MAMA on the Web: Ethical Consideration for Our Networked World

摘要

Information systems ethics have been studied for many years. It has primarily focused on the impact information systems in general have had on society. This research has been very valuable and has helped information systems professionals and students assess various business scenarios using ethical constructs. As a result of these studies we do have a strong sense of information systems ethics. However, the popularity of the Internet and more specifically the World Wide Web (web for short) has created new ethical concerns. It is important to remember that the Internet was built in an open systems environment, where collaboration to advance the improvement was encouraged. However, it was a closed community of a few intellectuals primarily in the United States of America. In this spirit many individuals spent countless hours expanding the capabilities of the Internet without worrying about ethical issues. As long as the Internet was used within this relatively closed community - government and academics -ethical problems could be discussed and resolved. Even though Internet use was extended to commercial venues, the software actually running the web is non-commercial. The Internet commercial pressures exploded in 1991 with Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web (WWW or web). With the web, users now had virtually seamless interfaces using browsers. Around 1995 the web was being transferred from a govern-mentally-run network to a network run by commercial organizations. One issue that had to be resolved was the limited assignment and control over domain names. After worldwide discussion the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was empowered to oversee the new DNS assignments. The first new registrars were announced in April 1999. Assignment of domain names was no longer a governmental sanctioned monopoly. The web community has had to deal with various problems to insure the continued safe use of the web. Anonymity can be problematic, but has been resolved so anonymous emails of spammers could be identified and stopped. In the anonymous web world digital signatures have been a stumbling point to E-commerce. This has been resolved so that the digital signatures can be verified. Additionally, broadcasters use the web to transmit video and audio along with static web pages. Digital online music caused ethical, as well as, legal negotiations in recent years from the new format MP3. The Internet community is already planning for the next step - a larger Internet - by the adoption of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) which increases the size and availability of IP addresses, and will allow more data and encryption in the packets transmitted on the web. Advanced search engines are being developed that incorporate language translation and artificial intelligence to facilitate sophisticated web searches. It is very difficult to keep up with all the new advances on the web, which can happen very quickly. Therefore, there needs to be an identification of several basic categories to help us define and discuss ethical issues on the web. In Richard Mason's article "Four Ethical issues of the Information Age" (19X6) he stated, "The question before us now is whether the kind of society being created is the one we want." He challenged the information systems professionals to develop ethical standards for the permeation of computers in our everyday life. He proposed the ethical issues of privacy, accuracy, property and accessibility (PAPA) as a way to focus the ethical discussion regarding information systems. While these four issues continue to be relevant today, the web requires additional ethical considerations and discussions. To help the global electronic community focus the ethical discussions about the web, this article proposes the following ethical categories - multicultural, adaptive, multifaceted, and archival. The acronym MAMA can be used to help us remember the web ethical issues relevant today.