ASSIGNMENT THREE

Question One
1. Discuss the ethical, social, and political issues are raised by information Technology
[10
Marks]
ETHICAL ISSUES
Health Issues – health problems related to information technology such as reduced eye vision,
Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and back pain are resulted from constant use of computers.

Productivity and employment -despite the use of computers creating job opportunities, the
introduction of it has in social applications has in turn reduced other job opportunities since
the work done by the staff have been replaced by computers.
Spam – these are emails which are not solicited that are sent to people for commercial
reasons targeting the recipients who might be interested in their contents.

SOCIAL ISSUES
Cyber bullying – due to Information Technology, there has been rising cases of online
bullying whereby people tend to make fun of others or even send intimidating messages
through social media platforms.
Education – in relation to education, plagiarism is a major issue since students copy the work
of other authors from online sources and tend to present them as their own.
Character defamation – people might make statements which might ruin someone else’s
reputation which in turn makes the person disliked.

POLITICAL ISSUES
Social Networking – use of social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook provide
citizens with information from the government without the government being able to
determine which kind of information to be fed to the citizens hence government doesn’t have
monopoly on the information.
Speed of computers - citizens report and post videos of things happening around them in
social media thereby spreading information to other citizens at a high velocity without
being able to be detected by the agents of the government.
 2. John is a cricketer. He has suspicions that a team mate, Simon, is involved in some
‘match fixing’ as part of a betting group. In this case he believes that bets are being
placed on which ball Simon will get out on. Rather than raise it with Simon or the team
captain, John makes a comment on a social media site accusing Simon of this action.
John believes that only his friends will read this comment but it is shared publicly. Simon
disputes the accusation and is intending to take legal action.
Required
i. Explain the law of defamation as it relates to John’s actions. [5
marks]
Defamation refers to one making statements which will in turn ruin someone else’s image, make
them feel worthless and result to them being disliked. Since John defamed Simon, Simon has all
the right to take action and sue John who will in turn have to pay money for damages caused by
the statement he made.
According to the Defamation Act 1996, John can have a defense if he is able to prove he was not
the editor or author of statement a hand, or even he did not have any idea that the statement he
made was a defamatory statement. In a situation whereby John will not be able to pay the money
for damages caused by defaming Simon, Simon can sue the social media website which can base
their argument to the fact that they can’t vet all of the things people comment in their site and
that they act in a hosting role.

ii. Discuss what responsibility do the social media site or internet

service provider that John is using have?
[5marks]
The social media site acts in hosting role meaning that it provides a platform that allows people
to publish their information. The site has the role to remove the offending material from it’s site
as soon as it detected the offending material.

3. 3. Discuss why do contemporary information technology and the

Internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and
intellectual property. [10 Marks]
 In order to make a person’s sensitive information safe.
 Protection of intellectual property prevents unauthorized people from copying and
producing one’s material without any permission.
 Protection of intellectual property ensures that the owners of the material to profit from
what’s theirs since there will be no infringement