(c) copyright Ray Archee 1996
RESEARCH & ETHICS ON THE INTERNET
Have you ever travelled overseas and met the Ugly Australian? This
person really exists - in the bars, hotels and camping grounds of Europe
and Asia, you meet him, (yes him!) every day. He usually travels around
with his mates getting drunk every night, acting noisily, and baring his
backside from the rear windows of buses. He is crass and uncivilised,
uncouth and not bound by familiar cultural rules. Back home however, he
is your normal yobbo and would never think to act like he did overseas.
Why? Because the ethics this character follows are grounded in the
Australian culture. Take the culture away and sadly, he has no ethical
principles left...
"Ethics" is one of those words to which many professionals give lip
service, but hardly spare a thought about, in their day to day lives. The fact
that you belong to the legal profession, or have taken the Hydroponic
Oath, or can manifestly recite XYZ Inc's Policy on hiring minorities and the
disabled, does not automatically make you ethical. Only by knowing what
is ethically right and acting accordingly can you call yourself an ethical
citizen.
But what if the ethical guidelines of the profession have not been
established yet? What if the company's policies are still being
considered? How could you be ethical if the lawmakers and policy
providers cannot make up their own minds? You would flounder in a sea
of complexity and indecision. And this is exactly the current state of affairs
on the Internet or as it is more affectionately known, Cyberspace.
We have a situation with two opposing points of view: those who believe
that current legislation and policy is flexible enough to be simply amended
by changing the laws to include digital media; and those who advocate
new laws and policies for a new kind of society or culture epitomised by
the Internet. Both sides may in fact be correct - some old laws may only
need cosmetic changes, whilst new legislation may be needed to cater
for contemporary online contexts.
Western ideas about ethics in general have historical roots going back to
Greek Philosophy. Socrates, Spinoza, St Thomas Aquinas, and John
Stuart Mill amongst others, laid the philosophical foundation of ethical
behaviour. In the Twentieth Century ethics advocates frequently appeal to
some previous set of principles or standards established in response to
earlier problems. However in many cases, the contexts and situations of
the present are quite different to the events that prompted the guidelines.
For example, during the War Crimes Trials following World War II, the
Nuremberg Code (see http://www.worldcitizen.org/ref/nurem.html) was
drafted as a set of standards for judging physicians who had conducted
horrific biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners.
Since 1947, this code has been the prototype for other standards adopted
by professional associations to guide their investigations. Whilst this
code has been useful, it has also been difficult to interpret and apply,
especially in the case of non-medical research involving human
participants.
In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (http://www.worldcitizen.org/ref/udhr.html) which again was a
reaction to World War II and the terrible indignities suffered by many
people in the war. The Declaration sought to make explicit the basic rights
which all humans should expect of their governments and other countries.
The Declaration however does not cover copyright, censorship, or even
privacy issues which have become so problematic today.
In 1978, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects
in Biomedical and Behavioral Research recognised these problems and
thus developed a broader set of ethical principles - the Belmont Principles
- to provide a foundation on which more specific rules could be
formulated, critiqued, and interpreted. These principles have in turn been
institutionalised in the ethical practices of most universities and research
organisations.
The question facing us today is whether these principles apply to activities
involving humans in Cyberspace? Or do they need to be significantly
revised to fit behaviour within the new environment of virtual, online
communities? Do these principles even make sense in the digital world?
RIGHT TO PRIVACY
All advocates of ethical behaviour in research agree that ethics policies
should try to 1. protect an individual's privacy, and 2. ensure that research
subjects are made fully aware of the procedures and outcomes of being
studied. In terms of the first principle, private information is regarded as
sacrosanct whereas public information is usually not constrained.
One major stumbling block to using existing ethical standards is that
Cyberspace may be seen as being both private and public
simultaneously. For example, electronic mail is one of the most private
forms of communication on the 'net. But many organisations and
universities state categorically that e-mail should not be viewed as private.
