At first glance, software and the Internet seem greatly separate entities. True, the systems that allow us to fully utilize the Internet as a powerful tool use software to do this. However, how can the simple use of the Internet and its software even bring up ethical questions?

Just as in many other areas, including music, the Internet has made it easier to violate certain ethical principles not necessarily specific to software. The Internet itself does not violate any of these principles, nor is it necessary to do so in order to fully utilize the power of the Internet. What the Internet does, however, is make it easier for a much greater number of individuals to violate basic ethical principles. It also has brought about new situations that walk a hard to distinguish line between ethical and non-ethical Internet practice.

• The situation that comes first to mind is the unauthorized copying and distributing of software. The most common of these are the more expensive operating systems and also hot new games. It is true, unauthorized copies of software have been appearing on home and even office computers for years, but that has little to do with the Internet, or so it seems. In reality, it is the volume of this infraction that is affected by the Internet. Now, a program can be loaded onto a web site and downloaded by millions of users. This is no more or less ethical than the hand to hand transfer that was prevalent before, only the volume of transfer has changed. Still, according to Principle Two above, it is unethical. Besides violating actual copyright laws, both the persons offering and accepting the software are violating the owners’ rights not to have their work copied or distributed without their permission.

• Another situation that has been, for all practical purposes, created by the Internet and its community of software developers, is open source software. This is a relatively novel situation, but still Principle Two above applies. Open source software is essentially free to those who want to use it and also those who want to modify it. How then does Principle Two apply? If this is free, then aren’t the developers giving you the right to do whatever you wish? The answer here is no. The software or code is provided at no cost, but not without stipulations or restrictions. The consent of the developers is given if, and only if, you follow the guidelines they set forth for the use of the software or code. Often times this includes merely retaining developer credits and agreeing to re-release the code once it is modified. If this is not done, you do not have the consent to copy or distribute the work. To do so would then be unethical.

• The third common situation where it may be easy to cross the ethical boundaries is in free downloadable software previews. These are commonly provided by major software companies as a 30-day trial of the full version of their packages (some of which cost many hundreds to thousands of dollars). Taking advantage of this as a trial or for a one-time use is fine and entirely ethical, whether or not you buy the software or intend to buy it. This is the company’s marketing strategy. However, erasing the program from your system or downloading the program again as a ‘different’ user in order to advantage of the offer again or to avoid purchasing the package is unethical. Not only would you be lying in the fact that you would be presenting yourself as a new customer, you would be violating Principle Two. Though the company is giving permission to copy the software, ‘their work,’ they are only giving it once to each person. By downloading it a second time, you do not have th! ! eir permission, as it is strictly stated, and you would therefore be ‘copy[ing] . . . without their consent.’ The violation of Principle Two clearly defines this action as unethical.

It is sometimes difficult to determine whether or not practices are unethical while operating on the Internet, but in reality, the Internet is a part of the physical world, not some realm of its own, and the same principles apply. Practices that are unethical off the Internet are not made ethical on the Internet because of the ease of the practice.

This page is the creation of

Randy Chamberlin

April Hennebeck

with thanks to the other members of the class for their input