Video Transcript: Ethics in IS and Beyond

Hello class and welcome to the very last week of our Information Systems  introduction course. I'm so glad to have spent this time with you to really go over kind of a broad overview of information systems, what it what it means, and  hopefully, kind of piqued your interest a little bit at this broad level, so that you  can choose what areas you really want to dive into and use to make a difference in your area of influence. So I would love to start with a prayer, Dear heavenly  Father. We ask first of all, thank you. Thank you for allowing us all to persevere  through all the way to the end of this course, of allowing us to really soak in the  new information and be able to go forward and use it in our organizations and  our family, bringing bringing efficiency and organization to to situations that  might have been more chaotic, so that we can be a positive light for others and  and use some of these skills to make life easier for someone and to make make  An organization more successful to help our families, and we were just so  appreciative that you give us the opportunity from from start to finish, to to have  a goal and to see it through and persevere. So we know that we will go where  you call us, and that that you've called us to finish this course. We're just so  appreciative that you've given us that opportunity to be together and to learn,  and in your heavenly name, we pray amen. So last module, we're going to talk  about ethics and information systems and the beyond, about what's coming  next. We talked about the history, for instance, of information systems in the  internet. We stopped around the year 2000 and so now we're going to just talk  about the beyond of now and later. Here we go. Here's some learning  objectives. So upon the successful completion of this chapter this week, we're  going to be able to describe what the term Information Systems ethics means.  We're going to explain what a code of ethics is and describe the advantages and disadvantages of implementing a code. We are going to define the term  intellectual property and explain the protections provided by copyright roles,  patent roles and trademark rules, so making sure that we aren't inadvertently,  you know, doing something that we shouldn't be doing, we're also going to  describe the challenge that information technology brings to individual privacy.  So this is a big, a big part of of the ethical conundrum is somebody's privacy  concerns and how to balance progress with privacy so and then, of course,  another learning objective is just to be able to speak knowledgeably about  what's what's coming. And so none of us know for sure, of course, what the  beyond looks like for information systems, but we can see some trajectories and some patterns that have emerged, and talk about those. Let's get started with  the ethics. Ethics, just by definition, is going to be a set of moral principles,  principles of conduct that really guide an individual or guide a group, as as  Christians in a modern workplace, I feel like there is sometimes a calling for us  to really adhere to these ethical principles. Where you'll you'll notice sometimes  people in your workplace are are not, and sometimes it's it's tricky. Even some  people in leadership positions within your organization might ask you to do 

things that fall outside of these set of moral principles and ethical values. So just being true to yourself when it comes to your organization and your families, and  just knowing what those principles are, and knowing how the new technology  will fit into that. So looking at the new technology, creating new uses in society,  creates environments and situations that people haven't seen before, and when  something's new, sometimes we don't know how to navigate that, so we're going to talk about that today. All right, so technology and ethics first, we're going to  talk about Henry Ford's assembly line. And I am currently in Michigan right now,  so we can, I'm happy to talk to you about Henry Ford's assembly line. So. It  created advantage in the in that cars could be manufactured more quickly, but it  devalued the human work and the skill and the production process when some  of these things were automated on the assembly line, it took out some of that  human work and skill that used to be highly valued in the workplace. So  although we do have that trade off where they're manufactured more quickly,  which then helps people in other ways, certainly we noticed that devalue, the  valuing of the human work the Volkswagen diesel deception. These are sensors  and cars for testing and software programming that allowed VW to cheat on  their emissions testing, which ended up being discovered in the end, but a  Volkswagen is still attempting to recover, but having at an organizational level,  the fact that that This was able to take place and and that it evaded so many  safeguards and so many ethical checkpoints that should have been in place that weren't to have the whole organization on this, this enterprise of cheating the  system for emissions testing. We're going to use that as a case study on what  not to do. So code of ethics is a documented set of acceptable behaviors for  professionals or for social groups, what to do, what not to do. These are typically defined by the group, so whether that is a subset of that group that come  together and make this code of ethics, or whether it's by the group as a whole.  I've worked in as a classroom teacher every year, one of the activities that I  would do as part of our our learning community was to define our own and we  would make our own code of ethics and our code of our rules as an entire  group. Now, I've seen that translate well in certain organizations I've worked for  as well, where they would establish, you know, what are what do we value?  Where are we so, not just the where are we going for the business, you know,  mission and vision, but more so the ethical component of what do we value and  how will we conduct ourselves as professionals and as individuals, they identify  specific actions that are either appropriate or inappropriate. In the supplemental  reading section, you're going to see some sample codes of ethics. And you can  kind of weigh in on what those are, on how they work. There are the Association  for Computing Machinery of ethics, the mouthful, but they have established  these 24 imperatives of personal responsibility. So I'm going to run through  these real quick, not through all 24 imperatives, but this contains issues that  professionals will have to deal with. So the first section is the General Motors 