On any computer network, there is at least one person who has root
access to all users' files including e- mail. According to reliable sources,
in Australia, some organisations monitor all employees' e-mail, check for
any suspect words or phrases, and chastise anyone who repeatedly
swears or uses foul language in company e- mail.
In the real world we would not normally expect to be videotaped or
observed in our everyday activities. However using the Usenet or e-mail
automatically means that a copy of the messages is generated and
recorded for posterity. If you contribute to any kind of listserv or
newsgroup, or even submit a Web form, you can expect those messages
to be recorded and/or archived for future reference on services such as
DejaNews or AltaVista.
INFORMED CONSENT
Telling people exactly what is going to happen is one of the cornerstones
of ethical behaviour. Whether it is a research study or an organisational
decision, fully informing others about the nature of any intervention is the
hallmark of good ethics. However, it has always been a problem, that if
you tell people you are studying them, then their behaviour changes. This
is especially true in Cyberspace where the mere mention of research can
send netizens into a frenzy of fear and loathing.
I once asked my students to record Internet Relay Chat channels in order
to complete a short student assignment. The recording of IRC "logs" is
built into all the IRC programs freely available on the 'net. But when
students announced that they were recording channel discussions, they
were kicked off and banned from those channels. In fact the whole of my
university domain was banned from joining certain IRC channels for a few
days. I was asked to "cool it" with the assignment, lest I myself be totally
banned from using the IRC network. Ethical behaviour was actively
punished in this context.
Robert Alun Jones, Professor of Sociology, History and Religious Studies,
University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in his excellent article in the
journal, "Internet Research" declares that consent is predicated on the
possibility that human subjects can be identified and/or harmed in any
kind of intervention. In real life, people are identifiable and may suffer loss
of dignity through participation in research. But in Cyberspace it is entirely
up to the individual how much of their true identity they reveal.
In Cyberspace, people may present themselves under a variety of
identities, disguises and aliases. Much of the sense of freedom
experienced by users of electronic communities is derived from the
experience of slowly revealing themselves, and being able to fully control
this process of self- disclosure. In some cases anonymity is the very thing
that encourages uninhibited, contextualised behaviour, which is so
interesting to researchers. How can an unidentifiable personality be
harmed in a Web chat room? It would only be through self admission that
the possibility of any kind of suffering might occur.
Due to ignorance and incomplete understanding on part of lawyers and
policy makers, it is probable that a simple translation of many existing
ethical guidelines from the real world to the digital world is likely to result
in creating more problems than it solves.
WEB ESPIONAGE
When I attended a large conference of technical communicators May,
1996, I met a Swedish conferee whose job involved Internet espionage.
Not that she used a shoe phone or anything, but this woman's job was to
ascertain useful information about certain companies via the Internet,
especially the World Wide Web, and sell that information to the highest
bidder. I knew that corporate spies existed, but I was quite staggered to
learn that companies often place sensitive information on the World Wide
Web for all the world to see. It seems that in the rush for global presence
companies are foolishly making available information, which competitiors
can benefit from.
Enthusiastic junior systems personnel are most probably responsible,
due to inexperience with sensitive materials, misplaced trust in the
honesty of Internet users, and the newness of the medium. Executive staff
are obviously too busy to check everything that goes on to a company's
website.
COPYRIGHT
At the time of writing there were no hard and fast laws which govern the
problem of copyright and intellectual property on the Internet in Australia.
Laws are in the process of changing but not fast enough for many people.
The Copyright Act, passed in 1968 should suffice, but it is said to be
based too much on paper-based technologies. The Act has been
frequently amended in the last 30 years, and is due for a thorough
overhaul soon. Government reform has been promised for the last two
years, but has been shelved for the time being.
One of the main problems is the fact that the World Wide Web inherently
asks all users to infringe copyright by enabling the downloading of a copy
of every article, graphic, and picture on a Web site at the click of a button.
