KAMPALA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

NAME: REGNO: COURSE: COURSE UNIT: LECTURER: YEAR: SEMISTER: SESSION:

KIMERA SHAFIC BBC/42316/91/DU BACHOLER OF BUSINESS COMPUTING BUSINESS ETHICS MR: MABONGA ERIC 3 2 WEEKEND

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QN: identify unethical practices in your field of specialization. (Computing and ICT)

Computer ethics has been used to refer to applications by professional philosophers of traditional Western theories like utilitarianism, Kantianism, or virtue ethics, to ethical cases that significantly involve computers and computer networks. Computer ethics also has been used to refer to a kind of professional ethics in which computer professionals apply codes of ethics and standards of good practice within their profession. In addition, other more specific names, like cyber ethics and Internet ethics, have been used to refer to aspects of computer ethics associated with the Internet. As the computer era evolves each day, our society is gradually forming into a gigantic chain through the increasing use of the Internet. Human beings interact with each other every day by using the Net. Just as ethics evolve as human societies grow and change, so similar ethical questions are raised during the evolution of this global electronic community. Ethics they are our moral code. Ethics describe how we determine what is good and right from what is bad and wrong. They are somewhat abstract yet definitely the art of the human race. They distinguish us from other creatures in nature. Computers and the Internet have given society as a whole vast accessibility and power to do much that was previously impossible. Surfing the Internet is only one such example of the many activities available through the computer. While education and communication have been facilitated, not everything about computers is positive. In fact, they harbor many unethical uses that are becoming increasingly available to the general public. Pornography Distribution and use of pornography has been greatly facilitated with the use of the computer. Not only is the use of adult pornography widespread with the use of computers, but so is child pornography. Child pornography is one of the most, if not the most, unethical uses of the computer today. Cyber-bullying Bullying online is another form of unethical computer use. It is widespread and getting increasing coverage in the media as it becomes a larger problem. Sitting in front of a computer

screen takes away the need to bully and harass someone in person and thus makes even worse actions and harassment possible. Additionally, the use of social networking on the computer as a tool for cyber-bullying is growing. Plagiarism Plagiarism is another unethical use of the computer. By going online, it is becoming increasingly easy to find material for plagiarism. The computer also facilitates writing articles through plagiarism by the use of writing programs and simply copying and pasting the words onto a document and taking credit for the work. Cheating Cheating in relationships is made easier through social networking online or the use of emails. Everything is password protected, making users able to be unfaithful in their relationships and even engage in cyber sex without anyone catching on. Identity Theft Theft of someone's identity is facilitated by the computer, making it yet another unethical use. If criminals are knowledgeable enough at computer hacking, then it is easy for them to gain access to the personal and financial information of other people and proceed in stealing their identity and ruining their lives. As electronic communication becomes essential to the daily lives of more and more people, ethical questions take on a practical urgency. For sometimes the hacker can kill. Some examples of unethical and criminal behavior: Stealing copyright and credit for intellectual property. Intercepting private e-mail. Display of pornographic material.

 Deliberate public misinformation. Misuse of research material. Improper commercial/personal use of network. Stealing credit information. Computer crime is a growing threat to society by the criminal or irresponsible actions of computer individuals who are taking advantage of the widespread use of vulnerability of computers and the Internet and other networks. It thus presents a major challenge to the ethical use of information technologies. E-computer crime poses serious threats to the integrity, safety, and survival of most e-business systems, and thus makes the development of effective security methods a top priority. Computer crime is defined by The Association of Information Technology professionals (ATIP) as including: The unauthorized use, access, modification, and destruction of hardware, software, data, or network resources. The unauthorized release of information The unauthorized copying of software Denying an end user access to his or her own hardware, software, data, or network resources Using or conspiring to use computer or network resources to illegally obtain information or tangible property. Hacking is the obsessive use of computers, or the unauthorized access and use of networked computer systems. Illegal hackers (also called crackers) frequently assault the Internet and other networks to steal or damage data and programs. Hackers can:

