Computer Ethics: Contemporary Ethical Dilemmas In IT

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Contemporary ethical dilemmas in IT
Ethics is part of philosophy that deals with how human actions is considered to be wrong or right and technology makes it possible for individuals and institutions to behave in ways they couldn't possible do without technology. Computer ethics brings these unexplored areas of ethics into focus.

1. Loyalty: employee has the responsibility to be honest to their employer and verse versa (all thing been equal) if there is mutual agreement will be deontological view.
Consequentialist believe that even if IT professional have a prima facie obligation of loyalty to employer he or she also have total loyalty to society because of health and safety that involve their nature of work (Herman T. , 2013) example is Tesco as retailer
2. Hardware / software
3. Whistle-blower is an employee that calls general attention to employer wrong doing for public interest (Herman T. , 2013). Deontologist believe it morally wrong for employee to open up the secret of his or her employer which the opposite to the consequentialist because the consequence of the action will benefit the society while virtue is
4. Copy right
5. Bribery/ grafty
6. Plagiarism is an immoral and unethical act of claiming ownership of someone else’s work to gain advantage with referencing the author.
7. Deontological view of plagiarism is that under no circumstance must anyone plagiarize someone else work because it is a law and there is no moral justification for it to be breach therefore If you break the rule then you must be punish. Consequentialist believed individual should consider

8. Privacy: Massive data is collected on individual organisations and used to detect customer shopping patterns, advertisement, security etc. Therefore org...

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...ware companies may lose money; this in particular affects small producers. Small producers are affected more mainly due to their size and lack of resources whereas larger producers will not get affected as much.

Displacement of Jobs
The spread of information technologies has meant that companies could decrease their workforce and replace them with newer technologies, which therefore creates an ethical dilemma. Other companies give their employees more roles than required, thus, increasing work pressure. Forcing employees out of their jobs or giving them more work without added benefits can also be considered as being unethical.

Ref http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Legal_and_ethical_issues_related_to_information_technology#slide=9 Johnson D.G (1998) computer ethics, Dianne. (Online) available from: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=521355 accessed: (14 march, 2014)

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