Republic of Cameroon

Peace – Work - Fatherland

TOPIC: Legal Regulation

Class: SWE and NWS By: TSEKANE ADI Landry

Sub topic

COMPUTER ETHICS

Learning objectives
After studying this lesson, student should be able to:

1. Define computer and state some computer code of conduct and the commandments of
computer ethics
2. Discuss some issue of computer ethics and unethical actions taken by computer users
3. Discuss some legislations the govern computer ethics

INTRODUCTION
Computers are involved to some extent in almost every aspect of our lives. They often perform
life-critical tasks. Computer science is not regulated to the extent of medicine, air travel, or
construction zoning. Therefore, we need to carefully consider the issues of ethics.

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 Topic : Legal Regulation By: TSEKANE ADI L.

I. DEFINITION AND OBJECTIVES

Ethics is a set of moral principles that govern the behavior of a group or individual. Therefore,
computer ethics is set of moral principles that regulate the use of computers. Some common issues
of computer ethics include intellectual property rights (such as copyrighted electronic content),
privacy concerns, and how computers affect society. It is morally acceptable use of computers i.e.
using computers appropriately

Computer ethics helps us solve the legal issues that crop up every day, to underline and solve those
violations that were not defined by the older laws; to form new laws, rather to form an organized
structure of laws to govern the world of internet, which is termed as "cyber law". As technology
advances, computers continue to have a greater impact on society. Therefore, computer ethics
promotes the discussion of how much influence computers should have in areas such as artificial
intelligence and human communication. As the world of computers evolves, computer ethics
continues to create ethical standards that address new issues raised by new technologies. The
primary objective of computer ethics is identifying the ethical issues, which fall in the broad
category of copyright issues, issues concerning privacy and censorship.

II. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPUTER ETHICS

When computers were introduced in our society at large, the absence of ethical standards about
their use and related issues caused some problems. However, as their use became widespread in
every facet in our lives, discussion in computer ethics resulted in some kind of a consensus. There
are a variety of reasons why computer ethics should be given special attention. In fact, it is
necessary to acquire knowledge on computer ethics because doing so will:

(1) Make people use computer in a responsible way

(2) Limit the level of computer crime
(3) Teach computer users how to avoid catastrophes resulting from computer abuse;
(4) Enable us fit adequacy in our new world – the information society
(5) Facilitate the creation of new laws to suit our modern computerized world
(6) Prevent us from being misled by certain irresponsible websites or users
(7) Enable us respect the rights of other computer users
(8) Prevent us from illegally accessing other people’s computer data

III. ETHICS CODE OF CONDUCT

A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the responsibilities or proper practices for an
individual, party or organization. The most known standard bodies that have produced computer
code of conduct are:

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 Topic : Legal Regulation By: TSEKANE ADI L.

1. BCS (British Computer Society),

The British Computer Society is a professional body and a learned society that represents those
working in Information Technology both in the United Kingdom and internationally. It set the
professional standards of competences, conduct and ethical practice for computing. As an aid to
understanding, these rules have been grouped into the principal duties which all members should
endeavour to discharge in pursuing their professional lives.

 The Public Interest

 Duty to Employers and Clients
 Duty to the Profession
 Professional Competence and Integrity

2. ACM (Association of Computing Machinery)

Commitment to ethical professional conduct is expected of every member (voting members,

associate members, and student members) of the Association for Computing Machinery. The new
ACM code of ethics and professional conduct adopted in 1992 identifies more specific guidelines
and rules than the 1972 ACM code. This Code, consisting of 24 imperatives formulated as
statements of personal responsibility, identifies the elements of such a commitment. It contains
many, but not all, issues professionals are likely to face. It is devided into four sections.

→ Section 1 outlines fundamental ethical considerations,

→ Section 2 addresses additional, more specific considerations of professional conduct.
→ Section 3 pertain more specifically to individuals who have a leadership role, whether in
the workplace or in a volunteer capacity such as with organizations like ACM.
→ Section 4 gives principles involving compliance with this Code.

3. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) describes itself as "the world's largest
technical professional society -- promoting the development and application of electrotechnology
and allied sciences for the benefit of humanity, the advancement of the profession, and the well-
being of our members."

The IEEE fosters the development of standards that often become national and international
standards. The organization publishes a number of journals, has many local chapters, and several
large societies in special areas, such as the IEEE Computer Society.

Members commit themselves to the highest ethical and professional conduct and agree:

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 Topic : Legal Regulation By: TSEKANE ADI L.

a) to accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the safety, health, and welfare
of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the
environment;
b) to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible, and to disclose them to
affected parties when they do exist;
c) to be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based on available data;
d) to reject bribery in all its forms;
e) to improve the understanding of technology; its appropriate application, and potential
consequences;
f) to maintain and improve our technical competence and to undertake technological tasks for
others only if qualified by training or experience, or after full disclosure of pertinent
limitations;
g) to seek, accept, and offer honest criticism of technical work, to acknowledge and correct
errors, and to credit properly the contributions of others;
h) to treat fairly all persons regardless of such factors as race, religion, gender, disability, age,
or national origin;
i) to avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or malicious
action;
j) to assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional development and to support them
in following this code of ethics.

IV. COMMANDEMENTS OF COMPUTER ETHICS

The Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics were created in 1992 by the Computer Ethics
Institute. They copied the style of the Ten Commandments from The Bible and used the archaic
"thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" found in the King James version. The ten commandments of
computer ethics are:

1. Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Harm Other People.

2. Thou Shalt Not Interfere With Other People’s Computer Work.
3. Thou Shalt Not Snoop Around In Other People’s Computer Files.
4. Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Steal.
5. Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Bear False Witness.
6. Thou Shalt Not Copy or Use Proprietary Software for Which You have Not Paid.
7. Thou Shalt Not Use Other People’s Computer Resources without Authorization or
Proper Compensation.
8. Thou Shalt Not Appropriate Other People’s Intellectual Output.
9. Thou Shalt Think About The Social Consequences Of The Program You Are Writing
Or The System You Are Designing.
10. Thou Shalt Always Use A Computer In Ways That Insure Consideration And Respect
For Your Fellow Humans.
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V. CYBERETHICS AND SOME COMPUTER ETHICS ISSUES

V.1 What is Cyberethics

Cyberethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computer networks, encompassing

user behavior and what networked computers are programmed to do, and how this affects
individuals and society. Examples of cyberethical questions include:

 Is it OK to display personal information about others on the Internet (such as their online
status or their present location via GPS)?
 Should users be protected from false information?
 Who owns digital data (such as music, movies, books, web pages, etc.) and what should
users be allowed to do with it?
 How much access should there be to gambling and pornography online?
 Is access to the Internet a basic right that everyone should have?

V.2- What is netiquette

The term netiquette is the short form of network etiquette. Network etiquette refers to the rules
of courtesy governing the use of computer networks. Generally, network users would rather make
friends than enemies, and if they follow a few basic rules, they are less likely to make the kind of
mistake that would prevent them from making friend. Some important netiquette rules include:

 Promptly respond to messages.

 Delete messages after you read them if you don’t need to save the information.
 Don’t send messages you wouldn’t want others to read.
 Keep the message short and to the point.
 Don’t type in all capital letters.
 Be careful with sarcasm and humor in your message.

V.3- Some ethical issues

Some ethical issues include the following

1) Privacy

Privacy is the responsibility to protect data about individuals. Privacy can be decomposed to the
limitation of others' access to an individual with "three elements of secrecy, anonymity, and
solitude". Anonymity refers to the individual's right to protection from undesired attention.

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Solitude refers to the lack of physical proximity of an individual to others. Secrecy refers to the
protection of personalized information from being freely distributed.

