Name: Mary Rose Ann L.

Virtudazo

Course: BSIT 1-1

Computer Ethics: Hackers and Intellectual Property

Review of the Article

Computer ethics is the study of assigning a "value" to actions based on whether they are "good"
or "bad." Every society has rules about what constitutes ethical behavior. Consensus in society has led to
the creation of these guidelines, which are frequently codified in laws.

There were a few issues when computers first started to be used in society as a whole because
there weren't any ethical guidelines for how they should be used or dealt with. However, as their use
spread throughout every aspect of our lives, discussions of computer ethics came to some agreement.
Many of these rules have been codified into national or international laws in recent years. The terms
"computer fraud" and "computer crime" are now widely used. Everyone is responsible for
understanding what constitutes computer crime and computer fraud, and there are laws that prohibit
them.

Hacker

Contrarily, computer hackers adhere to their own code of conduct. The Computer Ethics
Institute's code of ethics is directly at odds with some, but not all, of theirs.

The concept of a "hacker ethic" is perhaps best described in the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the
Information Age.

Intellectual Property

Software ownership-related intellectual property rights are one of the more contentious areas
of computer ethics. Some people, like Richard Stallman, who started the Free Software Foundation,
think that it should be illegal to own software. He asserts that everyone should be able to copy, study,
and modify all programs and that all information should be free (Stallman). Others argue that software
developers or software companies wouldn't put in weeks or months of work and a lot of money to make
software if they couldn't make money back from licensing fees or sales (Johnson). The software industry
today contributes billions of dollars to the economy; and software companies assert that illegal copying,
or "software piracy," results in annual losses of billions of dollars. According to Nissenbaum, a lot of
people think that software should be able to be owned, but that it should also be okay to "casual copy"
programs owned by oneself for friends. According to the software industry, such copying costs millions
of dollars in sales.

Because there are three different types of ownership and a number of different aspects of
software that can be owned, ownership is a complicated subject: patents, trade secrets, and copyrights.
A program can be owned in the following ways:
1. The "source code" that is written by the programmers in a high-level computer language like C++ or
Java.

2. The "object code," which is a translation of the source code into machine language.

3. The "algorithm," which is the sequence of machine commands represented by the object code and
source code.

4. The way a program looks on the screen and interacts with users is known as its "look and feel."

The possession of a computer algorithm patent is a contentious topic in today's society. The
owner of an algorithm can prevent others from utilizing the algorithm's mathematical formulas because
a patent grants them a monopoly on its use. Scientists and mathematicians are outraged, claiming that
algorithm patents threaten to cripple science by effectively removing portions of mathematics from the
public domain. Additionally, conducting a preliminary "patent search" to ensure that your "new"
software does not infringe any software patents is a time-consuming and expensive process. As a result,
such a search can only be conducted by very large businesses with substantial budgets. Many small
software companies are effectively eliminated as a result, stifling competition and reducing the number
of programs available to society (The League for Programming Freedom).

Conclusion

There are numerous perspectives on computer ethics, including those of the Association of Computing
Machinery and hackers' "ethics."

You have different points of view, even within the hacker communities. The white hats attempt to
prevent the black hats from gaining access to their computer networks and stealing data.

In order to make money online, there are organized criminal gangs who will do whatever it takes.

There is a dispute over intellectual property, with some arguing that all software ought to be free.
Scientists and mathematicians believe that patenting an algorithm would remove mathematics from the
public domain.

On the internet, there are also issues with censorship. China and North Korea, for example, censor
portions of the internet to "protect" their citizens by allowing only certain information to be accessed
and viewed. There are businesses that restrict what you can do online to prevent productivity loss.

Computer ethics is viewed from a variety of perspectives and varies from one region of the world to
another and from one point of view to another. I don't think one viewpoint is correct or incorrect. I think
you should follow your "gut," but does it feel right to you? There are a lot of gray areas, just like there
are with many ethical issues in the world today. I believe that as the profession develops, some of these
gray areas will become clearer.