Computer Ethics - Code of Ethics in Computing

Ethic refers to the standards and rules that "should" be followed and it helps us to regulate our conduct in a group or with a set of individuals. As computer and Internet or intranet has come big time in our lives and it is an interactive medium where we can directly or indirectly communicate with people. We can put forward our opinions and suggestions, there has to be an ethical base for it wherein we communicate and interact within a given set of guidelines and do not cross the limit. Since the term Ethics is a relative term, it is branched under philosophy, which states how users of World Wide Web should make decisions regarding their conduct.

Computer Ethics is becoming more and more important as the users arte increasing everyday and there is no way to check what kind of people are actually using it. Therefore it is a just to educate all the users about the ethics and the issues that can be considered as violation of ethics. Thus Computer Ethics helps us to solve the legal issues that crop up everyday, to underline and solve those violations that were not defined by the older laws; to form new laws, rather to form a organized structure of laws to govern the world of internet, which is termed as "cyber law".

The primary concerns of computer ethics is identifying the ethical issues, which fall in the broad category of copyright issues, issues concerning privacy and censorship. Today every individual has to enter into the cyber society, irrespective of your field of work and without the knowledge of computer ethics. It will be difficult for you to survive since you might end up either doing something unethical or being a part of it or unnecessarily be a victim.

Spamming and sending e-mails concerning to sabotage something are practices which have become too banal to be done something about though your internet portal would facilitate your account so that you receive minimum of all the crap. Now in some cases the main deal is to identify the issue like if there is information provided on the Internet somebody could use it as a source of information and more research could be done on the basis of the information provided. In some cases this is listed under copyright violation.

There are issues that are confusing as there is a slight demarcation between the ethical and the unethical. For example, there are many kinds of cases that can fall under "hacking", copyright issues, and privacy and censorship issues. Experts are defending and arguing on all these issues to make a defined structure of cyber policies. There are bodies of experts who are trying to deal with cyber laws and they have also formed code of ethics for the same purpose of forwarding it in a structural and defined form that defines from the legal, social and political perspective. Let me give you a glimpse of what a code of ethics is which is based on the principles of the interests of the cyber community, competence, truth, social justice and ethical behavior.

Code of Ethics

• Information stored on the computer should be treated as seriously as written or spoken word.
• Privacy should not be violated. In case of academic use, it is known plagiarism.
• Information fro public viewing should not be modified or deleted or inaccessible since these are considered as destructive acts.
• Intrusive software such as "worms" and "viruses" which are destructive to the computer system is also illegal.
• Congesting somebody’s system with a lot of unwanted information is also unethical.
• Sending obscene and crude messages through mail or chat is also forbidden.
• Sending sexually explicit content, message or pictures is also forbidden.

It is an age where information technology is accelerating and widening the avenues for the people, therefore it has to be kept clean and information has to be unsullied.