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DOMINANT ISSUES RE: INTERNET ETHICS NOT EVERYONE HAS ACCESS TO INTERNET-IT CREATES ADVANTAGE AND PUTS PERSOANL INFO AT RISK The size and popularity of the Internet have grown enormously and continue to grow at phenomenal rates. Using the Internet often comprises of the use of social networking sites, email facilities and the browse of various other websites. Internet privacy comes on the scene when it comes to website users giving out their personal details on the Internet. For certain websites, which facilitate online shopping, the users are made to input their credit card numbers. In case of emailing sites, there are issues about whether third parties should be allowed to store or read emails without informed consent. Whether or not, the third parties should be permitted to track the visitors on a website, is another major privacy concern. The other important Internet privacy issue is whether the sites that gather personally identifiable information from the users should store or share it. One school of thought denies the existence of Internet privacy while the other advocates the necessity of the Internet privacy. Complete anonymity is not the intent of Internet privacy. It rather intends to achieve a controlled disclosure of one’s personal information. Internet is a network of networks and when a person uses the Internet, he/she connects to it and is identified by an address. In technical terms this address is known as an IP address. For security reasons, a website may wish to track these addresses of its users. Websites may collect the non-personally identifiable information of their users. Such information is the one, which in no way can be used to uniquely identify a person. The disclosure of these forms of information is acceptable. It is actually the means by which websites track the users' Internet activities. While numerous approaches have been suggested for the improvement of elementary and secondary education in American urban public schools, one common component of such plans is the more effective utilization of computers, networking, and other educational technologies. When making these considerations, leaders must look at information regarding demographic analysis, assessments, demand factors, and access. The trade-off would be to define the demarcating line between what's public and what's private. Internet privacy is indeed important in case of the revelation of personally identifiable information but it requires to be delimited in cases where privacy puts the Internet ethics on stake. Home access to computer technology is a continuous area of inequality in American society. If society assumes that academic achievement is facilitated by access to computers both at school and in the home, the gap in access to computer technology is a cause for concern. ISP and e-commerce unit should seek to strive to meet the privacy guidelines laid down by the FTC. The U.S. government has given private industries the opportunity to develop their own guidelines regarding the privacy rights of adults. However, a recent report by the FTC indicated that private industries have, in general, failed to develop their own standards regarding privacy. They found that 85 percent of 1,402 sites surveyed collected personal information but did not have any information about privacy policies. A much more disturbing finding involved children’s sites. Eighty-nine percent of 212 such sites surveyed collected personal information from children. This included e-mail addresses, postal addresses, telephone numbers, social security numbers, date of birth, gender, education, interests, hobbies, etc. The government is actively seeking to end such practices and to protect children from such activities. IN BUSINESS: INTERNET CAN BE USED AS A STRONG VEHICLE FOR MARKETING BUT IS OFTEN MISUSED. One particularly offensive means of advertising is called spamming. When used in this way the term means sending a message to many unrelated newsgroups or interest groups. It's not too hard to do, but it almost always is met with great opposition and feelings of hatred. One way to deal with it is to send a copy of the message and a complaint to postmaster@the.other.site. Spamming involves sending e-mail messages indiscriminately and without the permission of the receiver and disregarding the appropriateness of the message. It is the equivalent of "junk mail" sent through regular postal services. Spamming is widespread and affects the speed of the Internet, sometimes bring it down completely. The Electronic Mailbox Protection Act is trying to control spamming. This act requires senders of spam to identify it as advertising, to indicate the name of the sender, and to include valid routing information. In addition, ISPs would be required to offer spam blocking software and recipients would have the right to request that all future spam be stopped. The Internet allows consumers, businesses, and industry to do many new things in unique and efficient ways. The technology around which it is built is also changing and advancing rapidly. A source of concern is that the legal and ethical developments regarding the Internet are not able to keep up with the fast pace of technological change. This tutorial touches on the main areas of legal and ethical concern that have emerged so far, the ways in which they are being dealt with, and the implications for providers of technology related services and products. These major areas are: • protection of intellectual property • prevention of fraud • protection of freedom of expression versus problems of defamation • protection of privacy • control of Internet indecency versus free speech • control of spamming The Case Between Ticketmaster and Microsoft is a perfect example of ethical issues stemming from internet capabilities and usage: The dispute arose nearly two years ago. Microsoft had embarked on its Seattle Sidewalk Web service, providing local event information to Seattleites, with plans to build similar sites for a variety of other cities. Negotiations with Ticketmaster to jointly provide content and ticket sales failed, but Microsoft set up its event pages with links directly to Ticketmaster's specific event ticket sales pages. Ticketmaster objected to links which bypassed its own substantive content and advertising, but Microsoft persisted. In fact, according to a CNET report at the time, Ticketmaster set up technological blocks to prevent Microsoft and other sites from accessing ticket sales pages directly in that way, but Microsoft built a work-around and continued the practice anyway. So Ticketmaster sued. The law regarding hyper-linking is still evolving. It is good practice to get permission from a site before linking to it especially if it is going to be a major link that will draw viewers to your website. In addition, the cases that have arisen to date suggest that difficulties with hyperlinks arise when the links bypass some major content of the site being linked to (for example, pages that contained important information regarding the company linked to, and its advertising) so that some of the effectiveness of that site is diminished. Linking to a webpage by avoiding some of the earlier pages on the site is sometimes referred to as "deep linking". Ethical behavior seeks to go beyond legal requirements to ask questions such as: Is it what is best for all concerned and not just for myself? Would I want someone else to do the same thing to me? It can be seen that ethics is much more difficult to pin down than legality, and is much more a personal decision. This is all the more reason for technology professionals in the computer industry to set high ethical standards and to act in a way that its actions and the basis for them are clear to all concerned. One approach to accomplishing this is to have a clearly stated set of guidelines for the organization that addresses general issues, as well as specific issues prone to ethical problems, and make sure that both employees and customers are familiar with.
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