Wednesday, November 23, 2005

MoDuLe No. 6

1. Pornography
Strictly speaking, I think pornography doesn't violate any of the computer ethics commandments. As what I've said before the action depends on the intention of the person visiting the pornographic sites. But I think I can give an example where pornography violates the several of the commandments. It is the situation in which a person used a computer in editing a picture and making it pornographic. For example, pictures of actors/actresses are attached to naked bodies in such a way that you can barely notice the fraud from the real picture. Advancement in technology is used to achieve this and would very much humiliate the people involved. This would very much violate laws such as thinking of other people's welfare, and using the computer to harm other people.

2. Spamming
Thou Shalt Not Interfere With Other People's Computer Work. This is what I hate specially when using free emails. Spamming involves sending advertisements, announcements, and product endorsements to email accounts in bulk. This violates the commandments especially on the one that involves other people's work. This violates because first it is a burden in erasing thousand of unwanted messages. In my experience, if I go to the Internet café just to check important emails, I ended up using all of my time in deleting these spams. The time I should have spent in reading and replying to important emails was consumed on deleting useless emails. Another violation is the disk space these spam mails are occupying in the email account. This violates the use of other people's resources. Spamming is really not a good thing.

3. Hacking
This situation entails close analysis. This is so complex because of the many sides that we have to look at. For the sake of discussion, we'll take the bad side of hacking, the one which is harmful such as breaking into secured systems just to extract restricted information. Although we know the more appropriate term is "cracking', we also know that these act quite violates many of the existing commandments. First, using the computer to harm other people (this is self-explanatory). Second, snooping in other people's file, and lastly using the computer in stealing. Whatever the motive of hacking, most of the time this involves breaking into other people's computers.

4. Sending chain letter emails(such as prayer and novena)
Just like spam mails, chain letters is another nightmare of people using emails. If you entertain this kind of emails, this is quite a burden because just like the spams, all your time will be spent on forwarding and deleting this mails. Its because these mails contain threatening contents such as bad luck if not forwarded, death to loved ones, years of suffering, death and many more so people have no choice but to concede to these useless emails. Sometimes they even use the Lord in threatening people. Because of this, I think this violates messing other people's work. Also this occupies a lot of disk space so this is another violation, using other people's resources without proper consent.

ADDITIONAL INPUTS:

Viewing this in altruistic point of view, this would violate two strong commandments:

Thou Shalt Think About The Social Consequences Of The Program You Are Writing Or The System You Are Designing. Although this does not necessarily apply to everyone, it can't be denied that there are some people who can't control their lust. Seeing pictures of naked people stirs up their imagination and they end up raping poor victims. This is a bad side of pornography and this would make pornography bad.

Thou Shalt Always Use A Computer In Ways That Insure Consideration And Respect For Your Fellow Humans. If people continue supporting pornography, this would also promote human trafficking. This is not good especially when we know that there are minors who are involved in this. Because of the difficulty in looking for money, for example here in the Philippines, there are many people that resort to this just to earn a living. They invest their body and their dignity just to earn little amount of money. This is a sad reality in our society especially in our country. If no one supports pornography, there will be no human trafficking and other similar crimes.

Lets now take a look sa hacking in altruistic side.

The best example of hacking in altruistic side is the movie SWORDFISH, starring Hugh Hackman and John Travolta. In the movie, Hugh has already given up on being a cracker for his family but he was searched and blackmailed by John. Amidst his futile attempt to resist, he was forced to break inside one of the government agencies because if he refused to do so his daughter would be killed. I think this does not violate any of the commandment its because what is at stake is not codes or programs. In the movie, what is at stake is the life of Hugh's daughter. I think this is a very good example.


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