Ethics in the
Information Age Position Paper
Assignment
Due dates: March 18 (Topic statement); April 8 (Rough draft); April 29 (final version)
Basic assignment: Write a 6-8 page paper in which you explain
and support your position on one of the ethical issues discussed in this class.
(See below for some possible topics.)
Some Explanations and
Guidelines
1. This is a class in ethics, not sociology, political science, or computer science. Your paper must address an ethical question: a question about what is right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust -- not a question about what is technically feasible, what is likely to happen, what the law says, or what people believe.
2. Students sometimes have difficulty grasping the kind of paper I am asking you to write.
a. It is not a research paper. You probably won’t need to read anything but the assigned class readings. (In some cases I will recommend that you read some other essay or article– my goal will be to help you find a ‘worthy opponent’.)
b. I am asking you to express your own personal opinion (something you may have been taught to regard as too subjective or as inappropriate for academic work). But I am also asking you to subject your opinion to a careful, critical examination before you express it. You may find that your opinion changes in the course of this examination. In particular, I want you to examine carefully the arguments and reasons offered by those whose opinions are opposed to your own, and to show in your paper that you have given those reasons and arguments a fair hearing.
c. I will be evaluating your paper primarily by assessing how clearly you state your position and the reasoning behind it; how alert you are to the variety of possible alternatives and objections to your position that might come from other ethical perspectives (especially those contained in our course readings); how accurately you have explained the arguments of those who disagree with you; and how cogent and thorough your replies to those arguments are. I will not be judging your paper on the basis of my opinion about the correctness of your position.
3. Taking a position is not the same thing (necessarily) as taking a side in a polarized debate. You may find yourself wanting to stake out a "middle ground" position. Or your position may be that no definite opinion on the topic can be adequately defended. Any position is O.K. as long as it is clearly explained and carefully reasoned.
4.
Be sure to state your position clearly. Even if
you are uncertain or ambivalent, explain carefully the nature of and reasons
for your uncertainty or ambivalence. Be sure to make clear to your reader what
question(s) you are trying to answer.
[Here, for example, are five (or six) different questions connected with
the topic of online pornography: Is there anything wrong (ethically
speaking) with being a consumer of pornography?
(Is regular consumption of pornography a vice?) Is there anything wrong (ethically speaking) with
being a producer or marketer of online pornography? Is it a good thing or a bad thing if
pornography is freely available and/or widely enjoyed in our society? Would it be helpful or harmful if pornography
(or some kinds of pornography) were censored or banned? If a majority of people in the
5.
Support your position, as best you can, with
reasons and arguments. Try to find
reasons that will have some chance of persuading those who disagree with
you. In other words, avoid
"preaching to the choir", i.e., giving reasons that will only seem
like good reasons to those who already agree with you. Try to find a way to base your argument on
principles and/or values that all parties to the debate will share. (Note: this means that reasons based on your
particular religious faith or scripture are not appropriate for this assignment.)
This is hard. Do the best you can.
6. Try to explain and rebut the most important or most common objections to your position. (I am assuming that you will have encountered views opposed to your own in the readings and class discussions. If not you will need to find some.) What will count as an adequate reply to an objection depends on what sort of objection it is. But, in general, try to explain why the objection should not convince a reasonable person to reject your view.
7. Give credit where credit is due. Cite your sources for ideas, arguments, objections etc. For references to class readings, give a page number and author’s name in parentheses. If you do use any other sources, give them credit for whatever you take from them: list them in a bibliography at the end of your paper and give specific references for any ideas you have borrowed.
Topic statement (due March 18): In addition to selecting an issue, your topic statement should include a tentative statement of your position on the issue you want to write about. Spend some time thinking about what you think and why you think it. You might want to skim through the readings on your topic to get a sense of the ‘lay of the land’. It’s fine if your position changes as you continue working on your paper.
Some Possible Topics:
1. Defend or criticize some position on the proper extent of intellectual property protection. Example: “Software should (or should not) be eligible for copyright protection.”
2. Defend or criticize some position on people’s personal ethical responsibilities in relation to intellectual property protection. Example: “People who illegally share copyrighted digital music and video files are (or are not) doing something which is morally wrong.”
3. Defend or criticize (some part of) Benkler’s thesis: The expansion of “nonmarket, nonproprietary” production of information and culture can make our society freer, more just, and more democratic. And we should take steps to make sure that our laws and regulatory policies promote rather than prevent this expansion.
4. Defend or criticize some account of why privacy is important and how it should be protected by law or regulation.
5. Defend or criticize some account of the (ethical) responsibilities of companies for the protection of information they collect (or some specific kind of information). (Examples: Should the Code of Fair Information Practices apply to private businesses? Should retail firms sell information about their customers’ purchasing habits to third parties?)
6. Should software manufacturers be held accountable for the quality of their products in the same way that manufacturers of other products are?
7. In what circumstances, if any, should people working on software projects, who are under pressure to meet schedules or budgets, refuse to compromise the quality of their work?
8. Under what circumstances, if any, should IT professionals ‘blow the whistle’ on coworkers or employers?
9. Discuss the adequacy of one or more codes of ethics (eg., the Software Engineering Code of Ethics discussed in Chapter 9 of Quinn’s text or one of the others indexed here: http://onlineethics.org/codes/index.html#guide .) (This will probably produce an interesting paper only if you have some criticisms of the code or can defend it against some critic.)
10. To what extent is it fair to hold ISP’s responsible for the behavior of their customers (eg., spammers) or to hold web-space providers responsible for the content of their customers’ websites?
11. Freedom of expression is an important value in our society, but not an absolute one. What limits to freedom of expression are appropriate for the Internet?
12. Discuss: Because there is no practical way to prevent underage users from accessing websites, nothing should be posted on publicly accessible websites that is unsuitable for children.