Theory of Privacy for the Information Age
Name of the Book:
Quote:
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“Our revolution will not be in gathering data—don’t look for TV cameras in your bedroom—but in analyzing the information that is already willingly shared”. Larry Hunter
Lesson Expectation:
While philosophical theories have long acknowledged the relationship between privacy and information about persons, and have argued for limits on allowable practices of information gathering, analyzing, and sharing as a means of protecting privacy, their efforts have primarily applied to intimate and sensitive information. While not denying the importance of protecting intimate and sensitive information, this paper insists that theories of privacy should also recognize the systematic relationship between privacy and information that is neither intimate nor sensitive and is drawn from public spheres.
Review:
In the unfolding of recent developments in information technology, and especially comprehensive digital electronic networks, there is another means by which information may be harvested. In contemporary, technologically advanced societies, it is commonplace for large sectors of populations to participate, in varying degrees, in electronically networked -interactions. Governments, as well as individual and institutional agents of the private sector, encourage such participation by their explicit expressions of approval, by progressively increasing the ease of access, as well as speed and declining prices (for example, through the World Wide Web), and at the same time creating the possibility for more and more to be done by electronic means. Once in the electronic sphere, the tracks of people's activities may be recorded directly into electronic databases. Electronic transactions, even carefree meanderings (popularly referred to as "browsing" and "surfing") may be captured and recorded.
Information like email addresses, system characteristics, and a trail of network-based activities are not only effortlessly recorded, but easily combined with information from the physical world. In this activity information technology is doubly implicated as it acts as the medium for transactions as well as repository for the information.
Lesson learned:
Although Hunter, in the passage quoted earlier, may have understated the extent that the sheer growth in data gathering affects privacy and the extent to which technological means allows intrusion into and surveillance of even private, enclosed spaces, he accurately predicted not only that analysis of information will be a major source of privacy invasion, but that because the information analyzed is willingly shared, people are, in some sense, complicit in the violation of their own privacy. Accordingly, although the traditional topics covered by philosophical discussions remain important both for their historical significance and their present urgency and seriousness, they no longer cover the full extent of a need for privacy protection in our information age where the practice of public surveillance, record keeping, and information analysis seems to be growing not only without apparent limit but so completely out of the control of those who are its subjects.
Integrative Question:
What are the theories of privacy?
What is World Wide Web?
What is privacy?
What is information technology?
What is the systematic relationship between privacy and information?
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Name of the Chapter:
The Structure of Rights in Directive 95/46/ec on the Protection of the individuals with regard to the Processing Personal Data and the free movement of such Data
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Lesson Expectation:
The issue of personal data protection is referred to also in many other international acts, but not as complex as the mentioned ones. It is important that the directive be understood further before its implementation.
Review:
Initially, the European Union did not see the need to regulate personal data protection in national, specific legal acts.
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However, with time discrepancies in legislations of particular EU Member States caused the need to harmonise them. The fundamental task to be fulfilled by this regulation was to ensure minimum and at the same time uniform for Member States level of protection of personal data collected in the filing systems and to ensure a free flow of personal data between Member States. The performance of the second task is an essential condition of ensuring, at next stage, a free flow of goods, services and persons between Community states, which each time involves the need to transfer personal data.
In 1990 works on relevant directive were started. They resulted in the issuance of Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 (95/46/EC) on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. The deadline for its implementation in the legal orders of Member States was set for 23 October 1998.
Lesson Learned:
The new Constitution of 1997 was the first one to guarantee the protection of personal data in Poland. Its Art. 47 guaranteed citizens the right to privacy and Art. 51 guaranteed each person the right to the protection of his/her information.
However, international obligations of Poland related to the EU accession resulted in the need to ensure personal data such protection as the one guaranteed by the EU Member States on their territories. All European acts were based on or adjusted to the Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council.
Integrative Question:
What is directive 95/46/ec?
What is the importance of the directive 95/46/ec?
When was the directive established?
When was the directive amended?
What is privacy?
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Name of the book:
Name of the Chapter:
Privacy, Individuality, Control of information, and Privacy –enhancing Technologies
Quote:
“Privacy” is used frequently in ordinary language as well as in philosophical, political and legal discussions, yet there is no single definition or analysis or meaning of the term.
Learning Expectation:
The concept of privacy has broad historical roots in sociological and anthropological discussions about how extensively it is valued and preserved in various cultures. Moreover, the concept has historical origins in well known philosophical discussions, most notably Aristotle's distinction between the public sphere of political activity and the private sphere associated with family and domestic life.
Review:
According to one well known argument there is no right to privacy and there is nothing special about privacy, because any interest protected as private can be equally well explained and protected by other interests or rights, most notably rights to property and bodily security (Thomson, 1975). Other critiques argue that privacy interests are not distinctive because the personal interests they protect are economically inefficient (Posner, 1981) or that they are not grounded in any adequate legal doctrine (Bork, 1990). Finally, there is the feminist critique of privacy, that granting special status to privacy is detrimental to women and others because it is used as a shield to dominate and control them, silence them, and cover up abuse (MacKinnon, 1989).
Other commentators defend privacy as necessary for the development of varied and meaningful interpersonal relationships (Fried, 1970, Rachels, 1975), or as the value that accords us the ability to
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control the access others have to us (Gavison, 1980; Allen, 1988; Moore, 2003), or as a set of norms necessary not only to control access but also to enhance personal expression and choice (Schoeman, 1992), or some combination of these (DeCew, 1997). Discussion of the concept is complicated by the fact that privacy appears to be something we value to provide a sphere within which we can be free from interference by others, and yet it also appears to function negatively, as the cloak under which one can hide domination, degradation, or physical harm to women and others.
