Computing Ethics Lab

CS 102

Feb. 18, 2004

Introduction

This lab will help us discover:

1. The beginnings of a discussion of ethics and computing.

Lab

The following ethics case studies were taken from the Ethics Update Home Page at
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/.

MP3 on Campus

MP3 audio files enable users to exchange compact disk recordings digitally over the Internet. Music lovers use MP3's to search for rare recordings. They also can use them to copy an entire compact disk and transmit it to anyone at no cost. Recently the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has undertaken a major effort to combat copyright violations. The RIAA sends letters to colleges and universities whenever its researchers discover on campus servers offering copyrighted music. According to Frank Creighton, an RIAA Senior Vice President, when the Association began its monitoring efforts several years ago it discovered that about seventy percent of the infringing sites were on university campuses. ``We're willing to give individuals or students a first pass,'' said Mr. Creighton. ``But if we catch you doing it again,'' he said, ``we have no alternative but to take the stance that you're thumbing your nose at us, and you don't take us seriously, and there are potential civil and criminal remedies that we will invoke if we need to.''

In the fall of 1999 network administrators at Carnegie Mellon University, without prior warning, checked the public folders of 250 student computers connected to the University's network, and found 71 students whose files contained illegally copied MP3's. The students lost their in-room Internet connections for the rest of the semester, which meant they had to use a university computer lab to gain access to the Internet. All the students were given a right to appeal their penalties, and students who attended a ninety minute class on copyright had their penalties reduced by one month. Speaking of the investigation, Paul G. Fowler, Carnegie Mellon's Associate Dean for Student Affairs said, ``It wasn't a big caper. All we did was go in to take a look at the culture of our Internet.'' Mr. Fowler noted that prior to the investigation, University officials had discussed whether it would be a good idea to step up efforts at educating students about copyright violations. ``We now know it would be,'' he said.

Under the Digital Millennium Act, which Congress passed last year, on-line service providers, such as universities, can avoid liability if they take certain steps specified in the Act. These include, in cases when the university has been informed of an infringement, shutting off access to the infringing material, and notifying the user who posted it, so that he or she can take up the matter with the copyright holder. The user must be given the right by the university to appeal the shutoff. According to Mr. Arnold Lutzker, an attorney for the American Library Association, if a university meets the above requirements, in all likelihood, it will avoid liability for any given infringement.

``I'm no fan of the recording industry,'' said Mr. Fowler of Carnegie Mellon, ``but our students need to understand they're probably going to be out there creating software some day that's going to make them a million dollars.'' If that software winds up in some shared community,'' Mr. Fowler observed, ``their livelihood is jeopardized. So why should we not afford the same opportunities to make a living to other members of our community?'', asked Mr. Fowler.

Notes: Fifth Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, APPE, 2000

Computer Privacy

An interesting post on a computer discussion site (Slashdot) raises some important questions about software installed by cable personnel. Here's the entry in its entirety:

Posted by Cliff on Monday October 28, @08:33AM from the fishy-practices dept. N0S asks: ``The cable guy came over to install a cable modem at my Dad's house. As I watched him do his stuff I noticed he was installing something called Broadjump Client Foundation. I know you don't need software for a cable modem to work so I asked if it was necessary. He said he had to do his list of things, and we had to sign that he did his list of things, otherwise he couldn't leave it with us to use. Since I can always remove the software, I agreed, but I noticed while he was flipping through the install, he was clicking 'agree' on every EULA that came up. Doing a search on Google for 'Broadjump Client Foundation' comes up with some pretty scary stuff as far as what it does, like: 'Builds a database of subscriber demographics and buying behaviors to help evolve and refine marketing efforts.' Now, how does this affect us? Neither myself or anyone in my family agreed to the software; the cable guy did. And is there anyway to get cable companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still have this software on their computers is pretty high.''

Notes: The original entry and subsequent discussion can be found at:
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/02/10/26/2311244.shtml?tid=172 . This is reprinted with the kind permission of the author.

Not on Our Network, you can't

At many college and universities in the United States, Internet connections began to slow perceptibly in 2002 as more and more students were downloading music and movies, often files that were pirated or that they were otherwise unauthorized to download. In some cases, as much as seventy-five percent of a university's bandwidth is being taken up with file swapping.

Two distinct issues became intertwined: the size and frequency of the downloads was sufficient to clog college and university networks, often interfering directly with the academic concerns that are primary to the mission of the educational institutions. In addition, students were often downloading files that they were not permitted to download --- and were making use of the university's Internet connection to do so.

Administrators have reacted in various ways to this worsening situation. Some have added more bandwidth, often just to see it gobbled up as well. Others have been alerted by companies who felt their rights had been violated. For example, Warner Brothers contacted one college to inform them that one of their students had illegally downloaded a copy of a new Clint Eastwood movie. The Naval Academy, which has a strict honor code that prohibits stealing as well as cheating, confiscated nearly one hundred computers with unauthorized downloaded material on them. Cornell disciplined over fifty students for unauthorized downloading. Other institutions have treated the issue purely as a technical one and explored technical solutions such as limiting the amount of bandwidth a particular student could use at any one time, segregating dorms on the network from academic offices, giving lower priority to the types of files typically found on file-sharing sites, etc.

Imagine that this has become a serious problem at your college or university, and that you are the head of a committee appointed to develop a policy on this issue. What recommendations would you make? What principles would underlie your recommendations? To what extent is this an issue of academic integrity and ethics? What rights do students have to privacy when they are on a university network? What responsibilities do universities have when students are using the university's resources to accomplish something illegal?

Notes: Source: Rebecca Trounson , ``Pirated Files Clog College Networks,'' Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2002, pg. 1. Amy Harmon, ``Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files,'' The New York Times, November 27, 2002, Section C.