An Introduction to Issues in Computers, Ethics, and Policy Gordon Hull
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An Introduction to Issues in Computers, Ethics, and Policy Gordon Hull * Note: The following text is complete except for chapter 6, “Subjectivity and Sovereignty” and a brief conclusion, both to be inserted. (GH, 8/13/00)* © 2000, all rights reserved. Chapter V: Computers and Crime - Dark sides of the Internet................................ An Introduction to Issues in Computers, Ethics and Policy Denial of Service Attacks..................................... 80 TABLE OF CONTENTS Mail Order Brides and Prostitution ....................... 83 Analysis and Discussion....................................... 85 Table of Contents .......................................................1 Federal Computer Crime Legislation..................... 87 Pornography........................................................ 89 Chapter I: Introduction ................................................2 Technology and Society: The Scope of the Topic .....2 Select Bibliography .................................................. 95 Ethics, Law, Policy, and Politics .............................7 Works Cited: Article s and Books .......................... 95 What, then, is “Computer Ethics”............................9 Works Cited: Court Decisions .............................100 A note on Argument............................................. 11 Chapter II: Philosophical Ethics................................. 13 Foundations ......................................................... 13 First Foundation: Consequences............................ 16 Second Foundation: Human Dignity...................... 23 Rights ................................................................. 28 Professional Ethics............................................... 31 Chapter III: Intellectual Property ............................... 37 What is Law?....................................................... 37 Property and Contracts ......................................... 40 The U.S. Legal System and Jurisdiction ................ 43 Patents ................................................................ 48 Trademark........................................................... 52 The Anti-Cybersquatting Act................................ 56 Copyright............................................................ 57 Chapter IV: Privacy.................................................. 65 Where does this dilemma come from? “Panopticism” and other ideas ................................................................... 68 Privacy as a concept............................................. 73 Privacy – What is to be done?............................... 76 Privacy as an International Issue ........................... 78 2 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION of the most difficult problems emerge precisely when our ethical theories do not seem to fit developments in technology and its This is a book about “computers, ethics and policy.” It is general diffusion. This is the space for critical thinking: for not a book of “computer ethics,” and in it, you will not find lists of developing the resources to think about ethics, and to make rules for how ethical people use computers, or formulae for how to educated, informed decisions about what to do. Critical thinking is decide if a given computing practice is or is not ethical. Rather, by a process and not a result; developing skills in critical thinking is putting an “and” between the terms of the title, I intend to indicate not a matter of the memorization of tables or for mula. It is a matter the intersection of several different topics.1 On the one hand, there of continual effort and practice. Additionally, because many of the is ethics, understood as the philosophical study of how people ought situations presented to us by computer technology do not have to relate to one another. On the other hand, there is the set of precise analogues in the physical, “bricks and mortar” world of phenomena called by such words as “information technology,” the traditional ethical theory, it will be very difficult to know for sure “computer revolution,” the “information superhighway,” and other what the “right thing to do” is. In such cases, the best we can hope such popular buzzwords. The social attempt to deal with these for is to have as many people as possible who are capable of phenomena results in various policies. Any of these topics can be thinking carefully about the issues at hand.2 studied on its own. However, studying them together presents a number of difficult and troubling questions. This is a book about Technology and Society: The Scope of the Topic some of the questions which emerge when one tries to think about Unless you have been hiding under a rock for some time, both computers and ethics together, and when one then tries to you will have heard that computers are important and that their establish policies and institutions that reflect this thinking. widespread use has implications for all of society. Lots of people In this sense, it is a book more about “critical thinking” than offer fantastic sounding propositions about how wonderful or how it is a book of “applied ethics,” assuming that applied ethics is the bad our world will be as a result of computer technology. Bill Joy, enterprise of adapting general principles of ethical theory to the founder of Sun Microsystems, surprised many with his dystopic specialized situations – business, medicine, and so forth. It can and predictions in the April, 2000 issue of Wired magazine. The should be extended to the study of computers and computing surprise in Joy’s case was not that he predicted that technology technology. However, without passing judgment on the viability of would cause problems. It was – as he took considerable effort to applied ethics in general, it seems that one should note that many of point out – that he is himself one of the “insiders,” one of the the ethical problems which emerge with computer technology do creators of the computer society. After detailing some apocalyptic not seem to fit traditional ethical categories very well. Indeed, some scenarios involving genetic engineering gone awry and uncontrollable “nanotechnology,” he suggests that: 1 I owe the conjunctive phrase “computers and ethics” (rather than “computer ethics”) to Professor Stephen R. Schach, whose “computers and 2 The study of computer ethics does not require or presuppose an extensive ethics” course I TA’d. The “and policy” reflects my sense of the pressing familiarity with computer technology. One needs to know what people can urgent reality of the topic. do with computers, but it is less important (in most cases) to know how. 2 The question is, indeed, Which is to be master? rather a matter of addressing the social issues brought on by this Will we survive our technologies? We are being human creation. 5 propelled into this new century with no plan, no Whether or not one believes that computer ethics is a topic control, no brakes. Have we already gone too far of universal proportions, it is an important topic. Money is not the down the path to alter course? I don’t believe so, only thing of value in the world, but the presence of a large amount but we aren’t trying yet, and the last chance to of it some place generally is a good sign that people think that place assert control – the fail-safe point – is rapidly is important. In this regard, some economic figures might help to approaching.3 indicate just how important people think computer and information technology is and is going to be. As with all printed statistics about the computer industry, these will be dated by the time you read Pronouncements such as Joy’s offer at least two occasions for them. But they should at least give a sense of the scale of the issues critical thought. First, of course, is the implicit ethical challenge: involved. Joy thinks that the human species as a whole lacks the ethical values According to a June, 2000 Department of Commerce report, to handle the technology it is creating, and that the survival of “Americans have definitively crossed into a new era of economic humanity depends on rapidly developing those values. Second, and and social experience bound up in digitally-based technological this is the point that is more striking at the moment, one needs the changes that are producing new ways of working, new means and critical skills to evaluate such apocalyptic claims. Both apocalyptic manners of communicating, new goods and services, and new forms and utopian claims about computers and technology are very easy to of community.”6 By 1997, the United States was spending roughly find. Neither is of any help at all unless they can be read critically; claims such as “there will never again be any moment in life with 5 privacy” are not very helpful unless one can know how and why This point is emphasized particularly in Lawrence Lessig, Code and other they might be true.4 More than with many other topics, the world of Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999). One should also underscore that the “market” within which computer technology operates is computer technology is, after all, a human creation, which means also a human creation, and operates by means of and through the structures that very little about it is a matter of pre-ordained necessity. It is (legal and otherwise) in which products are bought and sold. On this point, see also James Boyle, Shamans, Software and Spleens (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1996), 89 (“there is no ‘natural,’ unregulated state of affairs. Without the rules of contract, tort,