Lessons Learned:
There is no single version of the feminist critique of privacy, yet it can be said in general that many feminists worry about the darker side of privacy, and the use of privacy as a shield to cover up domination, degradation and abuse of women and others. If distinguishing public and private realms leaves the private domain free from any scrutiny, then these feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon (1989) are correct that privacy can be dangerous for women when it is used to cover up repression and physical harm to them by perpetuating the subjection of women in the domestic sphere and encouraging nonintervention by the state. Jean Bethke Elshtain (1981, 1995) and others suggest that it appears feminists such as MacKinnon are for this reason rejecting the public/private split, and are, moreover, recommending that feminists and others jettison or abandon privacy altogether. But, Elshtain points out, this alternative seems too extreme.
Integrative Questions:
What is informational privacy?
What is the constitutional right to privacy?
What are the Privacy and Control over Information?
What is the privacy and Intimacy?
Is privacy relative?
Name of the Chapter:
Toward and Approach to privacy in public: Challenges of Information technology
Name of the Book:
Quote:
"People have, and it is important that they maintain, different relationships with different people. Schoeman, 1984
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Lesson Expectation:
This article urges a conception of privacy that would extend consideration to all information, including information gathered in so-called public realms. If successful, it would also block two misleading assumptions that both implicitly and explicitly have been invoked by those who would justify compilation of complex databases of non-intimate information.
Review:
Let us consider what might be meant by a category of information for which "anything goes." What might this category include? How might we define it? One possibility is to define the category of public information in terms of a category we understand more directly; namely, that of a public place. Accordingly, public information would include any information observed and recorded in a public place, in keeping with Reiman's (1984) suggestion that the social practice of privacy "does not assert a right never to be seen even on a crowded street*' (p. 319). It would be reasonable to conclude, therefore, that information harvested in a public place is "up for grabs" and not covered by norms of privacy.
This proposal would only work if at least two things hold: one, that judgment confirms the inference from public space to public (in this strong sense) information; and another, judgments about information are indeed derivable from judgments about the nature of the place. It is not clear, however, that either of these hold. In the first place, the idea that we judge information to be public merely because it is acquired in a public arena is readily challenged. Consider Schoeman's (1 994) remarks, Just because something happens in public does not mean it becomes a public fact: the Central Park rape occurred in public as did the trial of the accused, but the victim maintains a measure of privacy as to her identity.
Lesson Learned:
Existing theories that limit the scope of privacy to a personal zone or to intimate and sensitive information fail to capture elements of common real-world judgments. Public reaction to Lotus Marketplace: Households and similar computerized databases of non-sensitive information indicates that, by contrast, our common notion of privacy is not thus limited. The power of computers and networks to gather and synthesize information exposes individuals to the scrutiny of others in unprecedented ways. Although guarding the intimate realm against unwarranted invasion is an important aspect of protecting privacy, information technology indicates a need for a more inclusive theory. Neglecting the broader sphere will rob from people the ease and comfort of anonymity as they stroll through actual town squares as well as electronic town squares, conduct trade, socialize, and engage in political and recreational activity both on and off line. It will deprive them of privacy in public.
Integrative Question:
Who is Helen Nissembaum?
What is public realm?
What is private realm?
What is lotus marketplace?
What, according to Nissenbaum, is wrong with current theories of privacy?
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Name of the Chapter:
KDD, PRIVACY, INDIVIDUALITY, AND FAIRNESS
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Lesson Expectation:
The lesson will broaden the definition of privacy.
The KDD is the enormous scale on which data can be processed and profiles can be produced. Relatively new. also, are the ever-growing possibilities of discovering hitherto unnoticed relationships between characteristics and features of persons, created by KDD. This also creates ample opportunities of covering up or hiding the use of certain delicate pieces of information. On the basis of a statistical correlation between the ownership of a certain kind of car and belonging to a high-risk group for a certain disease, an insurance company could, for instance, allocate its health insurance according to the type of car owned by a candidate. The company would then be able to select candidate without asking or checking for their health condition and prospects; it would not arouse the suspicion of selecting on the basis of health criteria.
However this may be, one can be sure that the profiles will be used more and more as a basis for policy-making by public and private organizations. Although many uses of the products o fKDD are morally acceptable, and even desirable, many other possible applications are at odds with commonly held values regarding the individuality of human persons.
Lesson Learned:
The only way to protect individuals against the possible negative consequences of the use of group profiles based on personal information in the broad sense lies in a careful assessment of the ways in which the profiles are in fact used and can be used. By meticulously investigating and evaluating
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these applications, one may hope to find starting points for restrictions of the purposes for which these data and profiles may be produced and applied.
Integrative Questions:
What is KDD?
What is privacy?
What is individuality?
What is fairness?
What is categorical privacy?
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Name of the Chapter:
Data Mining and Privacy
Quote:
What is needed … is a machine-to-machine protocol for negotiating privacy protection. The user sets her preferences once – specifies how she would negotiate privacy and what she is willing to give up – and from that moment on, when she enters a site, the site and her machine negotiate.
Lesson Expectation:
As Moor (1997) notes, data privacy is not determined by the content of data, but by situations where the data are collected, mined, processed, and exchanged.
