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 & holding your ground when mgmt asks you to adjust

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

Ethics of a project  fairness to the knowing users  implications for unknowing users

Are all projects worth doing?  Intended misuse  Potential misuse  Unexpected consequences Google glasses

 Responsibility to users Making it clear that its another site Protection from inappropriate material  Responsibility to other site owners Bypassing advertisements ○ Ticketmaster and Microsoft Use of their resources (e.g., images) Hyperlinks

 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 What is Intellectual 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 Intellectual Property v. Real Property

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

 Free flow of ideas  First amendment freedom of speech  Creative ideas build on society and culture  Pay what you want Music, Textbooks, Games, Books, Software MusicTextbooksGamesBooksSoftware Arguments against IP

 Copyright  Patent  Trademark Legal Protection

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

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

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

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

APIs: Oracle v Google  Issue: Android APIs are very Java-like  Android VM was built in a “cleanroom environment”  Oracle sued over the APIs  Ruling: not copyrightable Ruling: not copyrightable  Ruling overturned Ruling overturned

 Physical objects 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 Patents 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

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

Recent Activity  German legislature: resolution calling for cessation  New Zealand considering outright ban  US courts appear to be backing off Bilski v Kappos (Supreme, 2010) ○ Hedging the risk of commodities fluctuation ○ Claims denied CLS v Alice (Circuit, 2013) ○ Trading platform to assure that neither side renigs ○ Claims denied

 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 Trademarks

 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 Domain Names