Ethical Dilemma- Chapter 6

Consider the scenario in which a group of your fellow students approach you to see whether you are interested in participating in a project that is intended to be a commercial venture. The group has come up with a novel approach to obtaining large number of e-mail addresses. This requires the development of some software, and once this is used, it will be possible to develop a very extensive e-mail address list.

Subsequently, this information is to be sold to companies involved in spam advertising. You voice some initial reservations based upon your concern that this may not be entirely legal/ethical. However, you are assured that the software will only be used to obtain e-mail addresses for people who are normally based overseas – specifically in third world countries. Since the team is to be based in the UK and the software is going to be used to locate e-mail addresses that are normally based outside the UK, you are assured that you will be breaking no UK law.

How would you proceed? Do you consider that this is a legal/ethical undertaking? In that case that you are not entirely happy with the possible ethical aspects of this venture (but you are satisfied that you will not be breaking UK law), would you still be willing to participate if the level of remuneration is sufficient? At what point would personal remuneration override any ethical reservations that you may have?

Let us suppose that you do become involved in this undertaking but that you subsequently find that the software that you helped to develop is not only being used to locate e-mail addresses that are normally based outside the UK, but in addition e-mail addresses within the UK, and these are being sold on to companies who specialize in spam advertising? Does this compromise your legal position?

 Reaction:

Though I know that I will not break any law in UK, I will never engage myself developing such a kind of software. It is simply because it is beyond my conscience and personal legal position. What if the software we developed will be used for illegal matters and operations? If we have to consider and foresee some possible things may happen like using the software in UK as well, covertly, I'm pretty sure that I will never find myself guilty if predicament and disorder arises. 

Ethical Dilemma- Chapter 5

Let us suppose that you are employed by a company that develops websites for clients. One day your boss presents you with a new project. In brief, your company has obtained a contract from a law enforcement agency to develop several websites. These are to act in line with the 'honeypot' scenario mentioned in the previous chapter. The project being undertaken by the law enforcement agency is to gather information in relation to individuals who may be 'interested' in extreme forms of violence. By developing this website you will be assisting the law enforcement agencies who will gather material in relation to people who peruse the site.


What is your ethical position? Do you think this is an appropriate agenda in terms of invisibly policing the internet? Since your boss has presented you with this brief, in the case that you do not agree with the ramifications of policing the internet in this way, do you have any political alternative but to undertake the work? (Here we assume that your boss is insitent that the work should be carried out by you.) What - if any - real objections do you have? DO you feel this is encroaching upon the liberty of the individual? Are your views be any different if the website related directly to terrorism or other forms of political extremism? To what extent do you think that the internet is currently being policed - not only in terms of monitoring those who enter particular websites or who enter contentious chat room areas or the like?

If you are employed to a certain company and you are task to do for example a certain website, you are forced to do it even without your free will. There will be two circumstances if you will neglect the task assign to you, either your boss will agree and find someone who will do the work for you or he/she insisted you to do the task. Since you are engaged you must follow instructions and follow your boss though you don’t have your privacy and will this time. There is really an encroaching upon the liberty of the individual (employee) if the boss will really insist. On the other hand if the website was related to terrorism or other forms of political extremism we would surely do the website. If the website will be useful to track the terrorism of a country or a nation it will certainly help the economy and the site will be for the good cause of the people so why not do the website.

As we all know internet has no boundaries, though there are countries like United Kingdom who strictly provide law for using the internet there is lots of country especially the Philippines who doesn’t have a secure law being practiced. We don’t have enough law and regulations when we talked about internet here in the Philippines that’s why there is a rampant crimes involving the use of internet.

Ethical Dilemma- Chapter 4

Is Alice guilty for plagiarism? Why?

Yes, because Alice only makes a few alterations for it which is she only changes the places of diagram. Alice also reproduce this without obtaining any permission.

As stated Copyright is the right to make and distribute copies to perform or display the work in public, and to produce derivative works, such as translations into other languages  there are factors that need to be considered in deciding whether an organization or the company involve  has a fair use of the copyright material. The following factors are:

•  Purpose of the use (whether it is educational or commercial)

• Nature of the work being copied (whether it is fictional, or factual news)

•  Amount of material being copied (whether the whole articles have been copied or portions of those articles, and whether students are able to make multiple copies)

• The effect the copying will have on the market for journal sales. Will it infringe the market for the journals from which these articles are taken

• permission must been sought from the authors or publishers of the articles. Permission must be granted for the use of any copyright material. 

this factors are also  applicable in copyrighting software.