Ethics

Within a span of just a few years, the entire globe has seen many technological advances. Just a few years back, when there was no technological revolution in place, we had to stand in never ending queues for almost every other thing, be it paying some utility bill or doing some account transfer or even a query as small as the accounts balance enquiry. Few individuals could now be seen doing the transactions standing at the bank. We now do not have to wait for our turn to know our account balance and do not have to wait for the banks to open in the morning in order to withdraw cash for emergencies. This all has been facilitated by hundreds of software companies which are functioning across the globe with some of them providing new software products while the other offering software services.  It is generally these software companies who do a complete automation for every item over the internet for us viz. online shopping, facilitating the payment of utility bills, purchase of movie tickets and even the complex tasks like maintenance and update of bank accounts balances for millions of bank customers plus determining their credit limits and keeping a track of their card payments.

According to the author, Computer ethics is the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology. The computer ethics are different from any other ethics as these ethics should consider personal as well as social policies. It is difficult to conceptualize the policy for using the computer technology because new value as well as old value has to be taken into consideration.

We have come miles ahead when it comes to development of softwares  hardwares but are still at the some place when it comes to development of policies and framework for protecting the rights of the individuals who have developed these softwares. There are stringent policies in place safety and protection of physical objects but for softwares such policies are still missing. We need to develop a good framework and policies for protecting the rights of computer professionals such that they are inspired for more innovations and thus do not have their hard earned work getting stolen without much pain. Using pirated softwares etc. should be covered under the same policies and they should be modified from time to time in order to meet the changing needs of time.