No one denies that the Internet is the most useful tool for research, business, and education, yet the Internet is the subject of a topic that is as controversial as the legalities of abortion or homosexual rights: ethics and the Internet. Many racy, illegal, and controversial materials are available on the Internet such as pornography and pirated software; on the other hand, many educational tools are on-line as well. This brings a need for a case of ethics in the Internet realm.

A definition of terms used regarding the Internet is necessary for the full understanding of how “unethical” data broadcasts itself around the Internet. The Internet is a worldwide computer network of home, organizational, corporate, and government computers. It is necessary to understand that the Internet is not just composed of web pages, but of files, e-mails, newsgroups, internal computer networks, personal computers, etc.; the media that most often provide the deemed controversial content are explained here. Electronic mail (E-mail) “enables computer users to communicate with and transmit digital material to other … groups of users” (“Internet”). Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat system in which messages are displayed real-time (i.e. messages are transmitted immediately and directly to however many receiving computer, all of which are connected to a remote server). File Transfer Protocol (FTP) allows remote computers to transfer information stored in files (such as reports or software) efficiently (“Internet”). Each medium of spreading information plays a large role in the spread of pirated software (Jordan).

Software piracy, often called “warez” as a vulgar term by the pirates themselves (“Warez”), is not just a problem to people; it is a problem to the software industry of the world. A 1999 study conducted by the International Planning and Research Corporation for the Business Software Alliance and Software & Information Industry Association (forthwith referred to as the BSA and SIIA, respectively) shows that, though the percentage of pirated software has reduced in the past 5 years, the per capita expense of the software industry due to piracy has grown. Additionally, the rate of software piracy is still 36 percent (i.e. 36 out of every 100 programs worldwide are pirated; this number is based on the global population’s PC business software applications), which is rather substantial (“1999”). The fact that the rate is 26 percent may lie in the fact that many so-called software pirates hide behind myths that they believe protect them.

For instance, there are myths that it is legal for one to post links to pirated software on one’s site, or that a disclaimer of acceptable usage will “shift liability to someone else” (“Warez”). The fact of the matter is “you could be liable for anything that you do that contributes to the infringement of copyrighted works” (“Warez”).

Another study conducted by the Student Monitor may also give insight as to the reason that the rate of software piracy is so high – pirated software is very easy to acquire! This study finds that 47% of polled college students borrowed some of the software they use for school from family and/or friends and 20% downloaded full versions of these program directly from the Internet (“Software”).

Perhaps the reason that money lost due to piracy has increased finds its roots in the actual heart of why software is pirated: money (or the lack thereof, in the case of the pirate). Computer software has grown increasingly expensive in the past few years; many people seek to find their software free (or at a reduced price), and in this folly, another myth is brought out: “Software is expensive” (“Warez”) and it is “okay to download programs as long as you delete them after 24 hours” (“Warez”). The VSA gives a good analogy in its response to this myth: “Cars are expensive, too … in the same way you can not use pirated software and pay for it … later” (“Warez”). Unfortunately, with this loop, more people pirate the software due to its expensive nature, and the software industry keeps increasing their price to cope with the economic loss due to the pirates’ actions.

There is a certain irony to “warez” sites in that, though they spread free software, they generally have pornographic “banners” advertising a commercial pornography site, and are compensated for these advertisements. Many of these sites are also difficult to navigate as “most of their links send you to a porn site” (Jordan). Consequently, the pirates “cheat” each other in this manner.

There are software companies and authors that distribute their software free (freeware or public domain software), or for a test drive of sorts (shareware). Shareware is a term used for software that encourages you to buy the software after a certain period. This software usually has all the features enabled, but, unfortunately, there is no way to stop people from just using full-version shareware outright – even if certain features are disabled after a period. The reason behind this is that many hackers and pirates have the knowledge to reverse engineer (take apart) a program and modify (commonly called “patching”) it to have the features enabled forever, or to get rid of nag screens.

The official U.S. law for copyrighted software penalizes violators with either or both civil and criminal punishment. Damages sought by the software company can reach to $140,000 for each illegally copied program or work; the court can authorize U.S. Marshals and/or the local law agencies to seize evidence of the crime unannounced; and, if convicted, one may be fined $250,000 or sent to jail for a term of five years, or both (“Software”).

Another ethical problem arises in plagiarism (“to put your name on a piece of work any part of which is not yours” (“Plagiarism”)) and the increasing availability of web pages and commercial Internet companies offering many term papers, essays, and reports. As recently as three or four years ago, ads for plagiarized, pre-written, or custom written papers would be regarded as obscure, were found only in alternative magazines, and were a small threat for serious colleges. Now, however, many sites serving this purpose are available, sites with names such as “The Evil House of Cheat” (“Cybercheats”), which enables its users to “Research Papers Online” (“Cybercheats”) (i.e. purchase pre-written term papers and essays via the Internet).

However, these companies maintain, “they are merely providing learning materials for inquisitive students” (“Cybercheats”); their services are becoming a huge problem on university campuses around the nation and world. Their sites are receiving thousands and millions of “hits” (which are visits to the sites) and “the owner of A1 Termpaper says that he has sold between 1,000 and 2,000 papers,” (“Cybercheats”) this just being in the first year of the company’s operation. Sites providing this type of content, between the years of 1997 and 1998 alone, more than doubled – 28 to 72 sites providing commercial content of this type, respectively (“Cybercheats”). There are currently hundreds of these types of sites (Jordan).

