Computer Ethics final exam study guide Final Exam is Thursday, Dec 15, at 4:15. ================================================================= I have slightly restructured the final from what I had earlier envisioned. You will probably be asked to answer all the questions (unlike the midterm, where you had a choice). The questions, however, are shaping up to be somewhat more specific and concrete than anticipated, generally answerable in one or at most two paragraphs rather than, say, a full page. Some sample questions appear at the bottom of this file. ================================================================== You should be familiar with the general issues we've discussed in class, together with the basic ways to approach ethical issues: * identifying relevant analogous situations * identifying stakeholders and their issues * identifying deontological v utilitarian perspectives In a general sort of way, the final exam will probably weigh most heavily on copyright, privacy, and speech issues, although there will almost certainly be a couple questions NOT directly on these issues. Here is the course outline from the notes file: copyright rights of copyright holders versus rights of users privacy from employers from government security matching / fraud prevention patriot acts from marketers personal profiles rfid from copyright holders (RIAA lawsuits, ISP actions) legal records per-use content management patents open source speech encryption dmca software anonymity libel hoaxes trust and the web e-commerce information reliability security: phishing, certificates, etc trusting your software spyware voting & democracy hacking kutztown 13 randall schwartz antitrust issues open source professional issues talking to your supervisor I reviewed the study questions in the book. Many are excellent, but tend to involve either detailed references to one of the essays in the book or else require online research or other further investigation. So as models of final exam questions, they are not terribly useful. The following are intended to be more suitable, but be aware that some of these were rejected for inclusion on the final exam because they, too, required that you be able to look things up online. ========== : 1. Discuss some universal principles applicable to user rights and obligations relating to listening to digital music. That is, discuss music copyrights from a deontological perspective. If you argue that listeners have no fundamental rights here, you should support that; otherwise, state what those rights are and why they are fundamental. 2. Jolene collects software from friends. She copies the installation CD, installs the software on her computer, and gives it a try. Generally she then does nothing more with it, but she has plenty of disk space and so doesn't usually delete it. "I might need it someday to open a file I receive" is what she says to herself. In fact, she seldom does even that. When she finds software she *does* use, however, she usually (though not always) ends up buying it; if not right away, then when the next version release comes out. Discuss this situation from a copyright perspective; in particular; rate the "severity" of the copyright/license violations here. Are the software companies facing financial harm from Jolene's actions? 3. Many sites offer music lyrics on the Internet. One argument in favor of these is that making lyrics available does not affect CD sales at all: nobody buys a CD just to find out what the lyrics were. Discuss the ethical implications of online lyrics, and also address the business issue of whether musicians and the RIAA would be better off suppressing such sites or encouraging them. 4. Consider the development of a single medical-records database in the US. What are the privacy implications of such a database? Should the records be available to any hospital or doctor, on the theory that they wouldn't ask for your records unless you were a patient? Or should you, the patient, have to authorize access to the records? How would that authorization work, especially in emergeny situations? 5. At one point the US government proposed rules on the use of encryption systems that would have required that decryption keys be placed in "escrow": that is, decryption keys would have to be turned over to a newly created office of the federal government which would only release them to other government offices if there were a search warrant or the equivalent. Discuss some of the concerns citizens might have about such a "key escrow" system, and how they might be handled. Assume that the delivery and safekeeping of the keys was itself extremely secure. 6. Suppose the movie industry arrives at the following marketing arrangement. One can buy movies as before, in DVD format, for $20 each. Alternatively, you can download the movie (in protected format) and for $10 receive a license to watch the movie for one week. Older and less popular movies would be discounted proportionately. Movie downloads (unlike cash purchases) cannot be made anonymously; the movie licensing bureau keeps track of such downloads. Discuss the privacy issues. 7. Suppose an online technical site has space for users to post pseudonymous comments. Recently, however, the posting section is being abused, as some users post hostile flames directed at other users. In order to restore civility, the site proposes that users will continue to be allowed to use pseudonyms, but must register with a real name, and the real names will be revealed to anyone who complains. (At the other extreme are policies guaranteeing real names will be released only with a court order.) Discuss this proposed revelation policy. Is there any intermediate position a site might take, in between revealing to all and revealing only under court order? 8. In the very early days of file sharing, the argument was sometimes made that file sharing would free musicians from recording companies. Musicians would be able to reach out directly to listeners, and make their music available (either free or for purchase) on the Internet. Concerts would be handled as before (possibly using the Internet to cut out Ticketmaster; possibly not). Comment on this as a business model. Consider in what cases it might work and in what cases it would likely not. Finally, draw a connection between your conclusions regarding the viability of this model and the sometime-popular theory that file sharing is justified when the bulk of the commercial losses falls on recording companies and not musicians. 9. The "fair use" doctrine was introduced in the 1976[?] copyright law. The US constitution states that Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; Discuss whether or not the fair use doctrine is constitutionally guaranteed, or whether it is just another law that Congress can repeal or diminish as necessary (eg with the DMCA).