1 Internet Ethics and Research Collaborations Between Industry and Universities Michael C. Loui Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign October 30, 2002

2 Some Ethical Issues in Research Research misconduct Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism Responsibility for error, negligence Authorship, acknowledgment of credit Sharing of research materials Human and animal subjects Conflicts of interest

3 How Does the Internet Affect Ethical Issues? Global scale Whose standards apply? Anonymity “Nobody knows you’re a dog” Interaction Rapid communication between remote users

4 How Does the Internet Affect Ethical Issues? Reproducibility Perfect copies Uncontrollability Who makes the rules?

5 Research Collaborations Traditional relationship between industry and universities: Industry wants access to students and new ideas, research with low overhead University wants dollars Ideal relationship: mutually beneficial partnership Confidentiality, intellectual property

6 Confidentiality Academics want to publish Industrial researchers want to keep proprietary information confidential Confidentiality as a professional obligation

7 Privacy and Data Gathering via the Internet Confidentiality of personal information Search engines Surveillance Cookies Data mining Informed consent

8 Intellectual Property and the Internet Copyright Who owns software developed cooperatively? Patent Do software patents inhibit innovation? Should old paper-based intellectual property mechanisms still apply?

9 Intellectual Property and Negotiated Agreements “Sponsored research agreements shall provide that all intellectual property developed as a result of the sponsored research project shall belong to the University unless otherwise specified in writing. The sponsor may receive an option to license such resulting intellectual property on terms to be negotiated … The specific terms of licenses and rights to commercial development shall be based on negotiation between the sponsor and the University … The University may also determine, on a case-by-case basis, that it is in the university’s interest to assign ownership of resulting intellectual property to the sponsor as an exception to this policy when circumstances warrant such action …” --Policy on Patents and Copyrights, University of Illinois, 1998

10 Summary Confidentiality: When no laws apply, we need awareness of special ethical obligations Intellectual Property: When laws do apply, we need to decide whether intellectual property laws are ethically appropriate

11 Resources Edward F. Gehringer, Ethics in Computing, Duncan Langford, ed., Internet Ethics, St. Martin’s Press, New York, Francis L. Macrina, Scientific Integrity, American Society for Microbiology Press, Washington, D.C Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, Robin Levin Penslar, ed., Research Ethics: Cases and Materials, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind., Richard A. Spinello and Herman T. Tavani, eds., Readings in CyberEthics, Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury, Mass., 2001.