Ethical and Legal Issues

Abstract

Ethics has to deal with the philosophy with what is considered to be right or wrong. Information in cyberspace can be accessed globally in which we need a research field of computer ethics to examine what is right and wrong for all Internet users. We need this research so that way we can underpin the actions that must be taken not only to harness the power of the IT itself, but also to survive its revolution.

It is even more important to understand security, privacy issues, and major negative impacts of IT on cyberspace. Even though some technical approaches such as encryption, digital ID, and firewall methods have been developed to overcome some of the problems. Legal actions must also be enforced worldwide which should address a growing number of ethical problems that are resulting from the negative impacts of IT in our global society. Data, information, and computer networks are threatened by many internal and external hazards internationally, which computer ethics should be the concern to everyone. All governments in each country, public policy makers, computer professionals, organizations and private citizens need to take an interest and make their contributions. This global information can be exploited in a socially and ethically sensitive way for our future benefit and applications.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with what is considered to be right or wrong. Definitions of ethics have been widely proposed, such as codes of morals of a particular profession, the standards of conduct of a given profession, agreement among people to do the right and to avoid wrong. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines ethics as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation. In a simpler way, it is the study of what is right to do in a given situation, and what we ought to do.

It is important to note that what is unethical may not be necessarily illegal. In...