DEFINITION OF INFORMATION OF TECHNOLOGY

According to the Oxford Student’s Dictionary of current English for KBSM, information is “facts or knowledge given”. While, technology is state in Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners as “advanced scientific knowledge used for practical purpose”. In other words, technology is advanced machines and equipment developed using technology. Therefore, information technology or well-known as IT is a combination of computer and communication that use to create, store, exchange and use information in many forms.

Ethical is involving the principle used for deciding what is right and what is wrong according to Macmillan English dictionary. Most people these days involved in many ethical issues in information technology. It can be good impact or bad impact to the people especially teenagers.

THE FACTORS OF ETHICAL ISSUES

There are many factors of ethical issues in information technology view. In our point of view, we will stress more o individual and society. As we can see, individual always influence by his or her friends. It happens when they always together in doing their works. As we mentioned before, ethical issues could be good or bad. For examples of good in point of ethical issues is search information or current issues. Meanwhile, bad is plagiarism, where he or she doing assignment that given by lecturer or teacher by copy and paste from the internet. Sometimes, friends can give benefits but sometimes it can destroy. Sometimes they help us to broaden our knowledge but sometimes we expose to illegal things like negative activities.

Furthermore, in society, it could be good or bad. We can learn something new such as through my space, facebook, friendster. From that we can create our own site. In friendster, we can give our friends comment and we can put picture in our site. While the bad things is sometimes, we are expose to bad activities such as pornographic pictures, wasting time and money.

Ethical IT

Ethical is set of standards of “rights” or “wrong” or “good” or “bad” in one’s conduct.Ethical issue in Information Techology (IT) were define in general. It was come out from our surrounding.

Ethical in IT is about “rights” and “duties” (Kallman and Grillo,1996). There are three “rights” which are “right to know”,”property right”, and “right to privacy”. The first one is about “right to know”. Right to know is about to know which extent to in using a database to access information. Secondlyis property right. To make sure our computer is being protected, we cannot misuse or abuse our computer. For example, we can protect our computer from viruses. Third is refer to right to privacy. The profesional was entrusted to protect the privacy and confidentiality of all information. Besides that, we are responsible to protect our password from being used by other people. We also are advise do not leave our confidential information on the screen without switch it off. In addition, one of the duties is confidential which is responsible to protect information from unauthorized access.

Furthermore, we can share our knowledge that we get from internet. There are many types of knowledge that we can found to sharpened our intelligent such as science, new tehcnology, new devices, current issues, economic global and so on. However, we need to smart enough to choose the right facts in order to obserb in our daily life. Besides, we can found many opinion and information by intelligence perception.

Another ethical issue is e-Learning. By using e-Learning, it convenience to us to find informations for references rather than to go to the library. We also can have lecture which there is tutor that can teach us. Besides that, we can ask question and do exercises. However, we cannot copy and paste the information from it because it considered as plagiarism.

In conclusion, people will get advantage if they use technology ethically. Suppose, in ethical condition we cannot download movies or songs. If we want it, we have to use legal way which we need to pay for it, as same as installing software. Therefore, we need be careful about free and illegal download and beware of unsolicited downloads. Other than that, for whom was defamation in libel, they can make a report to Multimedia and Information on Commision. So, the blog will be block. I want to stress that it is our responsible when we use computer. Are we gonna be use it ethically or unethically? So, think about it wisely.

*references: Using Information technology,Mc. Graw Hill,7th edition
Teaching Ethical Issues in IT, Ruth Rikowski, London South Bank University, UK.

ICT Effects

COMPUTER ETHICS EFFECT POSITIVELY TO THE COMPUTER USERS

Although we claim that we know what’s right, it is not easy to act on it because it is not usually easy to determine the right thing to do. Seldom we will think why should we be the one to do the right thing when everyone else is getting away with using copied software and music files?
Besides, computers cause new ethical dilemmas by pushing people into the situations that never happened before. Basic ethical principles which are used in computer ethics will help us in order to make the accurate decisions in our daily computer use. Ethical principles also help us to think through our options.
Three of the most useful ethical that is defined as the justification for considering an act or a rule to be morally right or wrong are an act is ethical if, were every one to act the same way, society as a whole would benefit; an act is ethical if it threats people as an end; an act is ethical if impartial observes would judge that it is fair to all parties concerned.
Good ethics is always practical especially when we use a computer at school or at work, because there probably have it own code of conduct or acceptable use policy for computer use. As a result, we have greater responsibility and less control over content ownership when we use someone else’s system than when we use our own.



NEGATIVE EFFECT OF UNETHICAL COMPUTER USERS

Have you here the word of plagiarism? Plagiarism is the example of unethical computer users. It is the serious problem in computer ethics because they will give the negative impact to Information Technology field specially.
Let’s start with something that’s gets many colleges’ students into serious trouble: plagiarism. Plagiarism is that the use of someone else’s intellectual property includes their ideas or written work. You might think how serious plagiarism is? As a student, you will get trouble if you plagiarize someone else’s ideas. For instance, at some school or colleges, students who are detected as plagiarize thrown out of school or colleges. Furthermore, even if your plagiarism action’s discovered after you finish your study; it will influence negatively to your degree and damage your career.
In addition, it is give big impact to who are owns the ideas that are copied illegally by someone else. For example, they cannot get income that how much they actually should get because their ideas or work are sold illegally by someone else. We also cannot know who actually own the ideas that are written in the internet because someone who is irresponsible copied ideas or works and make it exactly same and then claims as they are owner.

