LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES ON THE INTERNET:- COPYRIGHT, PLAGIARISM, HACKING, NETIQUETTE

LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES ON THE INTERNET:- COPYRIGHT, PLAGIARISM, HACKING, NETIQUETTE

INTRODUCTION

Technology has impacted everyone around the globe. It has made communication, sharing knowledge, and access to world news almost effortless. However the internet is sometimes used in a careless, inadequate, and unethical way. Ethics is defined as “moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.” We have also discovered that we are vulnerable to their malfunction and misuse, creating problems such as computer crime, software theft, hacking, viruses, invasions of privacy, an over reliance on intelligent machines and workplace stress, each of which has created one or more ethical dilemmas for the computer profession.

Ethics is a set of moral principles that govern the behavior of a group or individual. Therefore, computer ethics is set of moral principles that regulate the use of computers. Computer ethics promotes the discussion of how much influence computers should have in areas such as artificial intelligence and human communication. As the world of computers evolves, computer ethics continues to create ethical standards that address new issues raised by new technologies.

CONTENT

With the changing social landscape that naturally follows changes in technology comes a new wave of ethical issues. These issues must be addressed and resolved for computers, technology and the internet to have a positive influence in society. Internet privacy, electronic communication and computer crimes add a new layer of ethical issues that plague those who use computers and technology on a daily bases.

The main legal and ethical issues are copyright, plagiarism, hacking, phishing and netiquette.

1.       COPYRIGHT

Copyright relates to artistic creations, such as poems, novels, music, paintings and cinematographic works. In most European languages other than English copyright is known as author’s rights. The expression copyright refers to the main act which, in respect literacy and artistic creations, may be made only by the author or which his authorization. That act is the making of copies of the literacy or artistic work, such as a book, a painting, a sculpture, a photograph or a motion picture.  The author’s right refers to the person who is the creator of the artistic works, its author thus underlining the fact recognized in most laws, that the author has certain specific rights in his creation such as the right to prevent a distracted reproduction, which only he can exercise, where as other rights, such as the right to make copies, can be exercised by other persons. 

Example: - A publisher who has obtained a license to this effect from the author.

2.       PLAGIARISM

Many people think of plagiarism as copying another’s work or borrowing someone else’s original release. But terms like “copying” and “borrowing” can disguise the seriousness of the offence.

Plagiarism is an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own, as by not crediting the original author. In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and buying it afterward.

Plagiarism is the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original work. It is subject to sections like penalties, suspension and even expulsion. Recently cases of ‘extreme plagiarism’ is have been identified in academia plagiarism is not a crime peruse but in academia and industry. It is a serious ethical offence and cases of plagiarism can constitute copyright infringement.

3.       HACKING

In the computer security context a hacker is someone who seeks and exploits weaknesses in a computer system or computer network.  Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest or challenge.

The term hacker is reclaimed by computer programmers who argue that someone breaking into computers is better called a cracker not making a difference between computer criminals(black hats) and computer security experts(white hats) some white hat crackers claim that they also deserve the title hacker and that only black hats should be called crackers.

4.       PHISHING

Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers online.

Phishing is try to obtain financial or other confidential information from internet users typically by sending an email that looks as if it is from a legitimate organization, usually a financial institution, but contain a link to a fake website that replicates the real one.

Phishing is an email fraud method in which the preparator sends out legitimate looking email in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients. Typically the message appears to come from well-known and trust worthy websites. Websites that are frequently spoofed by phishers include paypale Bay, MSN, Yahoo, Best Buy and America online.

5.       NETIQUETTE

Netiquette, a colloquial portmanteau of Network etiquette or internet etiquette is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from use net and mailing lists to blogger and forums. Like the network itself, these developing norms remain in a state of flux and vary from community to community. The points most strongly emphasized about use net etiquette often include using simple electronic signatures and avoiding multi posting , cross posting, off-topic  posting, hijacking a discussion thread and other techniques used to minimize the effort required to read a post or a thread similarly some use net  guidelines call for use of unabbreviated English while users of instant messaging protocols like SMS occasionally encourage just the opposite bolstering use of SMS language. However many online communities frown upon this practice.

CONCLUSION

The objectives of computer ethic are to ensure the privacy and safety of the computer users, to help people use the computer in the right way and to guarantee that works that done by someone did not declare by other people.

Information Technology is one of the diverse field than imagine and is related to the ethics in various ways. Most of the people are unknown how they have abuse of ethical benchmark in Information Technology. So rather than taking about the ethics, people should get aware to do something ethical.