Review:
While concerns about personal privacy existed before the era of the Internet, several survey results mentioned above indicate that new technology enlarges those privacy concerns. It seems that new technology such as computing, communication, and network has intensified the debate over privacy concerns already introduced before. The Internet, in particular, has made it possible for certain existing privacy threats to occur on a broader scale.
On the other hand, certain specific concerns, which not possible before, now can be made possible by the Internet. For example, data collection had existed before the Internet was invented, but it has been “enhanced” by the Internet. On the other hand, the use of Internet cookies for data-gathering is “Internet-specific” techniques. Strictly speaking, data mining is not so much “Internet-specific” as “Internet-enhanced” techniques. Techniques for exchanging and mining personal data occurred before the Internet era (Tavani, 2000).
Cavoukian (1998) points out that one of the purposes of data mining is to map the unexplored terrain of the Internet, which means that the Internet is becoming an emerging frontier for data mining. Thus, when we consider privacy threats related to data mining, it is important to explore what characteristics of the Internet facilitate the process of data mining and how data mining with the Internet can exacerbate privacy.
Lesson Learned:
In order to determine whether personal data currently available to data mining should be restricted, however, two points should be considered; one is fairness and the other is openness in consent. First, because data subjects are often “not informed” during the data collection or data mining, sometimes it is impossible for them to set up a new normatively private situation regarding the data. Secondly, because the personal data that data subjects may have willingly granted for use in one context is often subsequently mined for another context different from the original situation. This brings about issues related to unauthorized consent.
Integrative Question:
What is data mining?
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What is privacy?
Who is Ann Cavoukian?
What are the purposes of data mining?
What are the advantages of data mining?
Name of the book:
Name of the Chapter:
Workplace Surveillance, Privacy and Distributive Justice
Amazon:
Quote:
“Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.”
Learning Expectation:
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The court held that the employee had no reasonable expectation of privacy: “unlike urinalysis and personal property searches, we do not find a reasonable expectation of privacy in email communications voluntarily made by an employee to his supervisor over the company e-mail systems notwithstanding any assurances that such communications would not be intercepted by management.
Review:
It has been traditionally accepted that employers have a right to engage in such activities. At the foundation of this view is a conception of the employment relationship as involving a voluntary exchange of property. The employer agrees to exchange property in the form of a wage or salary for the employee’s labor. Conceived as a free exchange, the employment relationship, in the absence of some express contractual duration requirement, can be terminated at will by either party for nearly any reason. Exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine include firing someone for serving on jury duty, for reporting violations of certain federal regulations, or for impermissible race, sex, or age discrimination on the employer’s part.
Lessons Learned:
Rawls argues that fair terms of cooperation are most likely to be chosen from behind a veil of ignorance, which he describes as follows: “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. Nor again does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong. In order to carry through the idea of the original position, the parties must not know the contingencies that set them in opposition. They must choose principles the consequences of which they are prepared to live with whatever generation they turn out to belong to.
Integrative Questions:
How does this bear on the issue of workplace surveillance?
What’s the point of the veil of ignorance?
How much privacy protection, if any, would these actually provide?
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Can you think of a likely situation in these?
What are the principles require employers to refrain from collecting data?
Name of the Chapter:
Privacy and Varieties of Informational Wrongdoing
Name of the Book:
Quote:
“It is not non-exclusion that makes retaliation impossible (for there may be other ways of punishing the free-rider than by excluding him), but anonymity of the free-rider. Clearly in a small group it is easier to spot the free rider and sanction him in one of many possible ways once he is identified than in a large group, where he can hide in the crowd". De Jasay
Learning Expectation:
I expect awareness of informational wrongdoing. It will also define different varieties of informational wrongdoing.
Review:
The privacy issue lies at the heart of an ongoing debate in nearly all Western democracies between liberalists and communitarians over the question how to balance individual rights and collective goods. The privacy issue is concerned more specifically with the question how to balance the claims of those who want to limit the availability of personal information in order to protect individuals and the claims of those who want to make information about individuals available in order to benefit the community. This essential tension emerges in many privacy discussions, e.g. undercover actions by the police on the internet, use of Closed Circuit Television in public places, making medical files available for health insurance purposes or epidemiological research, linking and matching of databases to detect fraud in social security, soliciting information about on-line behavior of internet users from access providers in criminal justice cases.
According to communitarians modern Western democracies are in a deplorable condition and our unquenchable thirst for privacy serves as its epitome. Who could object to having his or her data
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accessed if honorable community causes are served? Communitarians also point out that modern societies exhibit high degrees of mobility, complexity and anonymity. As they are quick to point out, crime, free riding, and the erosion of trust are rampant under these conditions. Political philosopher Michael Walzer observes that "Liberalism is plagued by free-rider problems, by people who continue to enjoy the benefits of membership and identity while no longer participating in the activities that produce these benefits.
The modern Nation States with their complex public administrations need a steady input of personal information to function well or to function at all. In post-industrial societies 'participation in producing the benefits' often takes the form of making information about one-self available. Those who are responsible for managing the public goods therefore insist on removing constraints on access to personal information and tend to relativize the importance of privacy of the individual.
Lesson Learned:
Both in the private as well as in the public sector IT is seen as the ultimate technology to resolve the problem of anonymity. Information and communication technology therefore presents itself as the technology of the logistics of exclusion and access-management to public goods and goods involved in private contracts. Whether IT really delivers the goods is not important for understanding the dynamics of the use of personal data. The fact that it is widely believed to be effective in this respect is I think sufficient to explain its widespread use for these purposes. The game-theoretical structure and the calculability of community gains make the arguments in favor of overriding privacy seem clear, straightforward and convincing.
