June 2010 Edition
Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town
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A way of dealing with new ethical issues is to take a traditionalist approach. This involves identifying a moral norm and principles on which the issue is based, then apply them to the new situation.
For example, we can extend or adapt property law of ownerships such as copyright, patent and trade secrecy to that of computer software.
E-mail is another technology that has an equivalence that one can consider applying the traditionalist approach on.
Identify the issues that might be of concern to e-mails include confidentiality (communication is private) and authentication (sender is who he or she claim to be).
How does traditional snail-mail deal with such issues. Are there any issues that does not have a snail-mail equivalence. Concerning these issues, what is it about e-mail that make it differ from snail-mail? (If you can not think of anything, you can also start by first identifying the difference between e-mail and snail-mail, and then go on to say how each factors can raise new issues that were not applicable to snail-mails)
There are also problems with employing the traditionalist approach. This approach can result in oversimplification of issues, as it implies a routine way of dealing with ALL problems. The computing process is fluid with technology over changing.
Another issue is that different people will employ different analogies which can lead to different solutions. For example, the Internet can be thought of as a network of highways as well as a shopping mall. Choosing which analogies to used may lead to unsuitable solutions to some of those involved. How should computer program be considered? Is it property, idea or something else?
Compare and contrast the different between a hacker breaking into a computer system and a thief breaking in to a house. Is this a reasonable comparison? Is it a good analogy to employ while considering the issue of hacking?
Consider a scenario where a person walks down a street trying each door. If he founds and unlocked door he goes in and looks around. Is this situation analogous to a hacker scanning ports on a computer and find an opened port and goes in a look around and take a few things. However, also consider that in computer terms, some ports are considered public ports (for example, port 80 where web pages are served from). For example, is it reasonable to assume that if port 80 is available, the owner of the site gives you permission to access the site.
How far can you take this argument. For example, if a wireless signal is available, could you derived from that the owner gives you permission to access it? In some culture, a public water well or tap, is considered to be freely available to all that come passed. Should publicly accessible wireless signal then falls under the same category?