ETHICS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Ethics

ACM Code of Ethics and Professionalism (Excerpt) GENERAL MORAL IMPERATIVES Contribute to society and human well-being Avoid harm to others Be honest and trustworthy Be fair and take action not to discriminate Honor property rights including copyrights and patent Give proper credit for intellectual property Respect the privacy of others Honor confidentiality ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVES Articulate social responsibilities Enhance the quality of working life Proper and authorized uses of computing and communication resources Ensure that those affected by a system have their needs clearly articulated; validate the system to meet requirements Protect the dignity of users

Intellectual Honesty McConnell, Code Complete Refusing to pretend you’re an expert when you’re not Readily admitting your mistakes Trying to understand a compiler warning rather than suppressing the message Clearly understanding your program – not compiling it to see if it works Providing realistic status reports Providing realistic schedule estimates and holding your ground when management asks you to adjust them

Whistle Blowing What are the alternatives? When is it okay? When is it not a choice?

Ethics of a project intended use potential misuse consequences fairness to the knowing users implications for unknowing users

Hyperlinks Responsibility to users Responsibility to other site owners Making it clear that its another site Protection from inappropriate material Responsibility to other site owners Bypassing advertisements Ticketmaster and Microsoft

SEO Techniques Lots of opinions Code of Ethics Ethical Guidelines

Intellectual Property

What is Intellectual Property? Ownership and property Rights of ownership: Blackstonian Bundle Exclude anyone from the property Use it as sees fit Receive income from Transfer property to someone else Intellectual property: intellectual objects

Intellectual Property v. Real Property Physical objects Zero-sum gain: one user at a time Significant cost in both development and replication Intellectual objects Used by many at once Significant cost in development, marginal cost in replication

Need for Protection need to recover the development costs knowledge of future ownership is incentive to increase value

Arguments against IP Free flow of ideas First amendment freedom of speech Creative ideas build on society and culture Noel Capon textbooks

Legal Protection Copyright Patent Trademark

Copyright:  giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time

Copyright: How Long? 1790: 14 + renew 1909: 28 + renew 1976 : author + 50, corporate 75 1998: author + 70, corporate 95

Digital Rights Management Enabling copying is criminal Preclude through architecture Problems Constrains who can use Exceptions will be too constrained for someone Tracks who is viewing

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (‘66) Illegal to … bypass technical measures used to protect access manufacture or distribute technologies primarily designed or produced to circumvent technical measures remove or alter copyright management information Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes (Aug ‘00) 8 studios sued 2600 Magazine posting DeCSS bypasses Content Scrambling System (CSS) commercially distributed DVD

Copying copyrighted materials Responsibility of those enabling it Software Network providers Cases: software Napster Grockster Bit Torrent Cases: network providers Verizon Six Strikes

APIs: Oracle v Google Ruling: not copyrightable

Patents

Patents Physical objects Criteria Process, machine or composition of matter NOT laws of nature, scientific principles, algorithms Criteria Novel Not previously described Non-obvious Useful

Patents Hardware, software, processes NOT laws of nature, scientific principles, algorithms Can patent new applications or combinations Criteria Novel Not previously described Non-obvious Useful A man "has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?" -- Thomas Jefferson

Software & Business Process Patents Processes vs. algorithms What is non-obvious? Examples Name Your Price (Priceline) One-click (Amazon) Opinions Marco Arment Paul Graham

Most Recent Cases In the last few years, situation has clarified Bilski v Kappos – software patents ok Machine or transformation Alice v CLS – abstract ideas not patentable LCS v American Airlines Extended to business

Trademarks

Trademarks Word, phrase or symbol “Pithily” identifies Infringement: used by someone else Dilutions Blurring – dissimilar products Tarnishment – negative or compromising Has been applied to domain names Cybersquatting Parody or criticism

Domain Names Cybersquatting .net, .org, .com, … Punctuation (hyphenation, etc.) Phrases, nicknames Parody, criticism, complaint (cybergriping) Property rights vs. free speech Bringing people to the site under false pretenses Including the name in the url vs. appearing to be the site