Integrative Question:
What are the different varieties of informational wrongdoing?
What is informational injustice?
What is informational inequality?
What are panoptic technologies?
Define privacy.
Name of the Chapter:
Defining the Boundaries of Computer Crime
Name of the Book:
Quote:
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Many citizens contact a local police station prior to the purchase of a home in a particular neighborhood to inquire about the number of burglaries and violent crimes in the area. Just as these data provide important information for communities in the "real world," the same is true in cyberspace.
Learning Expectation:
For individuals and organizations to intelligently assess their level of risk, agencies must provide accurate data about criminal threats. Access to reliable and timely computer crime statistics allows individuals to determine their own probability of victimization and the threat level they face and helps them begin to estimate probable recovery costs.
Review:
Crime statistics facilitate benchmarking and analysis of crime trends. Crime analysts use criminal statistics to spot emerging trends and unique modi operandi. Patrol officers and detectives use this data to prevent future crimes and to apprehend offenders.
In many police departments, detectives often compile and report crime data. Thus, homicide detectives count the number of murders, sexual assault investigators examine the number of rapes, and auto detectives count car thefts. Computer crime, on the other hand, comprises such an ill- defined list of offenses that various units within a police department usually keep the related data separately, if they keep them at all. For example, the child abuse unit likely would maintain child pornography arrest data and identify the crime as the sexual exploitation of a minor. A police department's economic crimes unit might recap an Internet fraud scam as a simple fraud, and an agency's assault unit might count an on-line stalking case as a criminal threat. Because most police organizations do not have a cohesive entity that measures offenses where criminals either criminally target a computer or use one to perpetrate a crime, accurate statistics remain difficult to obtain.
Lesson Learned:
Generally, crime statistics can provide approximations for criminal activity. Usually, people accurately report serious crimes, such as homicide, armed robbery, vehicle theft, and major assaults. Many other criminal offenses, however, remain significantly underreported. Police always have dealt with some underreporting of crime. But, new evidence suggests that computer crime may be the most underreported form of criminal behavior because the victim of a computer crime often remains unaware that an offense has even taken place. Sophisticated technologies, the immense size and storage capacities of computer networks, and the often global distribution of an organization's information assets increase the difficulty of detecting computer crime. Thus, the vast majority of individuals and organizations do not realize when they have suffered a computer intrusion or related loss at the hands of a criminal hacker.
Integrative Question:
What is computer crime?
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What are the boundaries of computer crime?
What is a crime in general?
What are the precautions being offered to combat computer crime?
What are the punishments for computer crime?
Name of the Chapter:
Terrorism or Civil Disobedience: Toward a Hacktivist Ethic
Name of the Book:
Quote:
Recently, a number of writers, such as Manion and Goodrum (2000), have begun to argue that attacks on government and corporate sites can be justified as a form of political activism – that is, as a form of “hacktivism.” The argument is roughly as follows. Since civil disobedience is morally justifiable as a protest against injustice, it is sometimes justifiable to commit digital intrusions as a means of protesting injustice. Insofar as it is permissible to stage a sit-in in a commercial or governmental building to protest, say, laws that violate human rights, it is permissible to intrude upon commercial or government networks to protest such laws.
Learning Expectation:
First, I argue that it wrongly presupposes that committing civil disobedience is morally permissible as a general matter of moral principle; in an otherwise legitimate state, civil disobedience is morally justified or excusable only in certain circumstances. Second, I attempt to identify a reliable framework for evaluating civil disobedience that weighs the social and moral values against the social and moral disvalues. Third, I apply this framework to acts of electronic civil disobedience. I argue that such acts typically result in significant harms to innocent third-parties that are not morally justified as an expression of free speech – and especially not as the expression of a view that is deeply contested in society.
Review:
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It is true, of course, that most civil disobedience has effects on third-parties, but digital civil disobedience can potentially do much more damage to the interests of far more people than ordinary non-digital civil disobedience. The effect of the protest in Washington was that many persons might have been late to work – losses that are easily made up. An attack that shuts down a busy commercial or public website for a few hours can easily affect hundreds of thousands of people. If the website’s activity is vital to the economy, this can translate into morally significant losses of revenue, which will usually be shifted to employees and consumers.
Lesson Learned:
One should say much more by way of justification for hacking 300 sites than just a vague slogan like this. The victims of such an attack, as well as third-parties, have a right to know exactly what position is motivating the attack and why anyone should think it is a plausible position.The willingness to impose morally significant costs on other people to advance fringe positions that are neither clearly articulated nor backed with some sort of plausible justification is clearly problematic from a moral point of view. It seems clear that such behavior amounts, at least in most cases, to the kind of arrogance that is problematic on ordinary judgments.
Integrative Question:
Why might companies who try to privatize the internet be intimidated by hacktivism?
What is the difference between a hacktivist and a cyberterrorist? How can one differentiate the two?
Should the laws regarding hacktivism be loosened? Explain your answer.
How does M&G's notion of hacktivism fare under the various ethical frameworks we studied in Chapter 1, in particular: Johnson's ``three rules'' (Ethics On-Line), Moor's ``reason within relative frameworks'' (Reason, Relativity and Responsibility...), his Just Consequentialism..., Brey's Disclosive Computer Ethics, and Adam's ``feminist ethics'' (Gender and...) ?
Define hacking.