Monitor e-mail, web server access, or file transfers to extract passwords or steal network files, or to plant data that will cause a system to welcome intruders. Use remote services that allow one computer on a network to execute programs on another computer to gain privileged access within a network. Hackers can: Monitor e-mail, web server access, or file transfers to extract passwords or steal network files, or to plant data that will cause a system to welcome intruders. May use remote services that allow one computer on a network to execute programs on another computer to gain privileged access within a network. Use Telnet, an Internet tool for interactive use of remote computers, to discover information to plan other attacks. Cyber-Theft Many computer crimes involve the theft of money. In the majority of cases, they are inside jobs that involve unauthorized network entry and fraudulent alternation of computer databases to cover the tracks of the employees involved. Unauthorized Use at Work: The unauthorized use of a computer system is called time and resource theft. A common example is unauthorized use of company-owned computer networks by employees. This may range from doing private consulting or personal finances, or playing video games to unauthorized use of the Internet on company networks. Network monitoring software called sniffers is frequently used to monitor network traffic to evaluate network capacity, as well as reveal evidence of improper use. Software Piracy:

Computer programs are valuable property and thus are the subject of theft from computer systems. Unauthorized copying of software or software piracy is a major form of software theft because software is intellectual property, which is protected by copyright law and user licensing agreements. Piracy of Intellectual Property: Software is not the only intellectual property subject to computer-based piracy. Other forms of copyrighted material, such as music, videos, images, articles, books, and other written works are especially vulnerable to copyright infringement, which most courts have deemed illegal. Digitised versions can easily be captured by computer systems and made available for people to access or download at Internet websites, or can be readily disseminated by e-mail as file attachments. The development of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has made digital versions of copyrighted material even more vulnerable to unauthorized use. Ethics deals with placing a value on acts according to whether they are good or bad. Every society has its rules about whether certain acts are ethical or not. These rules have been established as a result of consensus in society and are often written into laws. When computers first began to be used in 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 of our lives, discussions in computer ethics resulted in some kind of a consensus. Today, many of these rules have been formulated as laws, either national or international. Computer crimes and computer fraud are now common terms. There are laws against them, and everyone is responsible for knowing what constitutes computer crime and computer fraud. The Ten Commandments of computer ethics have been defined by the Computer Ethics Institute. Here is our interpretation of them: 1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people: If it is unethical to harm people by making a bomb, for example, it is equally bad to write a program that handles the timing of the bomb. Or, to put it more simply, if it is bad to steal and destroy other peoples books and notebooks, it is equally bad to access and destroy their files.

2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work: Computer viruses are small programs that disrupt other peoples computer work by destroying their files, taking huge amounts of computer time or memory, or by simply displaying annoying messages. Generating and consciously spreading computer viruses are unethical. 3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's files: Reading other peoples e-mail messages is as bad as opening and reading their letters: This is invading their privacy. Obtaining other peoples non-public files should be judged the same way as breaking into their rooms and stealing their documents. Text documents on the Internet may be protected by encryption. 4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal: Using a computer to break into the accounts of a company or a bank and transferring money should be judged the same way as robbery. It is illegal and there are strict laws against it. 5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness: The Internet can spread untruth as fast as it can spread truth. Putting out false "information" to the world is bad. For instance, spreading false rumors about a person or false propaganda about historical events is wrong. 6. Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid: Software is an intellectual product. In that way, it is like a book: Obtaining illegal copies of copyrighted software is as bad as photocopying a copyrighted book. There are laws against both. Information about the copyright owner can be embedded by a process called watermarking into pictures in the digital format. 7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization: Multiuser systems use user ids and passwords to enforce their memory and time allocations, and to safeguard information. You should not try to bypass this authorization system. Hacking a system to break and bypass the authorization is unethical. 8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output: For example, the programs you write for the projects assigned in this course are your own intellectual output. Copying somebody elses program without proper authorization is software piracy and is unethical. Intellectual property is a form of ownership, and may be protected by copyright laws.

