Ethical Dilemmas in Information Technology Essay

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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.

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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….....

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