2.1 Ethics

ethic, n. a set of moral principles concerning human conduct

moral, adj. founded on moral law

moral law, n. conditions to be satisfied by any right action

right, n. that which is morally correct or just; fair treatment

It is hard to define a global set of parameters that can be said to be ethical. This is due to the fact that ethics are defined by something that is in itself hard to define, morality. There are things that most people accept as being morally right or morally wrong, then there are those which fall somewhere in between. For example, most people that you speak to will agree that killing is morally wrong. The same people will most probably agree that to kill in self defence is morally right. From this it appears that an action by itself cannot adequately be judged moral or not without considering the complete set of circumstances. Posing a different scenario to the above-mentioned people may result in them being divided on a particular subject, noting at this point that they seem to share the same morals.

Ones moral beliefs are based on the law and/or religious beliefs. The law agrees with most religious beliefs in discriminating wrong and right, with a few exceptions. This is mainly because most of the law has its roots in religion[32]. The people who made the law were influenced by their religious or areligious beliefs. Religions differ -from the law when prescribing how the offender should be punished. The point to note here is that the law and our religious beliefs have a big impact on our moral beliefs. Therefore if we have different laws, and believe in different gods, it is more than likely that our moral beliefs will differ too.

Applying ethics to computer security and behaviour is equally, if not more, challenging. The issues of ethics in computing are complicated by the way that the computing world works. When applying ethical behaviour to computing environments, it is important to consider the differences in operation of real-life situations to those in computing. In the next sections, we shall examine how ethics work in a computing environment. The application of ethics is covered in a lot of detail in [25].

  
2.1.1 Networking Ethics

After the WORM incident[9], David J. Farber wrote to the ACM presenting the ethical network usage statement by the Division Advisory Panel (DAP) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure (DNCRI)[10]. The statement defines as unethical any activity which ``purposefully or through negligence:

1.

disrupts the intended use of the networks

2.

wastes resources through such actions (people, bandwidth or computer)

3.

destroys the integrity of computer-based information

4.

compromises the privacy of users

5.

consumes unplanned resources for control and eradication.''[10]

2.1.2 Applying real life ethics to Computing Issues

In the real world, stealing something means that the item no longer exists where it was - it is removed. In the computer world however, stealing information leaves that information where it was originally. The theft is the theft of a copy of the information. This is an appropriate example to show the differences between the real world and the computer world.

Incorrectly applying a real life scenario with its ethics to computer issues can be misleading. It is mostly used to get a point across more by pulling at heart strings than by the application of logic. That is what is referred to as cheating, which is morally wrong. It is therefore very important to choose an example which is equivalent in both the real world and the computer world.