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MIS 2000MIS 2000
Chapter 4Chapter 4
Social, Legal and Ethical IssuesSocial, Legal and Ethical Issues
Outline
Law and EthicsAccountability and LiabilityInformation RightsPrivacyComputer Abuse and CrimeIntellectual PropertyFair Information Practices
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
Management 2
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
Management 3
Discussion Questions
1) Employer can monitor email of employees? Is this moral? Legal?
2) A disk with data is found in a bank employee’s bag and the company sues him. Who can win?
3) Programmer X uses a piece from legally purchased software as part of a software package he develops and sells the package under his name. Is this moral? Legal?
4) Company A sues company B for copying design (screen layout—user interface) of A’s Web site. Is Company B’s behavior moral? Legal?
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
Management 4
Ethics and Law
Principles of right and wrong acquired through socialization.
Unwritten norms, stable over timeThere are different ethics, we usually talk about norms shared by a majorityViolation leads to social sanctioning/condemnation
Law: Legislative pronouncements of rules to be followed in society
Written, changeableViolation leads to financial and physical liability before court
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Computer-based information systems and data, information, knowledge (in digital or other format) are related to both ethical and legal issues.
For example, collecting large amounts of data on customers
(data warehousing), and processing this data to understand customers (data mining and customer profiling) potentially violates norms of privacy and more recently began colliding with new laws on protecting personal information.
Should anyone pay for crashes, lost data and transactions?
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Law: Computer Crime
Illegal acts through use of computer system or against a computer system (hacking, sniffing, spoofing*, spamming**)
Ethics: Computer Abuse
Acts involving a computer that may not be illegal, but are unethical
(e.g., using firm’s computer for private business, like “cyberslacking”; spamming)
Computer Crime vs. Abuse
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Ethics/Law: Responsibility or Accountability
Being answerable for own acts and decisions, accepting costs, duties, obligations Can be legislated
Law: Liability - Laws permit recovery of damagesDue process - Ability to ensure that laws are applied correctly
Responsibility, Liability, Due Process
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In new segments of social relationships it often happens that ethics precedes law.
This applies to information systems; for example,hackers’ damaging of property of others had been condemned as bad behavior but as illegal until appropriate laws were introduced;selling information on customers was sometimes criticized but only recently became illegal
Ethics Becomes Law
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual Property
Intangible property created by
individuals or organizations,
protected under trade secret,
copyright and patent law
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Anything communicated in confidence, not based on public knowledge – an idea, organized data (report), work or product (might be parts of software) used for a business purpose, not information in public domain
Trade secret law is under provincial jurisdiction
Employees asked to sign nondisclosure agreements
Might include software with unique elements (ideas embedded in them)
Trade Secret
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Copyright
Statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual
property from having their work copied by others for any
purpose for a period of at least 50 years
Canadian Copyright Act protects original literary, artistic,
musical, & dramatic works
Computer software is protected in Canada as a literary
work (period of 50 years or death of author + 50 years).
Associating author's name and software integrity also
protected.
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Fair Use
Use of intellectual property of others for non-
commercial purposes that is acceptable even though
copyright (e.g. copyright) is not released
Example: using longer citations from scientific
articles and copies of those articles in university
classes
New area of Digital Law, lots of gray zone
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Legal document that grants the owner an exclusive
monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for between
17-20 years
Determined by the Patent Office & relies on court rulings
Ensure inventors of new machines, devices and methods
receive financial and other rewards
Canadian Patent Office does not accept applications for
software patents because software is considered to fall
under Canadian copyright law
Patent
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Challenges to Intellectual Property Rights
Peer-to-peer Networking (Napster)
Nature of electronic dataProliferation of access points in networksEasy to copy information productsDifficult to track copying and distribution of these products
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Fair Information Practices (FIP)
A set of principles originally set forth in 1973 that governs the collection and use of personal data /information(North America and Europe)
Individual freedoms and privacy protection
Serves as basis to protecting personal information in later legislation
Privacy:An ethical (cultural) principle of a freedom of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals, organizations, or government.
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Personal Information Protection in Canada
Based on FIPCanada’s Privacy Legislation
PIPEDA- Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act; Enacted in 2000, completes some other lawsApplies to public and private organizationsPrivacy Commissioner; Federal Court for unresolved cases
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Every province has its own; Most still apply only to information held by public sector
Manitoba: Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) from 1998 dealing with protection of personal information and grants access to records held by public bodies. Extended in 2000 to include all local governments, school divisions, community colleges, universities, health authorities and hospitals.
Only Quebec’s privacy laws meet European standards & apply to information held by the private sector
Canadian Provincial Privacy Laws
Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for
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Data collection through forms & registrations
Secondary use of data for other purposes
Spam: Junk e-mail (spamming)
Profiling online customers – customer value vs. intrusion into privacy
(What data is collected? How much? Do companies disclose how they would use the data?)
Internet Challenges to Privacy
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