Issue 10.3 • Spring 2004 Ethics and Computer Science
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Issue 10.3 • Spring 2004 Ethics and Computer Science CROSSROADS STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: William Stevenson, Pennsylvania State University Ethics and Computer Science Spring 2004 — Issue 10.3 MANAGING EDITOR: Jeremy Lanman, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University COLUMNS & REVIEWS COPY EDITOR: Parag Mallick, University of California, Los Angeles INTRODUCTION 2 by Jeremy T. Lanman ONLINE EDITOR: Jose´ Campos, HOULD OMPUTER CIENTISTS ORRY BOUT THICS Coimbra University S C S W A E ? 3 DON GOTTERBARN SAYS, “YES!” ASSISTANT ONLINE EDITOR: by Saveen Reddy Durga Prasad Pandey, Indian School of Mines ASSOCIATE EDITORS: FEATURES Gary Glasscock, Campbellsville University USING SOFTWARE WATERMARKING TO DISCOURAGE PIRACY Jerry Guo, Riverside High School 8 by Ginger Myles Brandon Lewis, Centre College THE EFFECTS OF PIRACY IN A UNIVERSITY SETTING Mina Radhakrishnan, 12 by Joseph Nyiri Cornell University Lisa Sehannie, MULTILEVEL SECURITY:PRIVACY BY DESIGN Kennesaw State University 17 by Stephany Filimon Melissa Stange, Nova Southeastern University ETHICAL LESSONS LEARNED FROM COMPUTER SCIENCE 23 by Richard Bergmair SPANISH EDITOR: Paulo Lama, American College for Computer & Information Sciences GRAPHICS EDITOR: José Campos, Coimbra University REVIEWERS: Christian Collberg, Contact ACM and Order Today! Phone: 1.800.342.6626 (USA/Canada) Postal Address: ACM Member Services University of Arizona +1.212.626.0500 (outside USA/Canada) P.O. Box 11405 Lee Hollaar, Fax: +1.212.944.1318 New York, NY 10286-1405 USA University of Utah Internet: http://store.acm.org/acmstore Please note the offering numbers for fulfilling claims or single order purchase below. Richard Lejk, University of North Carolina Copyright 2004 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part of at Charlotte this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page or initial Anne Marchant, screen of the document. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be George Mason University honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, Suzanne Wagner, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept., ACM Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or [email protected]. Niagra University Crossroads is distributed free of charge over the internet. It is available from: OFFERING #XRDS0103 http://www.acm.org/crossroads/ ISSN#: 1528-4981 (PRINT) Articles, letters, and suggestions are welcomed. For submission information, please contact 1528-4982 (ELECTRONIC) [email protected]. Introduction by Jeremy T. Lanman “Commitment to ethical professional conduct is While the first three articles use ethics to study computer expected of every member (voting members, associate science, in our final article, “Ethical Lessons Learned from members, and student members) of the Association Computer Science,” Richard Bergmair turns the tables and for Computing Machinery (ACM) [1].” uses computer science techniques to study ethics itself. Bergmair describes an AI that makes decisions about the On October 16, 1992, the ACM adopted the ACM Code of notions of “right” and “wrong” after having a basic set of Ethics and Professional Conduct. This code consists of “24 ethics and logical rules pertaining to them programmed in. imperatives formulated as statements of personal responsi- While the article is mainly a thought experiment, it serves bility.” They address various issues that computing profes- as an interesting introduction to philosophical issues. sionals are likely to face. The feature articles in this issue on Ethics and Computer Science relate to Section 1 of the ACM Nearly ten years ago, Crossroads featured the interview, code on “General Moral Imperatives,” and more specifically, “Should Computer Scientists Worry About Ethics? Don to the subsections describing property rights, giving proper Gotterbarn Says, ‘Yes!,’” in an issue on Computers and credit for intellectual property, and respecting the privacy of Society. At that time, one of our editors, Saveen Reddy, inter- others (sections 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7, respectively) [1]. viewed Professor Don Gotterbarn, a computer and informa- tion science professor at East Tennessee State University. In the first article, “Using Software Watermarking to Discour- Gotterbarn described the many issues on ethics in computer age Piracy,” Ginger Myles provides insight into software piracy science and their social concerns at that time. It is interest- and copyright infringement. She describes how techniques ing to notice that many of the same concerns on moral such as software watermarking protect