Name of the Chapter:
Web Security and Privacy: An American Perspective
Name of the Book:
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Quote:
It can draw on a rich history of justificatory ideas ranging from duty (deontology) to utility (teleology) to the individual character (virtue ethics). It is not the purpose of this paper to engage in the ethical discourses surrounding privacy and security but only to demonstrate their relevance by explicating some of the more frequently used arguments.
Lesson Expectation:
The main argument of this paper is that there are discourses concerning privacy and security that focus on the ethical quality of the concepts and that the resulting ethical connotation of the terms is used to promote particular interests. In order to support this claim, I will briefly review the literature on privacy and security, emphasizing the ethical angle of the arguments.
Review:
Privacy and Security are concepts that have a strong moral connotation. We value privacy as well as security because they represent moral values which can be defended using ethical arguments. This paper suggests that the moral bases of privacy and security render them open to misuse for the promotion of particular interests and ideologies. In order to support this argument, the paper discusses the ethical underpinnings of privacy and security. It will then introduce the critical approach to information systems research and explain the role of ideology in critical research. Based on this understanding of the centrality of ideology, the paper will discuss the methodology of critical discourse analysis which allows the identification of instances of ideology. This will then lead to the discussion of an ideology critique based on Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action, which will be applied to the websites of Microsoft Vista and Trustworthy Computing.
Lesson Learned:
In this paper I have argued that privacy and security are concepts with important moral connotations. I then suggested that these moral qualities render the concepts open to be used to promote certain ideologies. In the final step, I have attempted a brief critical discourse analysis on Haberma's Theory of Communicative Action to support the suspicion that the moral nature of privacy and security can be used for ideological purposes.
Integrative Question:
What is the difference between security and privacy?
Why secure information is not necessarily private?
What are the goals of security?
What aspects of security can both be protecting and limiting privacy at the same time?
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What are the tools used to provide security?
Name of the Chapter:
The Meaning of Anonymity in an Information Age
Name of the Book:
Quote:
It is this level of understanding that would make people more cautious, more guarded, more mindful of the information they divulge to others in various transactions, and as a result, more capable of protecting the possibility of anonymity.
Learning Expectation:
Why does this matter? Although answers to this foundational question will not immediately yield answers, it is essential to understanding what is at stake in the answer to these question. For, after all is said and done, we would not want to discover that the thing we have fought so hard to protect was not worth protecting after all.
Review:
An understanding of the natural meaning of anonymity, as may be reflected in ordinary usage or a dictionary definition, is of remaining nameless, that is to say, conducting oneself without revealing one's name. A poem or pamphlet is anonymous when unattributable to a named person; a donation is anonymous when the name of the donor is withheld; people strolling through a foreign city are
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anonymous because no-one knows who they are. Extending this understanding into the electronic sphere, one might suggest that conducting one's affairs, communicating, or engaging in transactions anonymously in the electronic sphere, is to do so without one's name being known. Specific cases that are regularly discussed includes ending electronic mail to an individual, or bulletin board, without one's given name appearing in any part of the header participating in a "chat" group, electronic forum, or game without one's given name being known by other participants buying something with the digital equivalent of cash being able to visit any web site without having to divulge one's identity
The concern I wish to raise here is that in a computerized world concealing or withholding names is no longer adequate, because although it preserves a traditional understanding of anonymity, it fails to preserve what is at stake in protecting anonymity.
Lesson Learned:
For situations that we judge anonymity acceptable, or even necessary, we do so because anonymity offers a safe way for people to act, transact, and participate without accountability, without others "getting at" them, tracking them down, or even punishing them. This includes a range of possibilities. Anonymity may encourage freedom of thought and expression by promising a possibility to express opinions, and develop arguments, about positions that for fear of reprisal or ridicule they would not or dare not do otherwise. Anonymity may enable people to reach out for help, especially for socially stigmatized problems like domestic violence, fear of HIV or other sexually transmitted infection, emotional problems, suicidal thoughts. It offers the possibility of a protective cloak for children, enabling them to engage in internet communication without fear of social predation or -- perhaps less ominous but nevertheless unwanted -- overtures from commercial marketers.
Integrative Question:
What is anonymity?
What is pseudonym?
What is anonymity in a computerized world?
How is the concept different from that prior to the computerization of the society?
What's the difference between anonymity and pseudonimity?
Name of the book:
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Name of the Chapter:
Double Encryption of Anonymized Electronic Data Interchange
Quote:
“Collecting medical data electronically requires, according to our moral belief, also some kind of encryption.”
Learning Expectation:
Both the patient identification in the data and the doctor identification in the data must be anonymized. We skip the name and address; only the sex and the month-year of birth will be sent from the doctor to the central database. Even the number of the patient in the doctors database will be replaced, because once the doctor may be a researcher using the central database who recognizes one of the patients based on the number.
Review:
To be sure that the data are really sent by the sender of the electronic message, the double encryption of PGP is a suitable and widely used protocol. The sender encrypts his message with his secret key firstly and with the public key of the receiver secondly and afterwards he sends the message. The receiver must decrypt that message first with his own secret key and second with the public key of the sender according to the header. When the message is readable after this double decryption, one can be sure that the message was meant to be received by the decrypting receiver and the message was really sent by the sender named in the header of the message. Thus: double encryption needs the sender identification in order to decrypt the message with the senders public key.
