Richard A. Spinello - Cyberethics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace

SEVENTH EDITION

Morality and Law in Cyberspace

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Spinello, Richard A., author.
Title: Cyberethics : morality and law in cyberspace / Richard A. Spinello.
Description: Seventh edition. | Burlington, MA : Jones & Bartlett Learning, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019042895 | ISBN 9781284184068 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Internet--Moral and ethical aspects. | Cyberspace--Moral and ethical aspects. | Computers and civilization. | Law and ethics.
Classification: LCC TK5105.875.I57 S68 2021 | DDC 303.48/34--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042895

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Printed in the United States of America
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Dong Wenjie/Getty Images

Dong Wenjie/Getty Images

Since the sixth edition of Cyberethics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace appeared several years ago, the social and technical landscape of cyberspace has undergone signifi cant changes. In the United States, the intense debate over net neutrality continues, while the European Union has passed a new set of strict privacy laws known as the General Data Protection Regulation. Major security breaches at companies like Yahoo and Equifax have focused unprecedented attention on cybersecurity. Fake news, propagated on social media platforms like Facebook, disrupted the 2016 Presidential election in the United States, as social media companies grapple with how to deal with disinformation among its several billion users. The clash between Oracle and Google over software copyright protection reveals that, despite the popularity of open source code, some companies still zealously protect their intellectual property. And the new crypto wars have intensifi ed, thanks to the strong encryption now being used for consumer devices like iPhones and software programs such as WhatsApp. We have tried to take these and other developments into account in this new edition.

This technological dynamism, known as the internet, continues to shape our personal and professional lives, but not without social costs. Aside from the growing use of political censorship by tech oligarchs like Google, what is especially worrisome is the more pronounced erosion of privacy with few paths of resistance available for most users. Vast quantities of personal data are extracted and assembled in order to make targeted advertising more precise. Linked to this problem is the matter of information security and the abject failure of many companies to properly safeguard their data.

This Seventh Edition preserves much of the thematic content of previous editions, but also carefully reviews these emerging social problems and the fresh assaults on basic rights such as privacy. Our related purpose is to stimulate the readers refl ection on the broad issues of internet regulation and the behavior of platform monopolies such as Facebook and Google. Have those companies become a threat to individual liberty and free choice?

To accomplish our objectives, we first lay out some theoretical groundwork drawn from the writings of contemporary legal scholars and philosophers such as Kant, Locke, and Finnis. We then focus on four broad areas: censorship and free speech, intellectual property, information privacy, and cybersecurity. For each of these critical areas, we consider the common ethical and public policy problems that have arisen and how technology, law, or some combination of the two would resolve some of those problems.

The first of these four topics concerns the fringes of internet communication, such as pornography, hate speech, and online threats. We review the history of public policy decisions about the problem of pornography and consider in some depth the suitability of automated content controls. Are these controls technically feasible, and can they be used in a way that is morally acceptable to the relevant stakeholders? We also consider other prominent free speech issues, such as private censorship by platforms like Facebook and Twitter, violent video games, and the censorship infrastructures that have been constructed in countries like China.