Listed below are a few recommendations to restrict online databases from proliferating sensitive
personnel information.

a) Exclude sensitive unique identifiers from database records such as social security
numbers, birth dates, hometown and mothers' maiden names.
b) Exclude phone numbers that are normally unlisted.
c) Clear provision of a method which allows people to have their names removed from a
database.
d) Banning the reverse social security number lookup services (Spinello, 2006).

Private Data Collection: Data warehouses are used today to collect and store huge amounts of
personal data and consumer transactions. These facilities can preserve large volumes of consumer
information for an indefinite amount of time. Some of the key architectures contributing to the
erosion of privacy include databases, cookies and spyware.

2) Accuracy

Accuracy is the responsibility of data collectors to authenticate information and ensure its
accuracy. Due to the ease of accessibility and sometimes collective nature of the internet we often
come across issues of accuracy e.g. who is responsible for the authenticity and fidelity of the
information available online? Ethically this includes debate over who should be allowed to
contribute content and who should be held accountable if there are errors in the content or if it is
false. This also brings up the question of how is the injured party, if any, to be made whole and
under which jurisdiction does the offense lay?

3) Security

Security has long been a topic of ethical debate. Is it better to protect the common good of the
community or rather should we safeguard the rights of the individual? There is a continual dispute
over the boundaries between the two and which compromises are right to make. As an ever
increasing amount of people connect to the internet and more and more personal data is available
online there is susceptibility to identity theft, cyber crimes and computer hacking. This also leads
to the question of who has the right to regulate the internet in the interest of security?

4) Property

Who owns information and software and how can they be sold and exchanged? The controversy
over ownership occurs when the property of information is infringed upon or uncertain.

Intellectual Property Rights

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The ever-increasing speed of the internet and the emergence of compression technology, such as
mp3 opened the doors to Peer-to-peer file sharing, a technology that allowed users to anonymously
transfer files to each other. Much of this, however, was copyrighted music and illegal to transfer
to other users. Whether it is ethical to transfer copyrighted media is another question.

Proponents of unrestricted file sharing point out how file sharing has given people broader and
faster access to media, has increased exposure to new artists, and has reduced the costs of
transferring media (including less environmental damage). Supporters of restrictions on file
sharing argue that we must protect the income of our artists and other people who work to create
our media.

We also see a similar debate over intellectual property rights in respect to software ownership. The
two opposing views are for closed source software distributed under restrictive licenses or for free
and open source software

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

With the introduction of Digital Rights Management software, new issues are raised over whether
the subverting of DRM is ethical. Some champion the hackers of DRM as defenders of users'
rights, allowing the blind to make audio books of PDFs they receive, allowing people to burn
music they have legitimately bought to CD or to transfer it to a new computer. Others see this as
nothing but simply a violation of the rights of the intellectual property holders, opening the door
to uncompensated use of copyrighted media.

5) Accessibility, censorship and filtering

They are responsibility of data collectors to control access and determine what information a
person has the right to obtain about others and how the information can be used. Accessibility,
censorship and filtering bring up many ethical issues that have several branches in cyberethics.
Accessibility is the ability of a resource to be available for use on the Internet. Censorship is denial
of access to certain Internet resources for ethical, religious, political or other reasons. Filtering is
the act of allowing access only to some aspect of a resource while censoring other aspects

6) Freedom of information;

Freedom of information, that is the freedom of speech as well as the freedom to seek, obtain and
impart information brings up the question of who or what, has the jurisdiction in cyberspace. The
right of freedom of information is commonly subject to limitations dependant upon the country,
society and culture concerned.

VI. SOME ETHICAL LEGISLATIONS

Computers and their uses have become pervasive in today's society with new uses occurring on
almost a daily basis. In general this use is beneficial; however, as we mention in the previous
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paragraph, computers may be put to the wrong use. In order to safeguard computer users in the
UK there are different types of legislation covering the many uses or misuses of Information and
Communications Technology (ICT).

