ACADEMIC PAPER
The Importance of Ethics among IT professionals.
The importance of ethics among the IT professional are divide in six categories which are intellectual property, privacy, lifestyle, work, wealth, and health.
Intellectual property (IP) refers to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized and the corresponding fields of law associated with it. Under IP law, the owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets such as musical, literary and artistic works, discoveries and inventions and words, phrases, symbols and designs. Common types of intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets for some jurisdictions. It can be summarized that intellectual property refers to creations of the mind such as inventions, literary and artistic works and symbols, names, images and designs used in commerce.
Intellectual property is divided into two categories which are industrial property and copyright. Industrial property includes inventions (i.e patents), trademarks, industrial designs and geographic indications of source. Copyright includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs. Just like other kinds of property, intellectual property needs to be protected from unauthorized use. There are four ways to protect different types of intellectual property which are explained below.
1. Patents – Provide rights for up to 20 years for inventions in three broad categories
a. Utility patents – Protect useful processes, machines, articles of manufacture and compositions of matter.
b. Design patents – Guard the unauthorized use of new, original and ornamental designs for articles of manufacture.
c. Plant patents – Protect invented, discovered or asexually produced plant varieties.
2. Trademarks – Protects words, names, symbols, sounds or colours that distinguish goods and services. Trademarks can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in business
3. Copyrights – Protects works of authorship, such as writings, music and works of art that have been tangibly expressed.
4. Trade secrets – Information that companies keep secret to give them an advantage over their competitors.
In privacy sector, IT technology allows businesses to gather information and it must balance the needs of those who use this information against the privacy rights of those people whose information may be used. Systems collect and store key data from every interaction with customers likes purchasing habits, contacts, search terms, etc. Also, there are many objects to data collection policies of government and business for instance, strips people of the power to control their own personal information.
The lack of consumer confidence in information privacy has been identified as a major problem hampering the growth of e-commerce in conjunction of key concern of Internet users. Top reason why nonusers still avoid the Internet is some users prefer stricter forms of privacy such as anonymity to the Internet. Is it ethically right to allow users to use the Internet with a fake or an anonymous identity? While it caters to the privacy needs of some users, it may endanger the Internet usage for the others. Many users complain of being stalked by the anonymous users.
The freedom of expression endowed by social networking, has resulted in some Internet users publicizing wrong or undesired information under false names. They are free to discuss and opine about any and all topics in forums, chat rooms, communities and blogs. Moreover, such expressions do not require the users to disclose their identities. This raises issues in research ethics pertaining to the privacy of research subjects and informed consent. This is an undue advantage of the Internet privacy whereby the border between the private and the public spaces is made blurred. While providing open platforms for discussions, the Internet is ironically becoming a stage where fake people can voice false opinions and foster fallacies.
Reasonable limits must be set as information and communication technologies must be developed to protect privacy, rather than diminish it. In historical perspective on the right to privacy had been stated in Fourth Amendment (1789) which reasonable expectation of privacy protection against unreasonable searches and seizure.
In conjunction of privacy there are also provide some definition which is “The right to be left alone—the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people” and “The right of individuals to control the collection and use of information about themselves” There four aspect of legal concept of the right to privacy. Firstly, is protection from unreasonable intrusion upon one’s isolation? Next, is protection from appropriation of one’s name? Furthermore, protection from unreasonable publicity given to one’s private life. Lastly, is protection from publicity that unreasonably places one in a false light before the etc?
The trade-off would be to define the demarcating line between what's public and what's private. Internet privacy is indeed important in case of the revelation of personally identifiable information but it requires to be delimited in cases where privacy puts the Internet ethics on stake. His trade-off would be to define the demarcating line between what's public and what's private. Internet privacy is indeed important in case of the revelation of personally identifiable information but it requires to be delimited in cases where privacy puts the Internet ethics on stake.
According to McKinsey Global Institute, November 2002, there are improvements of lifestyle and standard of living due to the legal and ethical implication of Information Technology and Internet. It is stated that standard of living in the United States (U.S.) and Western countries has improved for a long time and the rate of change varies as the result of business cycles.
Within U.S., the labour productivity growth has averaged roughly 2 percent per year for the past century and the living standards doubled about every 36 years. (Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition)
It is proven that the key factor in the productivity improvement is the innovation of technology itself and Information Technology and Internet carry great impact on the society lifestyle. (Whatever Happened to the New Economy? November 2002)
Table above shows the relationship of labour productivity rates and the investment in information technology within certain periods of years. The higher the labour productivity rates indicated that the involvement of innovation of technology was higher compared to the other years.
Based on “Whatever Happened to the New Economy?” the relationship between investment in information technology and U. S. productivity growth is complex due to the innovations of IT, people and money. In early time, the introduction of technology; computers, Internet and many more had driven the labour productivity rates to increase and the technology keep on changing from time to time. People are still influenced by the importance of having new technology to help and improve their daily life activities. More people with better knowledge bring new innovations which leads to new technology hence it will affect the labour productivity rates.
Besides that, the additional factors that can also affect national productivity rates are the business cycle, flexibility of labour market, outsource and offshore outsource and market share. (Ethics in Information Technology, Second Edition)
The level of comfort in lifestyle is measured by the intangible benefits through IT and internet by goods, services, luxuries and the availability of technology that certain people received.
Digital divide refers to the gulf between people who do and do not have access to information and communication technology. It exists mostly in less develop nations where 20 million people do not have the access to information and communication technology whereas 1 billion Internet users worldwide have.
