8 - Consequences of Uses of Computing Flashcards
Discuss the ethical, legal and cultural issues that developers will face setting up and running an international student social networking site.
The are many ethical, legal and cultural issues that the developers will face but the main issues that they will need to take into consideration is the protection of the safety of students using the social networking site and deciding how the data collected by the site may be used.
There are several ethical issues that the developers will face. In order to keep students safe, they need to decide which rules they will enforce about acceptable use of its service as well as considering what harmful purposes users might use the service for which could endanger students. They also need to consider what data should be collected about each student when they register for the service. As well as this, the developers need to consider how to deal with copyrighted material that a student might post as part of a discussion.
There are also legal consideration that the developers need to make. They would need to make sure that they comply with legislation, however as the service is international, they would need to consider different legal systems in different countries. They will need to consider data protection legislation, as it will likely apply as well, and copyright legislation because it may be breached as a result of students uploading copyrighted material.
Finally, the developers also need to bear in mind the cultural issues that they will face. As the social networking site will be used to discuss various science topics, they need to be wary of the fact that discussing certain science topics may go against a culture’s beliefs. In addition to this, there is a risk of the the developers pushing their values on to other cultures.
Explain some of the challenges that face legislators in the digital age?
- Technology evolves quickly so it is difficult for law to keep up
- Laws are often national whilst the Internet is global
- Methods such as encryption make it harder to monitor criminal activity
