Ethics on the Internet

Ethics on the Internet

In today's society, there are many ethical issues on the Internet. Some of the biggest issues and concerns seem to be hacking and viruses, copyright infringements, spam, privacy, and cyberporn. Internet ethical issues affect a wide variety of individuals and almost all people today are affected in some kind of a way. Until recently, most computer users had not been very concerned with questions of ethics and may not have been aware of something being seen as an ethical issue, but this depends on every individual's position. However, today there are many concerns about these issues and some organizations are trying to get laws approved protecting individuals in today's society.

Copyright infringements now are an extremely large issue. Illegal distribution of software over the Internet damages the software market, causes prices to go up, slows new software development, and hurts job creation in software development. It is currently reported that 40% of the world's software is pirated.

Computer software is one of the most valuable technologies in our society. Since software is so valuable and because computers make it easy to create an exact copy of a program in seconds, software piracy is widespread. From individual computer users to professionals who deal wholesale in stolen software, piracy exists in homes, schools and businesses. Software pirates not only steal from the companies that make the software, but it causes the company to have less money towards their research and development of new software and it ends up hurting all users.

The software piracy industry is growing due to the number of PCs and Internet users growing. The Business Software Alliance believes that new techn...

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