Ethics on the net
The internet is an interesting place. It’s also a very new place and as such forces us to pass moral judgments on our actions and on actions of others in situations that don’t necessarily have equivalents in the real world.
Let me give you a few examples:
torrents, p2p, file-sharing, intelectual property and piracy: an incredibly complex issue with many shades of grey. There are types of piracy that are undeniably wrong and types that are undeniably right. The whole issue is complicated by the huge complexity of the whole media economy, no credible numbers or statistics and a dependency on obsolete law with very little correlation with any natural ethics.
(grey-hat) hacking: the act of showing the easiness of compromising someone’s system (especially army or energetics’ systems) goes a long way of making these systems more secure. Another fact is that most people have no idea how much they rely on systems that are spoofed extremely easily (like email - you knew that it takes like a minute to send a fake email from your address, right?). On the other hand the law is clear on this - a breach of another’s system is clearly illegal in most legislations. Obviously walking the line of morality can be difficult in this area.
privacy: The internet is turning out to be a valuable tool in sharing information. Yet there are many individuals that seek to control the internet and use this information for commercial purposes, or worse, for purposes of oppression of your freedom. What are the ethical borders for sites on privacy for their users? How should we treat the net - everything we post should be considered public?
responsibility for your word, netiquette: the net grants a certain type of anonymity that doesn’t enforce people to be responsible for what they say in the same way as in the real world (that is through shame and law). My view is that the general and most noticeable abuse of this reality (eg. youtube comments) does not enrich us in any way - but is probably the price we pay for having a medium where free speech can be more free than ever before.
It is very important to think critically about our actions online and how it impacts the world around us. Thanks to amazing technologies the world is becoming an ever more holistic system were every action we take can influence the whole - that in turn makes ethics incredibly important in this environment. It is also crucial to try to see more angles about issues before deciding whether they are right or wrong.
