Ethical
Issues and the Internet
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with what is
considered to be right and wrong. Ethics is highly contextual, and with the
passage of time society is continually updating its ethical guidelines. However,
what is unethical is not necessarily illegal, and in many instances individuals
are faced with ethical decisions that do not fall into the illegal bracket of
law breaking.
Communications technology and the Internet are facilitating easy
access to people in their homes and at work across the world, and through this
we are developing new perspectives on what is right and wrong in the global
society.
Much of what takes place on the Internet is highly unstructured,
and more recent e-business is so new that the legal, ethical, and other public
policy issues that are necessary for its existence are still evolving. The
spread of e-business has created many new ethical situations: for example,
putting 'cookies' on customers' PCs, or monitoring staff e-mail. Whether these
actions are considered unethical depends upon the organization, country,
culture, value systems and so on.
In the globalized economy, companies operate under increasing
environmental pressures. These pressures are not new but with the introduction
of the Internet as a new, and some would say better, distribution channel that
can compete against traditional ones, the need to attract and keep customers
online is essential. In their race for customer acquisition many companies have
developed practices that raise ethical issues, and these ethical issues are not
necessarily the same throughout the world. An attempt to organize IT ethical
issues into a framework can be seen in the work of Mason et
al [1], who categorized
ethical issues into privacy, accuracy, property and accessibility.
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Privacy. The collection, storage and dissemination of
information about individuals.
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Accuracy. The authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of
information collected and processed.
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Property. The ownership and value of information and
intellectual property.
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Accessibility. The right to access information and payment
of fees to access it.
Ethics has assumed a new dimension of importance as
e-business opens up a new spectrum of unregulated activities, and one major area
for concern has been in marketing on the Internet.
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