Lessons Learned:
To use double encryption for anonymized electronic communication, new requirements must be specified. In this paper we suggest additional features that network providers must incorporate in the functionality of electronic message handlers. In fact we propose to add some 'intelligence' to the virtual postbox: instead of automatically forwarding, the postbox must now be able to read the sender from the header, select the appropriate public key from that sender, decrypt the message with that public key, replace the senders identification and encrypt the message with its own public key. On the receiver side (the central database) we have to decrypt the message with the secret key of the virtual postbox and after that with the secret key of the central database receiver. This procedure requires the availability of a list with only public keys at the virtual postbox, as well as a program to intervene the electronic communication. Unfortunately, so far none of the network providers is willing or has been able to implement it.
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Integrative Questions:
What is Double Encryption of Anonymized Electronic Data Interchange?
What do the authors mean by "double encryption used twice"?
Is it a robust setup?
What is the problem the authors are trying to solve?
Why is double encryption necessary in this case?
Name of the book:
Name of the Chapter:
Double Encryption of Anonymized Electronic Data Interchange
Quote:
“Collecting medical data electronically requires, according to our moral belief, also some kind of encryption.”
Learning Expectation:
Both the patient identification in the data and the doctor identification in the data must be anonymized. We skip the name and address; only the sex and the month-year of birth will be sent from the doctor to the central database. Even the number of the patient in the doctors database will be replaced, because once the doctor may be a researcher using the central database who recognizes one of the patients based on the number.
Review:
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To be sure that the data are really sent by the sender of the electronic message, the double encryption of PGP is a suitable and widely used protocol. The sender encrypts his message with his secret key firstly and with the public key of the receiver secondly and afterwards he sends the message. The receiver must decrypt that message first with his own secret key and second with the public key of the sender according to the header. When the message is readable after this double decryption, one can be sure that the message was meant to be received by the decrypting receiver and the message was really sent by the sender named in the header of the message. Thus: double encryption needs the sender identification in order to decrypt the message with the senders public key. The problem with an anonymized electronic message is that the senders identification was anonymized by the virtual postbox.
Lessons Learned:
In this paper we suggest additional features that network providers must incorporate in the functionality of electronic message handlers. In fact we propose to add some 'intelligence' to the virtual postbox: instead of automatically forwarding, the postbox must now be able to read the sender from the header, select the appropriate public key from that sender, decrypt the message with that public key, replace the senders identification and encrypt the message with its own public key. On the receiver side (the central database) we have to decrypt the message with the secret key of the virtual postbox and after that with the secret key of the central database receiver. This procedure requires the availability of a list with only public keys at the virtual postbox, as well as a program to intervene the electronic communication. Unfortunately, so far none of the network providers is willing or has been able to implement it. We are building it ourselves first, to convince the technical feasibility.
Integrative Questions:
What is Double Encryption of Anonymized Electronic Data Interchange?
What do the authors mean by "double encryption used twice"?
Is it a robust setup?
What is the problem the authors are trying to solve?
Why is double encryption necessary in this case?
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Name of the Chapter:
Written on the Body: Biometrics Identity
Name of the Book:
Quote:
“Biometrics will soon hold the key to your future, allowing you and only you to access your house, car, finances, medical records and workplace (Biever, Celeste 2005).”
Learning Expectation:
Signature verification is natural and intuitive. The technology is easy to explain and trust. The primary advantage that signature verification systems have over other types of biometric technologies is that signatures are already accepted as the common method of identity verification. This history of trust means that people are very willing to accept a signature based verification system.
Review:
Biometrics is a technology that verifies a person’s identity by measuring a unique-to-the-individual biological trait. Biometric technologies include dynamic signature verification, retinal/iris scanning, DNA identification, face-shape recognition, voice recognition and fingerprint identification. Biometric identification is superior to lower technology identification methods in common use today - namely passwords, PIN numbers, key-cards and smartcards.
Biometrics is the measuring of an attribute or behavior that is unique to an individual person. Biometrics includes measuring attributes of the human body - such as DNA, iris/retina patterns, face shape, and fingerprints - or measuring unique behavioral actions, such as voice patterns and dynamic signature verification.
Before biometrics only physical objects or behaviors based-on-memory were used to identify a computer user. Physical objects include smartcards or magnetic-stripe cards - behaviors based-on- memory includes the act of entering a PIN number or a secret password.
Objects are often lost or stolen and a behavior-based-on-memory is easily forgotten. Both types are often shared. The use of a valid password on a computer network does not mean that an identity is genuine. Identity cannot be guaranteed, privacy is not assumed and inappropriate use cannot be proven or denied. These limitations decrease trust and increase the possibility of fraud. These limitations are at the root of widespread distrust of the Internet, and these limitations are the biggest weakness in true network security.
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Lesson Learned:
Some strengths of using biometrics come from the “distinguishable (rather than unique) physiological and behavioral traits (Chandra, Akhilesh 2005)” that make up one’s body and the ease at which they can be used for identification and authentication. Unlike your passwords, you will not forget your fingerprints, irises, or DNA when you go to work.They are a part of you. They are also extremely distinguishable from another person’s biometrics. This means that they can be used with great confidence. Since they are a part of you they are difficult for another person to obtain or fake. They are also easy to use. All you may have to do is put your finger into a device and it gives you access if you are authorized or denies you if you aren’t.For these reasons and others, biometric systems are becoming more mainstream and commonplace. There are, however, some major weaknesses which need to be considered as biometric systems become more heavily relied upon.
Integrative Questions:
What is the entry-point paradox as defined by Roger Clarke?
In what ways are name, code, knowledge, and token-based identification schemes deficient?