software from piracy responsibility ten years ago continue to be relevant today. by embedding various unique identifiers into programs in order to discourage the illegal distribution of software copies. As demonstrated in our feature articles, there are many issues that are constantly debated in the realm of ethics in Given that many of our readers are university students, the computer science. Living in the Information Age, we will all next article is of great interest. The author, Joseph Nyiri, have to face issues of intellectual property, piracy, and pri- tackles the issue of music piracy in his article, “The Effects vacy not only as computing professionals, but as responsi- of Piracy in a University Setting.” Nyiri discusses file sharing ble citizens of our society. and related intellectual property laws such as copyrights on song files. Moreover, he provides the views and opinions of References various groups including university students and officials, 1 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM Code of Ethics and lawyers and political activists, and the infamous Recording Professional Conduct. http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html Industry Association of America (RIAA). (Oct. 1992). Although piracy issues are very important, security is also a major topic in ethical discussions. Thus, we turn our atten- Biography tion to privacy. Much has evolved in the information world Jeremy T. Lanman ([email protected], http://www.elanman.org) is cur- as a result of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on rently a systems engineer at Lockheed-Martin Corporation in Wash- the United States. These changes are, more specifically, in ington, D.C., and an adjunct professor in the Information and Software terms of increased intelligence data and communications Engineering department at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He monitoring. In her article, “Multilevel Security: Privacy by will continue with PhD studies in Spring 2004. He earned an MS in Design,” Stephany Filimon provides insight into protection Software Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in of privacy, and describes various models that may be used Daytona Beach, FL in April 2003, and a BS in Computer Science and to find patterns in data in order to identify user behavior Mathematics from Butler University in Indianapolis, IN in May 2001. while preventing access to specific individual user profiles. Jeremy’s research interests include software engineering concepts, real- Furthermore, she explains how various ethical issues are time systems, requirements engineering, and software architecture. debated between political figures, policy groups, the intelli- Jeremy currently serves as Managing Editor of Crossroads. gence community, and civil rights activists. 2 Crossroads Spring 2004 Should Computer Scientists Worry About Ethics? Don Gotterbarn Says, “Yes!” by Saveen Reddy In computer science, why should we take any particular I’m confused about your use of “ethical” and then “moral.” pains to consider social issues? There are a number of I’m not being a good philosopher here and maintaining the arguments. One is that as you gain special knowledge and distinction between ethics and morals. When you talk about special talent in society, along with that power comes ethics, you tend to talk about a public system of human responsibility to use it for the good of that society—many interactions recognized as appropriate for some group. So, people in computing have not even raised the issue of social people can talk about professional ethics as a generally responsibility. They have bought into the view that compu- agreed upon set of behaviors for a particular group. ter science is a theoretical discipline with no moral conse- Physicians have a public system of medical ethics, and quences. Some argue that ethics is irrelevant to theoretical because they face many confusing and tough questions, disciplines. You don’t find an ethics of mathematics course. they publish opinions of other physicians about them every You might find an ethics of statistics course. I’m not talking year in the AMA Code of Ethics, Current Opinions. It gives about whether statisticians are moral or not. I’m talking you examples of how to apply the code of ethics to tough about the highly likely possibility that there can be ethical cases. It is public and demonstrable. Engineers have a code applications of statistics. A theoretician might say “What do of ethics. Folks don’t realize that the ACM has a wonderful you mean ethical applications? You either do statistics or code of ethics accompanied by guidelines for professional you don’t.” When you talk about computer science and practice. The guidelines