This document defines key terms in ethics like deontology, utilitarianism, and contractarian theories. It discusses debates around issues like privacy, intellectual property, and censorship. It outlines threats to privacy from public data availability, commercial and government tracking. Issues with intellectual property include copyright, copyleft movements, and cybercrime damages. The document also discusses codes of ethics for computing like the Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics.

1. ethics, definitions & theories
Author of presentation
Itobore Oshobe
Supervisor Dr. Arkaduiz Liber
March 2012

2. Agenda
• Definition of terms
• Ethical theories
• Debatable issues
– Privacy encroachment issues
• Threats to privacy
– Property protection & criminal issue
• Intellectual e.g. patent& copyright law
• cybercrimes
– Personal and social issues
• Codes of Ethics in Computing

3. Defintions
Introduction
• Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with
questions of value, i.e., judgments about what human
behavior is "good" or "bad" in any given situation.
Ethics are the standards, values, morals, principles,
etc., which are used to base one's decisions or actions
on; often there is no clear "right" or "wrong" answer.
• For example, how would you decide which person
should live or die?

4. The Source of Ethics
• In moral realism, ethical principles are
thought to have objective foundations;
that is, they are not based on subjective
human reasoning.
• In moral relativism (also known as
situational ethics), ethical issues are
thought to be subjective.

5. Grounding principles of Moral systems
• Religion
– Murder is wrong because it offends God
– hard to apply in a pluralistic society
• Law
– Murder is wrong because it violates the law.
• In theory: Laws applies equally to all members in a
society
• Actual :Laws are not uniform boundaries
• are some laws are morally wrong e.g. death penalty
• Philosophy
– Murder is wrong because it is wrong.
– An act is wrong inherently or because of social
consequences

6. Foundation
• Different Approaches to Ethical Issues
• Deontological theories
• Utilitarian theories
• Contractarian theories
• Ethical Egoism
– The widely accepted principles used in modern society
– However ethical egoism is not widely accepted but basis for
discussion

7. Utilitarian theory
• Utilitarianism is the belief that if an action is good it
benefits someone and an action is bad if it harms
someone.
• Act Utilitarianism is the belief that an action is good if
its overall effect is to produce more happiness than
unhappiness.
• Rule Utilitarianism is the belief that we should adopt a
moral rule and if followed by everybody, would lead to
a greater level of overall happiness

8. Deontology
• Immanuel Kant’s moral theory
• Deontological Ethics : is the belief
that people’s actions are to
be guided by moral laws,
and that these moral laws
are universal
Cited as a basis for the most
laws

9. Contractarian theories
Social contract
• is the concept that for a society to arise and
maintain order, a morality based set of rules
must be agreed upon
• Social contract theory has influenced modern
government and is heavily involved with
societal law
• Used to govern the forfeiture of right. Such as
the right to be free i.e. if you violate the law
you go to prison

10. Ethical Egoism
• Nicollo Machiavelli
• (The Prince) - rationalization of war
• “Machiavelism”
"The end justifies the means"
• is the ethical position that moral
agents ( people or organizations) ought to do
what is in their own self-interest

11. The Role of Ethics
What are ethics?
Ethics are the rules we use to determine the right
and wrong things to do in our lives.
Normative ethics involves determining a norm of
ethical rule that underlies ethical behavior.
Applied ethics refers to the application of
normative ethical beliefs to real-life issues.

12. What Is Computer Ethics?
Ethical judgments are no different in the area of
computing from those in any other are, as
computers raise problems of privacy, ownership,
theft and power, to name but a few examples.
Computer ethics: The study of ethical issues that
are associated primarily with computing
machines and the computing profession
– A branch of applied ethics

13. Typical problem of computer ethics
• “A typical problem in computer
ethics arises because there is a policy
vacuum about how computer technology
should be used.” james h. moor
Computers technology is “malleable” i.e can
be shaped or molded to do any activity .