What factors have led to the emergence of a consortium-based specification for a global standard for biometric technologies?
In the context of identity determination and verification, what are the distinctions between a 'one to many' and 'one to one' match?
In what ways are verification and identification procedures inter-dependent?
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Name of the book: Cyber Ethics
Name of the Chapter: Ethical Considerations for the Information Professions
Quote:
“A Physician’s Guide To Medical Writing’, an ideal medical write up framed along ethical considerations,”
Learning Expectation:
The efficiency flowing into this professional stream, promises a brighter and strategically stable future for this industry. But the emergence of certain negative trends in the practice of this profession poses a threat to its ability to deliver quality contents with reliable information.
Review:
Ethical issues are the concerns that address subjects like, content reliability, data collection techniques and presentation tactics, marketing strategy and the relevance of research and development. They play a vital role in relieving the writers of regulatory pressures involved in the process. Properly includes technical exposition on any subject related to medical science, such as biochemistry, pharmacologic studies, sanitation and psychoanalysis”. It is the responsibility of the writer to include necessary technical details under regulatory limitations to establish a level of understanding among the readers. Such ethical responsibilities have to be shared by the writer as well as the client.
The client or the researcher should generate complete information on the academic background of the writer before allotting the assignment. This helps a client to understand the performance level that could be extracted from a writer.
• Regular communication with the writer is an essential condition for the correct formulation of the content.
• It is pivotal for a client to allow proper validation of the content written for him before mass circulation.
Lessons Learned:
Ethical and legal considerations enhance the quality and reliability of the content. It is true that the technical aspects in the profession of medical writing demand constant attention and need to be presented with clarity. In absence of such considerations it will be impossible for the clients to bridge the communication gaps between them and the target audience. It is widely accepted by many
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researchers that legal and ethical issues can play the role of obstacles in the progress of marketing a research as they impose certain limitations on the utilization of research products. But it is important to remember that appropriate observance of these issues can bring momentum in research activities along with assured standards of safety.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is ethical considerations? 2. What is the information professions? 3. What are the activities of ethical? 4. Define ethical considerations? 5. Find the legal and ethical issues?
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Name of the Book: Cyber Ethics
Name of the Chapter: Intellectual Property , Information, and the Common Good
Quote:
"With air pollution there was, for example, a desire of the people living in Denver to see the mountains again. William Ruckelshaus”
Lesson Expectation:
Environment is important to mankind. This article will review how the environment should be preserved for the benefits of the mankind. It will also tackle issues about politics that support environmentalism.
Review:
Ecology and welfare economics were extremely important for the environmental movement. They helped to provide its agenda, its rhetoric and the perception of common interest underneath its coalition politics. Even more interestingly, for my purposes, those ideas -- which began as inaccessible, scientific or economic concepts, far from popular discourse -- were brought into the mainstream of American politics. This did not happen easily or automatically. Popularizing complicated ideas is hard work. There were brilliant books like Silent Spring and A Sand County Almanac, television discussions, documentaries on Love Canal or the California kelp beds, op-ed pieces in newspapers and pontificating experts on TV. Environmental groups both shocking and staid played their part, through the dramatic theatre of a Greenpeace protest, or the tweety respectability of the Audubon society. Where once the idea of "The Environment" (as opposed to 'my lake', say) was seen as a mere abstraction, something that couldn't stand against the concrete benefits brought by a particular piece of development, it came to be an abstraction with both the force of law and of popular interest behind it.
To me, this suggests a strategy for the future of the politics of intellectual property. In both areas, we seem to have the same recipe for failure in the structure of the decision-making process. Decisions in a democracy are made badly when they are primarily made by and for the benefit of a few stake- holders (land-owners or content providers). It is a matter of rudimentary political science analysis or public choice theory to say that democracy works badly when the gains of a particular action can be captured by a relatively small and well-identified group while the losses -- even if larger in aggregate - - are low-level effects spread over a larger, more inchoate group. (This effect is only intensified when the transaction costs of identifying and resisting the change are high.) Think of the costs and benefits of acid rain producing power-generation or -- less serious, but surely similar in form -- the costs and benefits of retrospectively increasing copyright term limits on works for which the copyright had already expired, pulling them back out of the public domain. There are obvious benefits to the heirs and assigns of authors whose copyright has expired, in having the Congress put the fence back up around this portion of the intellectual commons. There are obviously some costs -- for example, to education and public debate -- in not having multiple, competing low cost editions of these works.
Lesson Learned:
Apart from the normal presumption in favor of informed democratic participation in the formation of entire property regimes, I argued that there are particular reasons why this comparative political vacuum is particularly unfortunate. Drawing on some prior work, I claimed that our intellectual property discourse has structural tendencies towards over-protection, rather than under protection. To combat that tendency, as well as to prevent the formation and rigidification of a set of rules crafted by and for the largest stakeholders, I argued that we need a politics of intellectual property.
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Integrative Question:
1. What is intellectual property?
2. What is politics?
3. What is environmentalism?
4. What is ecology?
5. What is welfare economics?
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Name of the Book: Cyber Ethics
Name of the Chapter : Is Copyright Ethical
Quote:
A property right is the relationship between individuals in reference to things. Cohen (1935)
Lesson Expectation:
This paper examines the relationship between intellectual property rights and ethics, focusing for the most part on copyright. The focus is on two key questions: 1) what is the relationship between ethics and copyright law and practice in the United States; and, 2) is the concept of private ownership of intellectual property inherently ethical? These questions are important because access to an overwhelming number of the elements of daily life is now controlled by intellectual property law. Is non-conformance with these laws a calculated risk against being caught, equivalent to parking at a meter beyond the specified time period, or is it a matter of ethics?