The newest version of Mosaic for Windows has a menu item for exactly
this. All Web users capture the whole of a home page whenever they
browse a Web site. The ease of copyright infringement makes it very
tempting for all of us to save artistic and creative works. In fact browser
technology has such tools built-in. Click on the right mouse button, whilst
in Netscape and you will see Copy Link Location, and Save Link As.
Many Web users might believe that anything that they see is freeware, i.e.
publicly freely available and therefore non-copyright protected. Nothing
could be further from the truth. In the USA, prior to March 1989, all
copyright protected works, on the Internet and otherwise, used to have a
visible copyright notice on the work, before distribution took place. Today,
at least in the USA, this notice is not necessary, although still used by
many people either through ignorance, or to circumvent others'
misunderstanding. Copyright of a work exists and attaches to any work as
soon as it is made into any tangible shape or form which can be
perceived, reproduced or communicated. Any viewable file, including
electronic mail, is protected under US copyright laws.
If you want to copy and use any materials which are taken from another
source then you would be wise to ask permission of the auther, if you
intend to use such material for commercial purposes. The rule of thumb
is that personal use is fine, commercial use necessitates permission.
BUSINESS ETHICS
Ethics are not only for the research scientist - there are dozens of
companies which have corporate ethics policies available online. One
such firm is Lockheed Martin, which has published its code of ethics and
business conduct (see http://jefferson.vf.mmc.com/ethics/). The
aerospace giant has been notable in its adoption of WWW technology,
and has some 45,000 web pages on 250 internal web servers.
Lockheed have adopted the Computer Ethics Institute's Ten
Commandments of Computing:
1) Thou shalt not use a computer
to harm other people;
2) Thou shalt not interfere with other people's
computer work;
3) Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's
computer files;
4) Thou shalt not use a computer to steal;
5)
Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness;
6) Thou shalt
not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid;
7)
Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without
authorization or proper compensation;
8) Thou shalt not appropriate
other people's intellectual output;
9) Though shalt think about the
social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are
designing;
10) Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that
show consideration and respect for your fellow humans.
Another example is KPMG, which has established a new Business Ethics
home page and bills itself as a global leader
(http://www.us.kpmg.com/ethics/). The home page has several interesting
items. The inaugural issue of Integrity, the KPMG Business Ethics
Practice newsletter may be downloaded in Acrobat .pdf format; "The Case
of the Successful Broker" is an ethical dilemma which a user must work
through to answer several questions. The site is replete with links to other
Ethics resources, strategies for developing ethical practices, and Federal
government sentencing guidelines for organizations engaged in criminal
misconduct.
There are also several excellent courses whose descriptions and
resource materials are available online. MIT's
(), and Duke University's
() online courses have a wealth of material suitable for perusal and consideration.
One exceptional professional source for all journalists is the Investigative
Journalism on the Internet home page
() has references to Media Ethics and
Censorship in Journalism. Of particular note is the Stalkers' Home Page (
) which is constructed as an ironic reminder to all of us that placing personal information on the 'net is
asking for trouble.
I have met several women who have told me horror stories about males
who have harassed them both electronically, and on the telephone.
Trusting the 'net community with personal information such as
addresses, phone numbers, even e-mail addresses is fraught with
danger especially for vulnerable users such as women and children. I
personally would never place pictures of my family for the all the world to
see. There are just too many weirdos out there.
Virginia Shea ("Netiquette" Albion Books, San Francisco) has another ten
Rules of ethical behaviour in plain old using the Internet:
1.
Remember the human
2. Adhere to the same standards of
behaviour online that you follow in real life
3. Know where you are in
cyberspace
4. Respect other people's time and bandwidth
5.
Make yourself look good online
6. Share expert knowledge
7.
Help keep flames under control
8. Respect other people's privacy
9. Don't abuse your power.
10. Be forgiving of other people's
mistakes.
I should like to add an eleventh and twelfth:
11. Be just as careful in
Cyberspace as you would be in a foreign country, and
12. Don't be a
yobbo in Cyberspace!
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(c) copyright Ray Archee 1996