14. Privacy encroachment issues
• Threats to Privacy
– Public Information Availability
– Commercial compromise of Privacy
– Government compromise of Privacy
– Workplace compromise of Privacy

15. Public Information Availability
– Few laws regulate selling personal information.
– Person specific advertising and sales
– “Data broker” Database companies comb personal
information such as birth records ,marriage licenses
website registration forms information criminal and
provide this information to anyone with a credit card
and access to the Web.

16. Commercial compromise of Privacy
Tracking and identification technologies
• Cookies
– They can also be used to record user interests and preferences,
which can then be used by companies to target advertisements.
• Global Unique Identifiers in hardware and software
• E.g. office 97 and 2000 used to identify users removed in
subsequent version
• Location Tracking
– Apple is watching you – the iphone tracking fiasco of
2010 bug or feature test?
• facial recognition on social sites

17. Government compromise of Privacy
right of privacy vs. law enforcement
Eavesdropping
– To better monitor e-mail messages, the FBI Internet wiretap
programs named Omnivore, Carnivore, and DCS1000.
Encryption Restrictions
– Encryption software makes it harder for the government to
monitor e-mail messages.
– The FBI has warned that its role in protecting the nation will
be negatively affected by this.

18. Workplace compromise of Privacy
• Employer vs. employee point of view
• Laws do not protect employees from being monitored
by their employers.
• Companies are rightly concerned about employees
conduct:
– Giving trade secrets to competitors
– Creating sexual harassment lawsuits by circulating offensive
jokes via e-mail
• Can prevent “whistle- blowing”
– What happens when employer is the government e.g. Bradley
manning

19. Property Protection Issues
• Intellectual property
– Copyright & trademarks
• Anti-copyright
– Copyleft Movement
• Damage Due to cybercrimes

20. Intellectual Property
• A copyright protects artistic and literary
endeavors.
Ethical debatable issues
• Knowledge: private greed Vs. public good.
• Profit vs. affordability E.g. suspension of copyright laws
• Freedom of expression and access to information
• Ownership rights vs. Right to communicate: share and
learn in a globalized world.

21. Anti-copyright
• Anti-copyright
– refers to the complete or partial opposition to
prevalent copyright laws
• Groups advocating the abolition of
copyright
– Pirate Cinema, The League of Noble
Peers, Association des audionautes,
Kopimism Church of New Zealand.

22. CopyLeft Movement
• Copyleft
• is a play on the word copyright
• the practice of using copyright law to offer the
right to distribute copies and modified versions
of a work and requiring that the same rights be
preserved in modified versions of the work
– The GNU General Public License, originally written
by Richard Stallman, was the first copyleft license to
see extensive use

23. Damage Due to cybercrimes
Host of cybercrimes Activities
– Malicious software
• Computer Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses
– Fraud and Theft (including identity theft)
– Forgery(document & identity)
– Blackmail
– Denial of Service Attack (DoS)
Weapons for “Good” ?
E.g. Stuxnet & flame virus aimed to end Iran
nuclear proliferation because is violated U.N
treaty

24. Personal and Social Issues
Freedom of speech

25. Protecting Freedom of Speech
• Hate speech sites against people of certain races,
religions, or beliefs.
• Cyberbullying
• sending disrespectful texts, e-mail messages, or photos.
• Not a crime to insult someone. Very controversial topic to
prosecute
• Pornography contain sexually explicit material
• Not only commercial
• e.g Sexting mostly by teens .
• Trending even in the FBI
• “FBI battling 'rash of sexting' among its employees”. CNN
article headline.

26. Codes of Ethics in Computing
There are many examples of ethical code currently
published that can be tailored to fit any organization
Three well known examples of Code of Ethics for IT
professionals are listed below:
• RFC 1087 by the Internet Architecture Board
• The Code of Fair Information Practices by the U.S.
Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
• Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics defined in
1992 by the Computer Ethics Institute

27. Codes of Ethics in Computing
Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics
• Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
• Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
• Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's computer files.
• Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
• Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
• Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
• Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
• Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
• Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are
designing.
• Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans

28. Questions