Ethical Dilemmas in Information Technology

Ethical Dilemmas in IT Ethical Dilemmas in Information Technology Information technology is a relatively recent phenomenon in our everyday political, social, and private lives. As such, centuries-old understandings of ethics and morality cannot easily be reconciled with the ever growing development of information technology. There are numerous cases, when information technology poses ethical dilemmas. In general, such cases occur when the good of the organization (government, companies) conflicts with the good of the individual.

For example, the questions of privacy and intellectual property are the two issues where information technology poses serious ethical dilemmas. In most democratic countries of the world, the right to privacy is protected by law. It is an aspect of human dignity as well as civil liberty but a dilemma occurs because large volumes of private data today are stored in computer databases by governments, organizations, business companies, and human rights advocacy groups.

There is a fundamental dilemma in these situations because individuals' private data may be used for the good of a group but it may at the same time violate individual rights to privacy. As Myers & Miller (1996) explain, "The information that is kept about people in an information system is property, and as such this property may be very valuable to the owner and user of the system. However, the good of the organization that uses this information may be in conflict with the good of the individual" (p. 155).

Intellectual property is another issue where information technology poses an ethical dilemma. The laws of most developed countries protect individual or company copyright and maintain strict regulations, sometimes imposing severe punishments for copyright violations. But the information technology today makes it much easier to copy copyrighted material and exchange them with others. The dilemma exists because the copyright holder may abuse monopoly powers, whereas illegal copying and distributing of software programs causes the owners of these programs billions of dollars.

Another dilemma exists because in some countries like Spain downloading music for private use is legal (Tremlett, 2006) though this practice may cause music producers losses in royalty payments. Governments and experts in this profession have adopted different strategies to deal with these problems. Many governments have passed privacy acts to protect individual rights.

For example, in New Zealand, the government tried to tackle the issue by allowing only the government to engage in data-matching activities by using individuals' private data, while making it illegal for any private organization to do so. Myer & Miller explain: "The government appears to regard the public good as overriding the individual's right to privacy, but it regards the individual good as more important than the private sector use of personal information" (pp. 156-7). This is one way of trying to address the problem.

On intellectual property question, governments try to protect copyright owners by passing laws against copyright violations, while civil rights organizations try to make sure the government regulations do not infringe on individual rights and they also.