Review:
The ethics of copyright can be approached in two ways: (1) If, as Hettinger suggests, every creator stands on the shoulders of giants what is the essential morality in allowing the last contributor to reap the full reward or to have the right to prevent others from building on her contribution; and (2) If, as postulated by Locke, an individual is entitled to what he or she creates, what are the ethics of limiting a creators rights in regards to his or her creation? Theoretically copyright law in the United States takes the first view, stating that authors have no natural right in their creation but only the rights that the state has conferred by reason of policy to encourage the creation of new works (H.R. REP. No. 2222). This approach assumes that the content of products of mind (not the objects in which they are embedded) belong to society as a whole, but that society would benefit more if more such products were available, and that in order to encourage production the creator of such products should be given rights that will allow him or her to reap some economic benefits from the creation. As Branscomb (1984) observed this is encouraging access by legislating scarcity.
Earlier United States copyright law was better aligned with the encouragement theory and the ethical position that creative works belonged to society as a whole. Only the exact copying of a work was prohibited, not new works based on a previous work. Subsequent authors were free to adapt novels to the stage, abridge scholarly works for the masses, and translate works into other languages without paying a license fee to the creator or to whom ever the creator had transferred his or her copyright. However as copyright law has expanded to grant creators more rights the law has all but abandoned the concept of allowing, let alone encouraging, transformative or productive use. Copyright no longer has a consistent theory, let alone an ethical position. It has become what is often called an equitable rule of reason, which attempts to balance the rights of authors with the rights of
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users. It is often not clear whether this balance is to be obtained by granting rights via law or by recognizing the intrinsic rights of each. However, if copyright is indeed only a matter of law there should be no rights other than those granted by the law.
Lesson learned:
Ethics are often raised as well in regard to copying software. The Software Publisher’s Association (SPA), which merged with the Information Industry Association (IIA) in January of 1999 to form the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), offers a guide on Software Use and the Law (SPA 1997) which states it is intended to provide “a basic understanding of the issues involved in ethical software use.
Integrative Question:
1. What is property right? 2. What is copyright? 3. Is copyright unethical? 4. What is Software Publishers’ Association? 5. What is intellectual property?
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Name of the Book: Cyber Ethics
Name of the Chapter: Privacy and Varieties of Informational Wrongdoing
Quote:
"Domain-specific standards regulate activities and relationships in specific domains of social life. Individuating by roles, examples of domains include the family, the educational sytem, the scientific community, the criminal justice system, the medical system, the economic system, the political system, and so forth.
Learning Expectation:
It will provide awareness of the informational wrongdoing. It will also highlight the varieties of informational wrongdoing. It will also define privacy.
Review:
What is especially offensive to our sense of justice, Walzer argues, is the allocation of goods internal to sphere A on the basis of the distributive logic or the allocation scheme associated with sphere B, second, the transfer of goods across the boundaries of separate spheres and thirdly, the dominance and tyranny of some goods over others. In order to prevent this the 'art of separation' of spheres has to be practiced and 'blocked exchanges' between them have to be put in place. If the art of separation is effectively practiced and the autonomy of the spheres of justice is guaranteed then 'complex equality' is established.
The meaning and value of information is local, and allocative schemes and local practices that distribute access to information should accommodate local meaning and should therefore be associated with specific spheres. Many people do not object to the use of their personal medical data for medical purposes, whether these are directly related to their own personal health affairs, to those of their family, perhaps even to their community or the world population at large, as long as they can be absolutely certain that the only use that is made of it is to cure people from diseases. They do object, however, to their medical data being used to disadvantage them socio-economically, to discriminate against them in the workplace, refuse them commercial services, deny them social benefits, or turn them down for mortgages or political office on the basis of their medical records. They do not mind if their library search data are used to provide them with better library services, but they do mind if these data are used to criticize their tastes, and character. They would also object to these informational cross-contaminations when they would benefit from them, as when the librarian would advise them a book on low-fat meals on the basis of knowledge of their medical record and cholesterol values, or a doctor poses questions, on the basis of the information that one has borrowed a book from the public library about AIDS.
We may thus distinguish another form of informational wrongdoing: "informational injustice", that is, disrespect for the boundaries of what we may refer to, following Michael Walzer, as 'spheres of justice' or 'spheres of access'. I think that what is often seen as a violation of privacy is oftentimes more adequately construed as the morally inappropriate transfer of data across the boundaries of what we intuitively think of as separate "spheres of justice" or "spheres of access."
Lesson Learned:
I think that philosophical theories of privacy which account for its importance in terms of the moral autonomy, i.e. the capacity to shape our own moral biographies, to reflect on our moral careers, to evaluate and identify with our own moral choices, without the critical gaze and interference of others and a pressure to conform to the 'normal' or socially desired identities, provides us with a bridging concept between the privacy notion and a liberalist conception of the self. Such a construal of
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privacy's importance, or core value, will limit the range of application of the privacy concept, but may invigorate its value, if the underlying conception of the self should be vindicated. Privacy, conceived along these lines, would only provide protection to the individual in his quality of a moral person engaged in self-definition and self-improvement against the normative pressures.
Integrative Question:
1. What is informational injustice?
2. What is informational inequality?
3. What is privacy?
4. Define the spheres of justice.
5. Define the spheres of access.
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