Internet Ethics and the consumer's private existence in an unstable regulatory environment -- untapped economic waters in a wild, wild west of identity theft and chronic consumption
When it comes to Internet ethics, even in the absence of legal requirements, businesses must themselves self-regulate when it comes to consumer privacy. If they do not, it is likely that the government will step in to do so, as the government has done in the European Union. This will only hurt businesses economically, and do damage to the equal ethical obligation corporations owe to shareholders. Furthermore, good business sense is about trust between the consumer and the business, and this is not honored when businesses unfairly spy upon casual surfers of their websites, or use consumer data for their own profit as well as research and marketing purposes.
Americans, according to a recent poll cited by J. Hodges in the journal of the Internal Auditor, now consider the Internet to be a more important source of information than radio or television, yet distrust its intrustive potential in their daily lives. This was the conclusion of the 2001 study "Surveying the Digital Future," a recent University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) area of long-time research. In addition, more than two-thirds of U.S. residents have regular, continuous access to the Internet in their homes, fifty give percent report frequently using e-mail, and fifty two percent have made purchases online. (Hodges, 2001) Ever since the age of direct mail, of course, consumers have had access to targeted advertising they may reject or accept. (Ewald, 2003) But the plurality of uses, of personal, business, and commerce, that most Americans deploy the Internet, makes the use of the Web particularly ethically dicey -- a business intrudes into the office of another business when an employee surfs for products online at work, and spam regarding advertising can intrude into a private conversation between parent and child while they 'talk' online.
Still, when Americans use something so vigorously and enthusiastically, they must trust the medium as ethical, correct? Yet despite these figures, two-thirds of the 2,096 Internet users and non-users polled believe that going online puts their privacy at risk. (Hodges, 2001) There is still a pervasive sense that their data may be sold or used for unscrupulous purposes, even while they use the Internet for innocent means. Thus, although Internet connections are ubiquitous to almost every workplace and home, the World Wide Web remain a tumultuous sea of uncharted ethical legal waters, in terms of consumer and user privacy as well as the regulatory issues regarding intellectual property that affect the content disseminated on the net.
The most pressing legal concerns and ethical, regulatory restrictions have centered on the dissemination of music through sites such as Napster, the controversial online music-sharing site. But today, the legal rights of artists compete for media attention with many interests regarding privacy and intellectual property for media contention. Some might contend that the Napster issue of the 1990s pales in comparison to the even greater ethical issues of making the Internet safe for ordinary consumers, so they may engage in social and business transactions such as paying their bills online, checking what doctor visits will be compensated by their health insurance providers, and submitting their resume and work related data to employees online. Consumers should be able to do so without putting their privacy at risk
Consumers are now used to the fact that computers and the Internet store data regarding consumer's health care, insurance and other important sectors of everyday life. They have perhaps even grown accepted and jaded to the emotional manipulations of advertising in their daily consumptive lives. (Kaess, 2004) Advertising is everywhere in daily life, and nowhere more so than the web. Businesses comfort themselves with the frequently cited ethical claim that the interactive nature of many web sites and discussion groups create or implied waiver of confidentiality for clients. You surf, you pay with your privacy -- click on a pop up, and your data may be used for marketing purposes to convey the typical profile and response to a specific advertising technique.
But when consumers are not simply enticed, but compelled to use certain sites, this seems like an ethically specious claim. Consider how many consumers are encouraged to conduct their banking online safely and securely, and banks limit hours to cut costs of 'real world' as opposed to 'virtual world' banking that requires no tellers and little overhead office costs. Consumers are encouraged to use such sites, even compelled to do so, and businesses...
They suggest that the laws necessary to protect informational privacy from unauthorized collection and use simply must catch up to the realities presented by modern digital technology exactly the way the laws now prohibiting unwarranted wiretapping of telephones once lagged behind the obvious implications of failing to incorporate the needs posed by modern technology into appropriate legislation (Levin, 2012). Competing Interests and Positions On balance, there are legitimate justifications for imposing
According to the current laws, which are not really up to speed yet, an employer can monitor employee email if he or she has a legitimate business purpose for doing so. There is a belief that, because the employer has an email and computer system for employee use, the computer system (as well as the resulting email and browsing history) is the property of the employer. While this makes sense,
In this sense, internet privacy represents a challenge indeed. Internet privacy is a relatively new term and the definitions are therefore rather scarce or general. For instance, it can be defined as "the ability of individuals to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others." (Givens, 1999) in this sense, privacy is a matter of personal choice and is therefore subject to
Internet Privacy The greatest challenge to the legal foundations of the Internet is the continual assault on individual privacy, brought about by continually loosening standards as to how personal data is used, stored and tracked online. Foremost among these threats is the relentless use of personal data from websites, social networks and other online forums where people are coaxed into giving up as much data as possible to support advertising strategy-based
Internet Privacy for High School Students The unrestrained stream of information is conceived necessary for democracies and market-based economies. The capability of the Internet to make available the vast quantity of information to practically everyone, irrespective of their locations thus entails large benefits. The Internet provides access to the greatest libraries of the world to the students even in the smallest towns and permit the medical specialists to analyze the patients
Even sex, she said, because everybody has a sexual nature. In other words, she accepted living her life as "an open book." She saw the trend on Internet web sites such as Myspace as an extension of life in a small town. The difference today, however, is that a record is being kept for all time. The Einsteins and Ghandi's of tomorrow will be there, sharing their thoughts, feelings, revelations,
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