Currently, universities (such as Boston University) are taking action against these companies which engage in the sale of term papers by commencing in sting operations charging those captured “with mail and wire fraud, racketeering, and breaking … law[s] against term-paper sales” (“Cybercheats”). Those charged believe that their actions are legal and take the stance that what the do “help[s] people” (“Cybercheats). Some ivy league colleges take the stance that none of their students plagiarize papers, that there has never been any trouble with that kind of cheating, and that their school is too respectable for that kind of action and the students understand that. On the other hand, students interviewed from colleges such as Harvard attest that they have used plagiarized material before because it was easy to attain and the classes were only being taken, as they were mandatory for the student (“Cybercheats”).

However much can be done to these internet companies who profit their sales of term papers, there are many free and not-for-profit web sites created by students posting their own papers; these sites are massive and numerous, their numbers growing every day (“Cybercheats”).

Internet pornography has also created a huge ethical dilemma for many individuals, ethnic groups, religious sects, and governments. The largest ethical problem/question dealing with pornography is that it is easy to come by. There are literally tens of thousands of “pay-sites” containing pornographic content, and not all of this content is legal. For instance, “hardcore” (sexually explicit) child pornography is not legal (which does not stop its spread) while “soft core” (nude poses) pornographic pictures of children are, being defined as “art.” Additionally many pay-sites exist that post many nude celebrity pictures without the consent of the celebrities – this, too, is illegal (Jordan).

There are many cases in which models, movie actors/actresses, sports stars, and the likes find nude and sexually explicit pictures of themselves posted, without their prior knowledge, on the Internet. A specific case deals with a French model, Estelle Hallyday, who won a copyright-infringement lawsuit over a primarily adult web-hosting company, AlternB. This company, which gave access hosting to 4,000 web pages, was fined $70,000 and shut down all sites hosted by it. In response, many angry customers and individuals posted Hallyday’s photos all over the Internet, making the “French law … moot” (“Taming”).

The business and economic expansion of Internet pornography has become so large that sites such as Ask Jeeves are considering offshoots (specifically for Ask Jeeves, asksex.com and askadult.com) specifically for adult material (“Ask”). Search engines harbor these sites and even searching for something as innocent as “windows backgrounds” can turn up massive amounts of pornographic sites. Other problems found in the search engines lie within the software itself. AltaVista, for instance, “returns a huge interactive Java banner, about half the screen high” (Jordan) if the word “porn is included in the search string. This would seem okay; however, a search for windows background excluding sites with the word porn in them (+”windows backgrounds” –porn) returns the same huge banner.

Another problem found with the internet is rooted in name-brands and domain-name sales, and the question: is it ethical (or legal, for that matter) for an individual to buy a corporate name, use a familiar term, or even go so far as buying the name of a government branch and adding a “.com” to the end of it? Ethically, the answer should be no; however, this is exactly what quite a few individuals are doing, as in the case of the website “whitehouse.com” which is a hard-core, sexually explicit site. Not only is the name of the site controversial (as well as the site content), the fact that a person can stumble upon it accidentally without knowing that the actual address is “whitehouse.gov” brings up other questions. If that were not enough, browsers are automatically configured to, when given a word without a .com, or other postfix, check for .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov domains in that order – consequently, a person looking for the White House’s web page would find a most likely undesirable site (Jordan).

This question does not only deal with pornographic sites. Commercial companies, name brand corporations, and even famous individuals find their names bought up on the Internet. Many companies, such as Coca-Cola, have found that someone else beat them to registering their domain name, and have had to pay individuals millions of dollars for the rights to use their own name on the Internet (Jordan).

The music format “MP3” (which stands for MPEG Audio, Layer 3) has been under fire for several years. This format of audio is high quality, yet small enough to allow mass distribution. MP3.com, whose “main product lets users listen to tunes located in a music locker on the company’s severs” (Vogelstein, 30), is one of the companies that has been under fire by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). This product made listeners of the tunes put a CD into their computer to prove that they owned the music before they could listen to it online; however, the RIAA stated that “the locker had been assembled illegally” (Vogelstein, 36) and the service was shut down on court decision. Recently, however, the RIAA has realized the importance of the MP3 format and the uses it has. The RIAA is working now with Michael Robertson, the CEO of MP3.com, to “enable consumers to listen to their music anywhere, to listen to CDs they purchase online, immediately, and to enjoy music they don’t even own by paying a monthly subscription” (Vogelstein, 36).

Another similar service, Napster, allows users to share MP3 files from their home computers directly but says that the sharing of copyrighted files is illegal. Unfortunately, most (of not all) of Napster’s users take this rule for granted and share copyrighted music files illegally (Jordan).

In conclusion, the variety of ethical issues on the Internet today are very broad, and will probably be debated for many years to come. Some say that censorship of the controversial part of the Internet will squelch most of the bad. Some say that this is unethical and impossible. However the problem is “resolved,” these issues will face society as long as the ability to distribute such information exists, unless people are taught to live in ethical ways.

Works Cited