The impact of computer ethics on my research project

Since I am going to progress to DMU and study cybersecurity, the topic of computing ethics is essential and important to me. My research project in Computer Skills and Research module is about passwords and the ways of authentication in general. Such topic is an important issue in industry mostly due to the violation of computer ethics by a number of users either because of harmful intends or the lack of knowledge in computer security.

(Magnificentexceptionalaeb, 2017)

 

The Ten Commandments of computer ethics have been defined by the Computer Ethics Institute. My project covers mostly all of them, since the user with bad intends can exploit weak passwords in a multiple ways such as stealing the work of other people, causing harm to individuals and communities, stealing valuable physical and/or virtual goods as well as intellectual property. However, some exploits are still not well-regulated by law and could not be seen in the jurisprudential field. Therefore, the only way of judging for example social network intrusion due to bad password is computer ethics (Weckert, 2007).

This blog post is dedicated to the amendment 8:

Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output: Copying somebody else’s program without proper authorisation is software piracy and is unethical. Intellectual property is a form of ownership, and may be protected by copyright laws.

This statement is the topic of a number of discussions online, since there is a group of people who think that all information on the internet should belong to everyone (Einar, 2007). Those people claim that information itself must be free and available to every person. Therefore, such people do not recognise intellectual property and do not hesitate to execute attacks with the intent to steal and then distribute intellectual property online. The summary of such ideas can be expressed in one sentence – information wants to be free.

Firstly, such attitude does not withstand any proper discussion, since it is obvious to every educated person that information nowadays is not seen as a raw resource, but as product of intellectual effort and work of people. People do have right to protect their intellectual property – the product they have made. Moreover, the idea of taking the product of intellectual work from the author is deeply unethical and could not be justified from the position of morality (Einar, 2007).

Secondly, intellectual property should not only be protected by law, but also with the attitude of the society towards this particular issue. Computer ethics help a lot of people to stay conscious and to resist the idea of using the product of intellectual effort of other people without permission, since a lot of unlicenced software can be found online. It is necessary to understand that every person who violates intellectual property rights causes harm not only to the developer, but significantly demotivates potential developers of future products, hence speeds the progress of all the humankind down.

In conclusion, protecting information and intellectual property rights is the duty of every conscious person. As a potential employee in cybersecurity field, I do recognise this issue as one of the most important today, since the cost of information is getting higher every day and the cost of getting information is decreasing. Information requires proper protection as well as it requires facilities where it can be legally spread.

Reference:

Einar, K. (2007) Internet security: hacking, counterhacking, and society. London: Jones and Bartlett.

Magnificentexceptionalaeb (2017) Constructive Summary: Reason, Relativity, and Responsibility in Computer Ehics [Online]. Available at: https://magnificentexceptionalaeb.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/first-quiz-march-1-2017/ (Accessed: 2 November 2021).


Weckert, J. (2007) Computer Ethics. 1st edn. London: Routledge.