Unethical IT

The developing of digital world and Information Communication Technology (ICT) had come out with so many of ethical issues. What I am going to share with you here is several of unethical issues regarding to the ICT.

Before I go through the example of unethical issues in ICT, let me explain to you about what is the unethical doings in ICT. Unethical doing is concerned on an act or rule which is morally wrong. To make it clear, let me share with you several examples of unethical issues which are related to ICT. First example is plagiarism. Plagiarism means using someone intellectual property such as ideas and written works and claim that ideas is yours. Students always do the plagiarism by copy and paste in order to accomplish their assignments or thesis. However, there are also sites which provide and sell college-level papers for those who are lazy and desperate students.

Second example pertaining to ICT is exploitation E-learning to obtain illegimate grades. There are some cases outsourcing the school project which on legislative side, violates piracy nor piracy laws. The websites like essaychief.com and essayadepts.com are attempt to sell academic papers to tertiary students.

Third example for unethical issue is Libel. Libel is the publication of a false statement that injuries one’s business or personal reputation. Nowadays, in Malaysia, there are a lot of bloggers. Many people thought that they are free to say anything in their blogs such as several cases of bloggers who had been arrest due to the libel action. As we can see, Adeeba who is arrested under investigation.

Fourth example for unethical issue is software piracy. Software piracy is refer to act that install a copy software into your computer. This is because most computer software are copyright. Beside that, if you purchase commercial software, you are purchasing a software license.

Plagiarism, libel and software piracy are unethical issues. How about downloading music, picture and videos? Actually, its also unethical act in ICT. Because you are taking royalties away from copyright holders.

So, after this if you want to do something that is unethical, you must think twice. Here we want to share with you several guidelines to avoid all the unethical act on ICT:

1. do not use computer to harm other people
2. do not use other people’s computer and ideas without authorization compensation.
3. do think about the consequences of the everything you written in your blog.

Cybercrime

Rifing of viruses, phishing and identity theft leads to the uncertainty of the consumer about the unuseable of internet in future for commercial purposes.

John Mckay, annouced that a juvenile has been arrested in connection with the release of a variant of the Blaster computer worm or known also as RPCSDBOT version of worm. Dangerously, it can infect computers to launch a distributed denial of service attack against the Microsoft corporation. The arrest is for an act of juvenile delinquency which based on causing damage intentionally and attempting to destroy protected computers.

John Mckay ask the Washington Cyber Task Force on its speedy and effective investigation and thanked Microsoft Corporation for its help to law enforcement. Moreover, he emphasized an on-going investigation still remains even there was investigation of Blaster Worm. He encourages anyone who has information about this problem to contact the FBI or the USSS.

Windows Cyber Task Force investigated this case that cooperates with local law enforcement in The Western District of Washington, The Seattle Division of the FBI and The Seattle Division of the USSS. Giving help in the investigation are other divisions of the FBI & USSS.

For the adjudication of deliquency, the public is reminded that an arrest of a juvenile is based on allegations which must be varified to a court beyond a reasonable doubt.

Today, in Washington D.C, The Justice Department annouced that a 16-year-old from Miami pleaded guilty and been sentenced to six months in a detention facility for two acts of juvenile deliquency. Those acts would have been for obtaining information from NASA computer networks illegally and violations of federal wiretap and computer abuse laws for intercepting electronic communications on military computer networks.

The juvenile or also known as "comrade" on the internet admitted today in US District Court in Miami that he was responsible for computer intrusions from August 23, 1999 to October 27, 1999 into a military computer network used by the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) which is a agency of the Department of Defence charged with reducing the threat to tha U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons.

Other illegal actions that he committed are gaining unauthorized access to a computer server, known as a "router" located in Dulles and installing a concealed means of access or "backdoor" on the server. The program intercepted more than 3,300 electronic messages to and from DTRA staff. Futhermore, at least 19 user names and passwords of computer accounts of DTRA employees and at least 10 user names and passwords military computers had been intercepted.

On June 29 and 30, 1999, "cOmrade" accessed a total of 13 NASA computers located at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, illegally by using two different ISPs to originate the attacks. Due to that, he obtained and downloaded proprietary software from NASA valued at approximately $1.7 million. The software supported the International Space Station's (ISS) physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space.

Pertaining to that, the NASA computer systems forced to shut down for 21 days in July 1999 that resulted in a delivery delay of program software costing NASA approximately $41,000 in contractor labor and computer equipment replacement costs.

Other than serving six months in a detention facility as conditions of his guilty plea, "cOmrade" will write letters of apology to the Department of Defense and NASA and also agreed to the public disclosure of information about the case.

U.S Attorney in Miami , Guy A. Lewis said: "This case should send a clear message to our community that, given the appropriate case, they will aggresively prosecute to the full extent of the law."