The legal and ethical implication of Information Technology and internet to work can be a lot of things to be considered, such as plagiarism, boarders between workers, how to make an ethical environment to the workers. Ethical environment is important to any organization in order to have more efficient workers. According to Nickels (2010), “Ethics is a fundamental business term because it can and does apply to all workplaces. Regardless of the organizational function, employees who fail to maintain an ethical standard in their workplace can raise the possibility of not only organizational corruption but also legal liabilities”. Also according to Sporleder(2009), “In an organization, workplace behaviour ethics should be a core value. Aside from doing the right thing, conducting ourselves ethically has great rewards and returns. Being ethical is essential to fixing problems and improving processes. It is needed to establish baseline measures and increase efficiencies”.
Plagiarism is a part of problem that always happened in the organization. Plagiarism is define as the imitation of another people’s work, thought, ideas, or expression and present it as one of their own original work. According to Jones (2006), Plagiarism in work can be more annoying because of people can take others ideas which mean the assets to them as use it as their own without shame. “Just like cockroaches,” they come again to plagiarise other people’s idea. Plagiarism can be serious offence to the victim because of taking their credibility in order to gain self profit.
Internet can be other source for some workers to use it to plagiarise other people works. So it is up to the organization to change their workers become to ethical workers before the workers can bring some problem and offence to the others. Which can make loses to the organization.
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from anIndo-European word stem.An individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources is known as wealthy.
The concept of wealth is of significance in all areas of economics, especially development economics, yet the meaning of wealth is context-dependent and there is no universally agreed upon definition. Generally, economists define wealth as "anything of value" which captures both the subjective nature of the idea and the idea that it is not a fixed or static concept. Various definitions and concepts of wealth have been asserted by various individuals and in different contexts.Defining wealth can be a normative process with various ethical implications, since often wealth maximization is seen as a goal or is thought to be a normative principle of its own.
If the chance of success and money is opportune to a wealthy person, their capacity and willingness can give rise to alleging various legal justifications for breach. A few years of legal expenses may only be a small proportion of their empire, and the resulting attrition and disparate investment in the conflict may eventually encourage other parties to renegotiate the disputed clauses.
In terms of moral relativism, most people would agree that it is ethically wrong to use wealth to control a situation and to ‘force’ people into renegotiating clauses in contracts if they are unable to afford the legal bill accompanying a dispute. However, as moral relativism is subject to a one’s own beliefs on what is right and wrong, some may not view using wealth as a means to control as being the wrong thing to do. In situations such as these, the ‘little man’ usually loses out and will ultimately succumb to the power of the other party or parties.
Computer-based information and communication technologies continue to change the delivery of health care and the conception and scientific understanding of the human body and the diseases that badly affect it. In fact, modern medicine has become almost impossible without the use of computers. While information technology has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of patient care, it also raises important ethical and social issues. Work on ethical issues at the intersection of medicine and computing has so far generated an ensemble of interesting and important questions.
For examples, what are appropriate uses of health information systems? , who should use these systems? , what benefits and risks do these technologies have for patients? , how does information technology change the physician-patient relationship? , how does (and will) medical decision making change?
Medical informatics has developed as rapidly as any science in history, paralleling and relying on extraordinary advances in information collection, storage, analysis and transmission. Medical informatics is changing the standard of care. It is no longer to consider whether it might be responsible for a physician or a united health professional to fail to use intelligent machines or their accessories in clinical practice and research.
One should be forgiven for thinking that the science is progressing faster than the ethics. People are too soon able to do things before they know whether they ought to or not. This is not a problem. It is rather a stage-setting in which they have the opportunity to use the tools of applied and theoretical ethics to track scientific change and, eventually, to guide it. If ethics lags too far behind, however, a science without moral underpinning risks losing touch with broadly shared human values. When use of a new machine poses risks to patients; and when failure to use the machine also may mean that a patient’s care might be sub -optimal, or that a patient might come to grief. Ethical analysis of these concerns and tensions thus emerges as a moral imperative itself. Put differently, failure to analyse the expanding application of an evolving technology is itself culpable.
It follows that ongoing developments in the fields of information and (tele-)communication technology require continuous monitoring of ethical and social implications. The Impact of IT on Healthcare Costs which are Healthcare costs is soaring out of control. The companies in the world are shifting costs to employees and eliminating healthcare coverage altogether for retirees. The causes for cost increases are use of more expensive technology and shielding of patients from true cost of medical care. Besides, development and use of new medical technology “accounts for one-half to two-thirds of the increase in healthcare spending in excess of general inflation.” To gain control over soaring healthcare costs by improving patient awareness and technology costs. Uses of IT industries Use of IT in healthcare industry includes Electronic health records (EHRs), Wireless technology, Telemedicine, Web-based health information
Reference:
Nickels, D.(2010). Workplace Behavior Ethics.
Retrieved October 30, 2011 from http://blogs.payscale.com/compensation/2010/04/workplace-behavior-ethics.html
Sporleder, J.(2009). Ethics in Workplace.
Retrieved October 30, 2011 from http://blogs.payscale.com/compensation/2009/12/ethics-in-the-workplace.html
Jones, D. (2006). Authorship gets lost on Web.
Retrieved October 30, 2011 from http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-31-net-plagiarism_x.htm
Marckmann G. (2001). Recommendations for the Ethical Development and Use of Medical Decision Support Systems.
Retrieved October 30, 2011 from http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/005/Marckmann-Goodman.p
Goodman KW (Hg.) (1998). Ethics, computing, and medicine. Informatics and the transformation of health care.
Retrieved October 30, 2011 from http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/005/Marckmann-Goodman.pdf
