MIS 2000 Chapter 4 Social, Legal and Ethical Issues

Outline Law and Ethics Accountability and Liability Information Rights Privacy Computer Abuse and Crime Intellectual Property Fair Information Practices Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management2

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management3 Discussion Questions 1) Employer can monitor of employees? Is this moral? Legal? 2) A disk with data is found in a bank employee’s bag and the company sues him. Who can win? 3) Programmer X uses a piece from legally purchased software as part of a software package he develops and sells the package under his name. Is this moral? Legal? 4) Company A sues company B for copying design (screen layout— user interface) of A’s Web site. Is Company B’s behavior moral? Legal?

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management4 Ethics and Law Principles of right and wrong acquired through socialization. Unwritten norms, stable over time There are different ethics, we usually talk about norms shared by a majority Violation leads to social sanctioning/condemnation Law: Legislative pronouncements of rules to be followed in society Written, changeable Violation leads to financial and physical liability before court

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management5 Computer-based information systems and data, information, knowledge (in digital or other format) are related to both ethical and legal issues. For example, collecting large amounts of data on customers (data warehousing), and processing this data to understand customers (data mining and customer profiling) potentially violates norms of privacy and more recently began colliding with new laws on protecting personal information. Should anyone pay for crashes, lost data and transactions?

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management6 Law: Computer Crime Illegal acts through use of computer system or against a computer system (hacking, sniffing, spoofing*, spamming**) Ethics: Computer Abuse Acts involving a computer that may not be illegal, but are unethical (e.g., using firm’s computer for private business, like “cyberslacking”; spamming) Computer Crime vs. Abuse

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management7 Ethics/Law: Responsibility or Accountability Being answerable for own acts and decisions, accepting costs, duties, obligations Can be legislated Law: Liability - Laws permit recovery of damages Due process - Ability to ensure that laws are applied correctly Responsibility, Liability, Due Process

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management8 In new segments of social relationships it often happens that ethics precedes law. This applies to information systems; for example, hackers’ damaging of property of others had been condemned as bad behavior but as illegal until appropriate laws were introduced; selling information on customers was sometimes criticized but only recently became illegal Ethics Becomes Law

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management9 Intellectual Property Rights Intellectual Property Intangible property created by individuals or organizations, protected under trade secret, copyright and patent law

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management10 Anything communicated in confidence, not based on public knowledge – an idea, organized data (report), work or product (might be parts of software) used for a business purpose, not information in public domain Trade secret law is under provincial jurisdiction Employees asked to sign nondisclosure agreements Might include software with unique elements (ideas embedded in them) Trade Secret

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management11 Copyright Statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property from having their work copied by others for any purpose for a period of at least 50 years Canadian Copyright Act protects original literary, artistic, musical, & dramatic works Computer software is protected in Canada as a literary work (period of 50 years or death of author + 50 years). Associating author's name and software integrity also protected.

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management12 Fair Use Use of intellectual property of others for non-commercial purposes that is acceptable even though copyright (e.g. copyright) is not released Example: using longer citations from scientific articles and copies of those articles in university classes New area of Digital Law, lots of gray zone

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management13 Legal document that grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for between years Determined by the Patent Office & relies on court rulings Ensure inventors of new machines, devices and methods receive financial and other rewards Canadian Patent Office does not accept applications for software patents because software is considered to fall under Canadian copyright law Patent

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management14 Challenges to Intellectual Property Rights Peer-to-peer Networking (Napster) Nature of electronic data Proliferation of access points in networks Easy to copy information products Difficult to track copying and distribution of these products

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management15Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management15 Fair Information Practices (FIP) A set of principles originally set forth in 1973 that governs the collection and use of personal data /information(North America and Europe) Individual freedoms and privacy protection Serves as basis to protecting personal information in later legislation Privacy: An ethical (cultural) principle of a freedom of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals, organizations, or government.

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management16 Personal Information Protection in Canada Based on FIP Canada’s Privacy Legislation PIPEDA- Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act; Enacted in 2000, completes some other laws Applies to public and private organizations Privacy Commissioner; Federal Court for unresolved cases

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management17 Every province has its own; Most still apply only to information held by public sector Manitoba: Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) from 1998 dealing with protection of personal information and grants access to records held by public bodies. Extended in 2000 to include all local governments, school divisions, community colleges, universities, health authorities and hospitals. Only Quebec’s privacy laws meet European standards & apply to information held by the private sector Canadian Provincial Privacy Laws

Social, Legal & Ethical IssuesMIS 2000 Information Systems for Management18 Data collection through forms & registrations Secondary use of data for other purposes Spam: Junk (spamming) Profiling online customers – customer value vs. intrusion into privacy (What data is collected? How much? Do companies disclose how they would use the data?) Internet Challenges to Privacy