Introduction
Ethics is set of principles that govern morally the behavior of an individual or a group. Ethics can also be define as moral codes. Ethics describes how we determine that what is right from what is wrong. Ethics differentiate us from other creatures of our world. Therefore we can say that computer ethics is a set of principles that regulate morally use of computers. Some issues of ethics about computer include property rights of intellectual such as electronic content and how can computers affect our society and its privacy concerns. For a person in everyday life is important to have good ethics and this is same about computer usage. Web ethics is how well business use their website for benefits of customers while giving protection to customer information, how well user interact with web and developer ethical responsibility to develop secure website using legal software and contents.
Computer ethics
For understanding it is easy for us to duplicate copyrighted content using a computer but computer ethics suggest that this is wrong without author's approval. Another examples is that it may be easy to access personal information of someone by a computer system but computer ethics advise that this is unethical. As advancement of technology computers have more impact on our society. So computer ethics discuss that to which extent computers should influence areas such as human communication and artificial intelligence. In the world of today computers are capable of changing everything as from health to education and from making war to making friends and voting. The world of computers is evolving and computer ethics are continues to develop ethical standards to address new problems raised by advances in computer technology. Computer ethics can be divided into many categories including hacking , spam, viruses, piracy, and responsibility of fair use of software, cyber porn, disturbing someone privacy and the excess use of the computer on job. The basic rules that we can purpose for computer ethics are
- Computer should not be used to harm other peoples
- Unauthorized access to computer should not be permitted
- No one should snoop around others data by computers
- Computer should not be used for stealing any information
- Computer should not be used to generate any false information
- Computer should not be used for piracy purposes
- Computer's resources should not be access without authorization
- Computer should not be used to copy others intellectual output
- Programmers should use computer for writing programs of social benefits
- Computer users should show respect
Web ethics
In the society we live have some rules in place that we should follow. The Internet is rapidly growing by all over the world in number of its users. Due to new technologies web is transforming us from almost every way of our life and how we communicate to each other. Most Internet users love it because of its positive benefits and general utility. In the result of rapid growth of Internet societies have increasingly calling for internet ethics and its regulation. In September 2003 there were more than seventy million Americans which is about sixty two percent of Americans who had at least one computer at their home. The situation is change and as now about 76% of people in America have access to internet at their home computers. The fact that majority of the American owns computers and use internet makes unethical practices of computer usage and web usage a growing concern of society that is rapidly changing. As democratic society Internet depends on rules of behavior to survive. Now as computer and internet have shown their existence even in developing countries and they can also participate in opportunities offered by cyberspace. Web is currently growing at a growth rate of 3000% per year.
Internet technology has given us many benefits that includes communications, business development and connectivity but there are also some of those who are willing to take benefits of internet by unethical ways. Unethical web operations include targeted predatory behavior at specific segments of internet and identity theft. Web business have also their part to play in web ethics as it is common issue of web ethics by the use of company's verified email addresses. For large business another issue is use of their customer's data for unsolicited messages. The main reasons behind is that businesses try to aggressively introduces the mass-market to their products which often let them to cross the line. There are some other aspects of web ethics that a business should consider
- Protecting information of clients; It is critical that any business should offers secure socket layer encryption for the protection of customers information. This protection save their information accessed by any unauthorized access. website of Business must follow protection layers that includes revolving passwords, Firewall protection and revoking security from old employees.
- Cultural awareness; Business should understand a particular community by awareness of the culture of that community in which they want to launch their product. As on web audience can be from any part of the world, any cultural background and speak any language. Welcoming different types of audience and respecting their cultural differences is important in the global web community.
- Spamming; Another most common ethical web issues is spamming. The practice of unethically emailing peoples unsolicited emails.
Consumers also expect a level of ethics from businesses on the web. Client trust could be lost if some business Ignore these expectations. Loss of client trust could harm to the reputation of any web business which could result in the loss of business. Till now we have looked web ethics from the way of user and business using websites for their product another ethics relates to the developers of websites. Developing a Website involve a wide variety of tasks from the type of software to use server, information availability and information presentation. These decisions are ethically significant for the web. For example the decision of whether or not include data that involve copyright or sexist or racist and decision about using pirated software for server. In most of cases these decision are made by business that if they want to buy copyright software for servers or illegal copy of it. So it is a developer responsibility to ethically use web development by right ways for the benefit of peoples. One of the major reason of the rapid growth in the popularity of Web is that any groups and individuals can publish own information with relative ease. Social networking sites, forums and other blogs give access to users for publishing whatever they feel about any topic. Administrative convenience should be mandates to avoid any unethical behavior of any individual. Load balancing is also a ethical part of web developing as clients must not feel that server is not timely responding. Developer should also include a point of contact for every Web page so in case of any issue user can easily contact to business or web owner.
Conclusion
We are in the process of informational and technological revolution and faster growing rate of internet demands us to put more focus on computer and web ethics as now a large population of world could be effected by any malicious malware or virus. So it is very important for our leaders, policy makers, computer professionals, teachers and all social thinkers to involve in the ethical and social impacts of communication technology. Computer and web ethics should transform into rules and regulations so our society could have more social values. Web ethics cover user, developer and website owner (business owner) and all should use internet with ethical values. Internet covers almost all countries so it is the duty of all countries to sit together and make an ethical code of conduct for computer and web ethics.
Works Cited
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/~say/c150/intro/lit10.html: http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/~say/c150/intro/lit10.html
George, F. (2004). Computers in society: privacy, ethics, and the Internet. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Langford, D. (2000). Internet Ethics. St. Martin's Press.
