Ethics and Piracy

Question 1

What is Ethics?

Answer 1

1. Ethics could be described as guiding moral principles with an aim to doing right or at least not doing wrong.
2. Generally laws follow ethical principles but it is important to understand that law and ethics are separate concepts.
3. The legal option may not always be ethical and vice versa.
4. Laws are defined by legislation and are (mostly) indisputable but ethics are open to interpretation and may vary amongst different people and different cultures

Question 2

What is Piracy?

Answer 2

1. We could define piracy as being the unlawful use of intellectual property such as using a software application that you do not have a license for. A code of conduct could go some way towards prevention of piracy.
2. The syllabus specifically refers to piracy in the development and use of ICT systems. For the development of systems a key area is making sure all development software is correctly licensed.
3. For example, you should not be using non-commercial licenses if you are building commercial software.
4. A similar situation applies to the use of ICT systems, an organisation should ensure that they are compliant with the licensing requirements of any software or systems they use. For example, many systems charge on a per user basis so an organisation should ensure that they have an adequate number of user licenses.