VI.1- Data protection act (1998)

The Data Protection Act 1998 was designed to provide a legal framework upon which to protect
the privacy of personal data when used with information technology. The act gives people rights
to protect themselves against any misuse of data held about them.

VI.2- Computer misuse act

The Computer Misuse Act is designed to protect computer users against willful attacks and theft
of information. Offences under the act include hacking, Unauthorized access to modify computers
include altering software and data, changing passwords and settings to prevent others accessing
the system, interfering with the normal operation of the system to its detriment and purposefully
spreading malicious and damaging software (malware), such as viruses. The Computer Misuse
Act 1990 was designed to clarify UK law with regards to the intentional malicious use of
computers.

VI.3- Copyright, Designs and Patent Act

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, also known as the CDPA, is an Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 15 November 1988. It
reformulates almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law (including performing rights)
in the United Kingdom, which had, until then, been governed by the Copyright Act 1956 (c. 74).
It also creates an unregistered design right, and contains a number of modifications to the law of
the United Kingdom on Registered Designs and patents. The act protects the ownership of
computer software in a similar way that copyright works with printed material. This act protects
the software developer's rights and lasts for fifty years after the writer's death.

VI.4- Consumer Protection Act

The Consumer Protection Act 1987 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
that made important changes to the consumer law of the United Kingdom. Part 1 implemented
European Community (EC) Directive 85/374/EEC, the product liability directive, by introducing
a regime of strict liability for damage arising from defective products. Part 2 created government
powers to regulate the safety of consumer products through Statutory Instruments. Part 3 defined
a criminal offence of giving a misleading price indication.

The Act was notable in that it was the first occasion that the UK government implemented
an EC directive through an Act of Parliament rather than an order under the European
Communities Act 1972.
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VI.5- Children's Internet Protection Act

The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in
1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful
to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never took effect, as three separate rounds of
litigation led to a permanent injunction against the law in 2009.

The law was part of a series of efforts by US lawmakers legislating over Internet pornography.
Parts of the earlier and much broader Communications Decency Act had been struck down as
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997 (Reno v. ACLU); COPA was a direct response to
that decision, narrowing the range of material covered. COPA only limits commercial speech and
only affects providers based within the United States.

COPA required all commercial distributors of "material harmful to minors" to restrict their sites
from access by minors. "Material harmful to minors" was defined as material that by
"contemporary community standards" was judged to appeal to the "prurient interest" and that
showed sexual acts or nudity (including female breasts). This is a much broader standard than
obscenity.

VI.6-The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 (CFAA) was intended to reduce cracking of
computer systems and to address federal computer-related offenses. The Act was approved by the
U.S. Congress, signed by the President and is now codified as 18 U.S.C. § 1030. It governs cases
that implicate a compelling federal interest, where U.S. government computers, or those of certain
financial institutions are involved, where the crime itself is interstate in nature, or where computers
are used in interstate and foreign commerce.

The Act has been amended a number of times – in 1986, 1989, 1994, 1996, in 2001 by the USA
PATRIOT Act, 2002, and in 2008 by the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act.
Subsection (b) of the Act makes it a crime not only to commit (or attempt to commit) an offense
under the Act, but also to conspire to do so.

VI.7- Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section

The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) is responsible for
implementing the Department's national strategies in combating computer and intellectual property
crimes worldwide. The Computer Crime Initiative is a comprehensive program designed to combat
electronic penetrations, data thefts, and cyberattacks on critical information systems. CCIPS
prevents, investigates, and prosecutes computer crimes by working with other government
agencies, the private sector, academic institutions, and foreign counterparts.
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VI.8- Computer Software Privacy and Control Act

To prevent deceptive software transmission practices in order to safeguard computer privacy,
maintain computer control, and protect Internet commerce.

VI.9- Official secret Act

This act is concerned with severe criminal penalties for people who disclose any information which related
to security, intelligence, defense or international relations

VI.10- Defamation Act 1996:

Defamation consists of the publication of opinion and untrue statements which adversely affect the
reputation of a person or a group of person.

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