Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems Quiz

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

• Ease of replication, transmission, and difficulty in classifying software are issues in digital copyright.
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to avoid technology-based protections of copyrighted materials.

System Quality

• Flawless software is economically unfeasible.
• Three principal sources of poor system performance: software bugs, hardware or facility failures, and poor input data quality (most common source of business system failure).

Quality of Life: Negative Social Consequences of Systems

• Balancing power: Although computing power is decentralizing, key decision-making power remains centralized.
• Rapidity of change: Businesses may not have enough time to respond to global competition.
• Maintaining boundaries: Computing and Internet use lengthens the work-day, infringes on family, personal time.
• Dependence and vulnerability: Public and private organizations are ever more dependent on computer systems.

Computer Crime and Abuse

• Computer crime: Commission of illegal acts through use of a computer or against a computer system.
• Computer abuse: Unethical acts, not illegal.
• Spam: High costs for businesses in dealing with spam.
• Employment: Reengineering work resulting in lost jobs.

Health Risks

• Repetitive stress injury (RSI): Largest source is computer keyboards.
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS).
• Computer vision syndrome (CVS).
• Techno-stress, radiation, screen emissions, low-level electromagnetic fields.

Learning Objectives

• Identify the ethical, social, and political issues raised by information systems.
• Identify principles for conduct that can be used to guide ethical decisions.
• Evaluate the impact of contemporary information systems and the Internet on the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property.
• Assess how information systems have affected everyday life.

Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems

• Ethics: Principles of right and wrong that individuals use to make choices to guide their behavior.
• Information systems raise new ethical questions because they create opportunities for intense social change, new kinds of crime, and loading.
• A model for thinking about ethical, social, and political issues: Society as a calm pond and IT as a rock dropped in the pond, creating ripples of new situations not covered by old rules.

Key Technology Trends that Raise Ethical Issues

• Computing power doubles every 18 months.
• Increased reliance on, and vulnerability to, computer systems.
• Data storage costs rapidly declining, multiplying databases on individuals.
• Data analysis advances, enabling the finding of detailed personal information on individuals.
• Networking advances and the Internet, enabling the moving and accessing of large quantities of personal data.

Nonobvious Relationship Awareness (NORA)

• NORA technology can take information about people from disparate sources and find obscure, nonobvious relationships.

Ethics in an Information Society

• Responsibility: Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for decisions.
• Accountability: Mechanisms for identifying responsible parties.
• Liability: Body of laws in place that permits individuals (and firms) to recover damages done to them.
• Due process: Laws are well known and understood, with an ability to appeal to higher authorities.
• Ethical analysis: A five-step process involving identifying facts, defining the conflict, identifying stakeholders, identifying options, and making a decision.