Ethics in Cyberspace - Essay Example

Cyber ethics Cyber ethics Over the few years, communication and information technology has come to play a progressively pivotal role in people’s dealings with one another. Computers, have made accessible a host of contemporary ways of people’s interaction with one another, which we have more and more made use of. In the awakening of this progress, various ethical queries have come up and have been debated. Ethics in Cyberspace concentrates on the impacts of ethical activity of mediating communication through computers, in quest of to clarification of how the situations of certain ways of interaction in cyberspace different from the situations of interacting face-to-face and how these diversities might come to affect the conduct of interacting agents when it comes to ethics (Spinello, 2006, p.10). This is known to be the study of code of ethics that are used pertaining computer networking and what behavior should be expected in such cases. It also deals with what computer is networks are used and how they are programmed (Richtel, 2004, p.22). This affects all computer users and the community at large. Some of ethics that will be dealt with, is how ethical it is to display people’s personal information, or their location like some networking programmes do. Others will be things like ownership of data, security, privacy and freedom among others (Spinello 2006, p.12). Thesis: putting harmless virus in the internet for the purposes of seeing how fast the virus will spread is more acceptable than selling a customer’s information to a competing company. The act of customer Data protection re quires one to process the information in a confidential manner and breaking the act will result one to facing criminal charges. It is, therefore, important for one to handle customer’s confidential information with high integrity and confidentiality. The need to process individual data lawfully and fairly is set out in the data protection act and is among the principles at the core of data protection. The main reason for these principles is to safeguard the interests of the persons whose confidential data is being handled by other people. These principles apply to nearly everything one does with individual data, in exception of where one is at liberty for an exemption (McGowan, 2007, p.56; Reynolds, 2010, p.1). For a customer who has many competitors, it is important to have his or her information guarded highly from the competitors. This is because failure to protect this confidential information would result to very negative consequences. For instance, the client can lose customers if his methods of maintaining clients are leaked to his competitors. Moreover, the competitors can use the confidential information to fight the company out of the market. This is not acceptable because it can affect the customer directly and can be very costly. Furthermore, selling out customer’s information to a competing marketing company would jeopardize the customer’s loyalty and trust to the people who work for him (Herman, 2010, p. 23-78; Bott, 2010, p.7-22). Releasing harmless viruses in the Internet for the purposes of discovered how fast the virus will spread, is more acceptable than selling out customer’s information to a competing marketing company. For the last six years, viruses have brought a bout baffling amount of destruction because of loss of resources and time. For many users, the expression, computer virus refers to a synonym of the most horrible nightmares that can occur on their system. Up till now, famous experts keep saying that it is probable to use the duplication device of the viral programs for some beneficial and useful purpose (Lee & Peace, 2004, p.28). It is normally regarded unethical to change other people’s information without their consent. In most countries, this is also illegitimate and, therefore, a virus that performs similar actions will be taken to be illegal or unethical in spite of any constructive result, it could bring to the machines which are infected. At times, this issue is apparent to the users as the virus producer claims to be more informed than them on what software the users ought to run on their machine. Usually, there has to be a person who should take the fall in case this information is not right and in case there is a wrong use of such information. The information should be accurate and should not cause harm to anyone. There are populace who distort good information for personal purposes and not caring as to who gets hurts in the belief of the false information being believed (Ess, 2009, 23). Furthermore, in most cases, changing a certain program could mean that ownership, copyright, or technical support liberties for this program are not valid (Quinn, n.d., 1). Therefore, spreading harmless virus on the internet is more acceptable because it does not necessarily affect victims directly. The virus could be harmless and therefore, it might not affect the users in any way. Secondly, the fact that one would be spreading the virus to see how fast it can spread could for the benefit of the internet users. For instance, this person would be experimenting on ways of dealing with virus spread over many users. So this practice might not essentially be seen as unethical (Herman, 2010). In addition, the action of spreading the virus could be for the purposes of devising a new anti-virus, which is supposed to safeguard computers from different virus forms. It is well known that certain computer viruses are modeled to work, not just in virgin environments of programs that can be infected, but also on systems that incorporate competitor viruses and anti-virus programs. Therefore, releasing the harmless virus could be more acceptable than releasing confidential information to a competing company because the action could be to the advantage of the computer users (Herman, 2010, p.30-47). Moreover, releasing virus on the network is more acceptable because experts can come up with applications which can be used to safeguard users from these illegal spreads. These are applications can be used to control or filter information passed on to users of computer networks. This is what makes some information not to be easily found or accessed without circumvention; that is elaborate or on a level, where business and personal information is obtained. This is done by use of content-control software which filters the information that seems to be out to cause harm to people or certain age groups who should not view it. This is where people argue whether it is better to have people access information on certain levels, or should the information be regulated in terms of where it is directed. There are groups which have been introduced to bring awareness on accessibility (Akdeniz, 2001, p.3; Scheider, 2010, pp.109-145). Again, filtering and censoring of information is happening all the way from small scale to large scale business industries. This is where benefits are considered in various places and the information released depending of the analysis made by regulating bodies. An example is where censorship of certain information, which is done by Golden Shield Project in China or bodies such as League Against Racism and Antisemitism also known as LICRA where they control access to certain information online or offline (Warren 1998; Network Working Group, 1989, 2). Therefore, the release of computer viruses can be prevented in order to stop Internet users from being harmed, unlike the selling of customer’s information to the competitors who can have permanent damage on the customer (Barlow, 1996, pp. 40-46; Harris, 2003, p.34-93). Conclusion Even, though, selling a client’s information without telling the customer and releasing harmless virus on the network are both unethical, it is clear that the latter is more acceptable due to the impact. This can be analyzed from the effect side of each action. Just as, we have discussed above, most of these ethics deal with freedom involved in communicating certain information as one of people’s rights. However, this should not be at the expense of safety of others in the community. This means that there ought to be a border line as to where the restriction on using cyber space reaches, and they should be well thought and applied. One can clearly see the releasing seemingly useful program, which is, in fact, a harmless virus for download on a Website is more acceptable than selling out customer’s confidential information third party marketing companies, without telling the customers because the latter can have permanent damage on the affected person. In addition, release of computer virus is more acceptable because the situation can be reversed unlike the release of confidential information. Bibliography Akdeniz, Y. 2001.Case Analysis of League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA), French Union of Jewish Students, v Yahoo! Inc. (USA), Yahoo France, Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris (The County Court of Paris), Interim Court Order, 20 November 2000 http://www.cyber-rights.org/. 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