9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write: You have to think about computer issues in a more general social framework: Can the program you write be used in a way that is harmful to society? For example, if you are working for an animation house, and are producing animated films for children, you are responsible for their contents. Do the animations include scenes that can be harmful to children? In the United States, the Communications Decency Act was an attempt by lawmakers to ban certain types of content from Internet websites to protect young children from harmful material. That law was struck down because it violated the free speech principles in that country's constitution. The discussion, of course, is going on. 10. Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect: Just like public buses or banks, people using computer communications systems may find themselves in situations where there is some form of queuing and you have to wait for your turn and generally be nice to other people in the environment. The fact that you cannot see the people you are interacting with does not mean that you can be rude to them. Ethics based on morality would entail placing value on those standards. Computers cannot discern the nuance of right and wrong as it doesn't matter to the central processing unit whether or not the computer and its program is harming a human through user misuse. It cannot intuitively know that if it "snoops" around in another computer's memory files that it needs to pull back and stop before it harms the data. It doesn't know that human consensus has put a negative value on interfering with someone else's computer work unless it is told that it is. Computers are not yet sentient beings. Computers have been integrated into society for over 30 years. Users have been emailing, banking, reading, writing, and using their computers for every aspect of their daily lives. Because of this assimilation and for the fact that the information highway that we utilize everyday, the Internet, is largely unregulated, the Brookings Institution, a U.S. think-tank began a project to compile all the ensuing discussion over what is ethical computer use into ten easy to understand guidelines regarding what constitutes acceptable behavior for computer usage.

The "Thou Shalt's"... The Computer Ethics Institute came up with the three discussed "commandments" replete with "Thou shalt's..." These are the no harming, snooping, and interfering with a computer. Of the other seven, the fourth deals with copyright infringement, or the use or copying of unpaid for software. The fifth and sixth are more Biblical in nature about using your computer not to lie or steal. Unauthorized usage is what the seventh mandates against, while the last three call for thinking about social consequence of writing programs, not using intellectual property that isn't your own, and about consideration and respect. Computer ethics encompass commerce, speech, social justice, privacy, criminality, and intellectual property issues. In business, each company has its own version of what is acceptable behavior for computer use. Most mandate that computers be used for work-related activity only, no personal surfing the Web, emails that are unrelated to work; and no illicit activity, such as downloading pornography. Companies track computer usage and log it. Some employees believe that this activity is an invasion of privacy, arguably another facet of ethical behavior. Other corporate computer issues include anticompetitive practices and fraud. School computer misuse is mostly allocated to harming another due to using intellectual property without proper permission, or plagiarizing, which ultimately harms the user. Students downloading music and software without paying the license-for-use fees, and using social networking sites to harm another's reputation, are issues that computer ethicists address. ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY As a business end user, you have a responsibility to do something about some of the abuses of information technology in the workplace. These responsibilities include properly performing your role as a vital human resource in the e-business systems you help develop and use in your organizations. The AITP code provides guidelines for ethical conduct in the development and use of information technology. End-users and IS professionals would live up to their ethical responsibilities by voluntarily following such guidelines. For example, you can be a responsible end user by:

 Acting with integrity Increasing your professional competence Setting high standards of personal performance Accepting responsibility for your work Advancing the health, privacy, and general welfare of the public Technology Ethics: Four principles of technology ethics that can serve as the basic ethical requirements that companies should meet to help ensure the ethical implication of new information technologies and information systems in business include:
Proportionality the good achieved by the technology must outweigh the harm or risk.

Moreover, there must be no alternative that achieves the same or comparable benefits with less harm or risk.
Informed consent those affected by the technology should understand and accept the

risks.
Justice the benefits and burdens of the technology should be distributed fairly. Those

who benefit should bear their fair share of the risks, and those who do not benefit should not suffer a significant increase in risk.
Minimized risk even if judged acceptable by the other three guidelines, the technology

must be implemented so as to avoid all unnecessary risk. Ethical Guidelines: The Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) is an organization of professionals in the computing field. Its code of conduct outlines the ethical considerations inherent in the major responsibilities of an IS professional. Business and end users and IS professionals would live up to their ethical responsibilities by voluntarily following such guidelines as those outlined in the AITP standard. You can be a responsible end user by:

Acting with integrity Increasing your professional competence Setting high standards of personal performance Accepting responsibility for your work Advancing the health, privacy, and general welfare of the public REFERENCES
1. Computer ethics; http://library.thinkquest.org/26658/ 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics 3. Computer ethics ; http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/~say/c150/intro/lit10.html 4. Computer and Information Ethics; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-

computer/ 5.