Legal Moral Ethical

Introduction

• The following definitions are important when considering ethical behaviour:
  • Legal covers the law, whether or not an action is punishable by law.
  • Morality concerns questions of right and wrong, and is more often thought of in relation to personal or individual choices.
  • Ethics also concerns questions of right and wrong, but is more often used in a professional context.
  • Culture refers to the attitudes, values and practices shared by a society or group of people.

Computer ethics

• Computer ethics is a set of principles set out to regulate the use of computers.

• Internet use has led to an increase in plagiarism – this is when a person takes another person’s idea or work and claims it was their own.

• Three factors are considered:

  • Intellectual property rights, for example, copying of software without the permission of the owner.
  • Privacy issues, for example, hacking or any illegal access to another person’s personal data.
  • Effect of computers on society, for example, job losses, social impacts, and so on.

Professional ethical bodies

• The British Computer Society (BCS) is a professional body set up in the UK, initially to represent the rights and ethical practices of all professionals working in the IT and computing industries.

• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) was set up in the USA with the aims of

  • raising awareness of ethical issues
  • promoting ethical behaviour among professionals working in the electronics industry
  • ensuring engineers and scientists respect the need for ethical behaviour.

• Jointly with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE has also developed a set of eight principles which govern the code of ethics specifically among software engineers.

Impact on the public

• While software engineers and scientists consider the Software Engineering Code of Ethics, the impact on the general public cannot be ignored.
• This section begins by considering three instances in which computer hardware or software led to expensive errors, which impacted on the general public.

Ethical

Computer is a set of principles set out to regulate the use of computers

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Ethical

Three factors are considered for computer ethics:

A.

Intellectual property rights

B.

Privacy issues

C.

Effect of computers on society

D.

Technology of development

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Ethical

BCS: IEEE: ACM:

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