Organizational Emerging Ethics Emerging Codes of Ethics

Organizational Emerging Ethics

Emerging Codes of Ethics in Technology: Designing a Website that does not potentially infringe upon the emerging ethical environment of the web

Imagine this. As head of your organization's website design program, you now have the perfect concept. You have an idea for an informative and interactive 'site,' as well as a newly registered domain. You have the perfect trademark and graphic arts to go with the content of the site. But all is not well -- yet -- one must first consult with the legal counsel of one's organizational environment to make sure that no copy rite infringements will be incurred by the technology.

Yes, as tedious as it may seem, one cannot underscore the importance of having stringent organizational ethical guidelines regarding the use of material gleaned from the web when using such visual and verbal material on one's own organizational website.

As observed in the Digital Enterprise article "Intellectual Property on the Web," (2004) while it is true that everything in cyberspace is "composed of bits, the binary code that is the foundation of computing," the fact that digital images, music, video, software, and written compositions are perfectly reproducible in a technical fashion does not mean that they can be reproduced ethically or legally as easily by anybody else who possesses it. It simply requires organizations to be more diligent in the use of such material, so that they do not unwittingly make use of the reputation of other sites and organization.

Who owns what information on the Internet? Who should own what information on the Internet? As usage of the Net intensifies, these questions are becoming increasingly important and controversial. Lawyers, legal scholars, judges, lawmakers, and Internet users disagree concerning how the existing set of legal rules should be applied to this new medium -- and disagree even more sharply concerning whether and how those rules should be modified to manage the medium better."(Fischer, 2003)

One throws up one's hands in the face of such confusion -- if legal scholars cannot agree, what of designers and businesspeople? Before the law steps in, business must police itself. After all, it is not just bad legal sense to co-opting the intellectual property of others for one's own organization's site without proper situation. To do so threatens commerce, and the right of individual artists to profit from their work. It casts aspersions upon the business of one's own organization, as one is essentially stealing the property and livelihood of another, as surely as a thief shoplifting from a store. And, in a cutthroat online business community, one does not want to contribute to the rapacious environment that already exists.

From an ethical, organization's own point-of-view it is crucial to recall that a web page or site is not public domain material. Even if anyone can access it, property holders can distribute their works freely while retaining their right of control over that work. At present, U.S. law remains murky on such issues, but ultimately it is less costly for an organization to err upon the side of caution rather than against caution, lest the law change in the near future and one must engage in a costly redesign of a now familiar (to the customer's eye) site.

Some areas where e-commerce businesses are struggling to understand how intellectual property rights will be handled under U.S. And international law include, for example, when is a hyperlink from one site to web pages within another site illegal? In other words, if one wishes to include a link on an organizational website to another page, because a newspaper has praised its employee compensation package, is it illegal to do so without permission? Legally or not, it is clearly within the organization's interest at present to request and receive such permission to avoid potential legal conflict. ("Intellectual Property on the Web," 24 May 2004)

Another important issue to consider is when is a domain name or a reference a trademark infringement -- in other words, avoid the use of references to, something like, 'our organization offers no McJobs,' or a site name that might sound like an already existing name like EBAY for a boat store going 'online' with its products, etc. Again, even though such issues may currently be contentious legally, the costs to the organization in such murky legal issues stress that the organization err upon the side of caution.