Michael J. Quinn - Ethics for the Information Age

7th edition

7th edition

Editorial Director, ECS Marcia Horton
Acquisitions Editor Matt Goldstein
Editorial Assistant Kristy Alaura
Executive Marketing Manager Tim Galligan
Director of Marketing Christy Lesko
Product Marketing Manager Bram van Kempen
Field Marketing Manager Demetrius Hall
Marketing Assistant Jon Bryant
Team Lead Program and Product Management Scott Disanno
Program Manager Carole Snyder
Cover Designer Joyce Consentino Wells
Text Designer Sandra Rigney
Manager, Text Permissions Tim Nicholls
Text Permission Project Manager Maya Gomez
Media Project Manager Renata Butera
Full-Service Project Management Cypress Graphics, Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Printer/Binder R. R. Donnelley/Harrisonburg
Text Fonts Minion and Nofret

Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, appear on the appropriate page in the text.

Copyright 2017, 2015, 2013, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission(s) to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, or you may fax your request to 201-236-3290.

Many of the designations by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial caps or all caps.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

ISBN 10: 0-13-429654-0

ISBN 13: 978-0-13-429654-8

Computers and high-speed communication networks are transforming our world. These technologies have brought us many benefits, but they have also raised many social and ethical concerns. My view is that we ought to approach every new technology in a thoughtful manner, considering not just its short-term benefits, but also how its long-term use will affect our lives. A thoughtful response to information technology requires a basic understanding of its history, an awareness of current information-technology-related issues, and a familiarity with ethics. I have written Ethics for the Information Age with these ends in mind.

Ethics for the Information Age is suitable for college students at all levels. The only prerequisite is some experience using computers and the Internet. The book is appropriate for a stand-alone computers and society or computer ethics course offered by a computer science, business, or philosophy department. It can also be used as a supplemental textbook in a technical course that devotes some time to social and ethical issues related to computing.

As students discuss controversial issues related to information technology, they have the opportunity to learn from one other and improve their critical thinking skills. The provocative questions raised at the end of every chapter, together with dozens of in-class exercises, provide many opportunities for students to express their viewpoints. My hope is that they will get better at evaluating complex issues and defending their conclusions with facts, sound values, and rational arguments.

The most significant change in the seventh edition is the reorganization of , Intellectual Property. The new, improved chapter is organized around six important themes:

• Intellectual property is different from tangible property. Trying to apply Lockes theory of property rights to intellectual property is problematic.

• Intellectual property is protected by trade secrets, trademarks, service marks, patents, and copyrights.

• Governments have attempted to find the proper balance between the interests of creators of intellectual property, who wish to maintain control over their creations, and the interests of the public, which wants to be able to use these creations. The concept of fair use is an example of such a compromise.

• The digital representation of intellectual property enables perfect copies to be made. Free copies are widely available, thanks to high-speed Internet connections. Together, these two technological developments have made possible an unprecedented amount of illegal copying, forcing companies selling these products to make doing the right thingobtaining a legal copyas easy as doing the wrong thingobtaining a pirated copy [Christopher Kauffman, private communication].

• The concepts of copyright and patent have been extended to computer software, but issuing software patents has been problematic. The arguments for granting intellectual property protection to software are not strong.

• Some believe that the current system of intellectual property protection actually inhibits creativity. The open-source movement advocates the distribution of source code to programs. Creative Commons has developed licenses that make it easier for artists, musicians, and writers to use the Internet as a vehicle for stimulating creativity and enhancing collaboration.

The seventh edition also adds new coverage of many important recent developments. Among them are

• employers accessing social media to learn more about job candidates

• the growth of the gig economy

• the right to be forgotten and the European Union court order requiring Google to suppress certain search results

• revenge porn

• fake online reviews and efforts to filter them out

• the debate over whether mashups are a violation of copyright law

• breaches of privacy caused by corporations releasing large data sets that were not correctly anonymized

• the smartphone patent wars

• the Open Internet Order released by the Federal Communications Commission to preserve net neutrality

• responses by China and South Korea to the Internet addiction of many of its youth

• the use of darknets by criminals, political dissidents, and others

• recent US Supreme Court rulings that seem to indicate that software, as a class, is worthy of patent protection

• passage of the USA Freedom Act to reform the Patriot Act in light of Edward Snowdens revelations

• the emerging power of data brokers

• the trend away from using direct-recording electronic voting machines in the United States