imperative, so avoiding harm to others, which is always a good idea. The  second section is professional conduct. So this is maintaining professional  competence. Are you up to up to speed on what you need to do your job well,  respecting others by making sure that you're ready to go and that your your  competence is up to par. Section three would be individuals with leadership  roles, and that's going to be creating opportunities for people and taking care of  the people that you work, that work for you and that work with you, but ultimately that report to you that you're going to create opportunities for them and have  their best interest in mind. So part of those 24 imperatives is this section for  individuals, specifically in a leadership role. And then finally, the fourth section of these 24 imperatives are compliance with the ethical code. So how are you  going to promote this ethics? How are you going to ensure compliance, and  what that looks like? All right? So here's some examples of some specific  admonitions for this. And this is no one should enter or use another person's  computer system software or data files without permission. And that seems  pretty straightforward. And again, this is kind of the boilerplate which can be  customized for each individual workplace. But this typically a good idea that I  know that my my computer system or software, my files won't be, I should  assume that those will not be, you know, bothered or molested by anybody  who's not me without my permission, designing or implementing system. That  deliberately or inadvertently demean individuals or groups is ethically  unacceptable, and the important key word here that deliberately or inadvertently  demean individuals. So basically, if you know better, you do better once that is  brought to your attention, regardless of intent, if you are demeaning individuals  or groups, it's not ethically acceptable, and so you need to design or implement  your system in a way that no longer is going to demean those individuals or  groups. And then organizational leaders are responsible for ensuring that  computer systems enhance, not degrade the quality of working life. So again,  going back to that, that conundrum, the paradox, if IT really does enhance  productivity, those organizational leaders are are charged with finding that  balance of what, how much will enhance and how much will degrade the quality  of working life within an organization. Having an ethical code set up for your  organization definitely has some advantages. It's going to add clarity to the  understanding of what's acceptable behavior. It's going to help with  communication. It's going to communicate calming guidelines for everybody to  follow. So everyone's on the same page, and nobody's able to not just able to  say, but able to have the reality be, I didn't know any better, because everyone  has the same guidelines to follow. And then what happens if you don't follow  those organizational ethical codes? And for instance, if you are an attorney and  you work for the State Bar Association, you can have your license revoked,  which would which would effectively end your law degree. If the State Bar  Association revokes your license as an example. So a lot of things to look at 

here. As part of the advantage is that it might help to have it written out for those that are coming from a different culture, coming from a different country. I spent  quite a bit of time working in Asia, and I would say that there were definitely  some differences in what would have been very obvious, codes of a code of  ethics in the workplace. Without getting into too much detail, there are things  that I that were very assumed in an American workplace, that were not present  in Japan where I was working, and vice versa, things that were, you know,  totally acceptable in the one wouldn't have been acceptable in the other as well.  So having some of these the advantage of having it actually written out for  everyone, so everyone is on the same page with communications very clearly,  you know, communicated to everyone that this is what we value, this is how we  behave, and this is how we don't behave. Now speaking, you know, we're  talking about information systems, so this would be specifically to those IT  standards, but just having a general ethical code for any conduct in the  workplace is probably a good idea. We're talking specifically for digital ethical  code. All right, some disadvantages. So we talked about why we should have a  ethical code in place. There are a couple disadvantages as well. It might not  reflect the ethics of every single person in the group, of every member. And  again, that's kind of a depends on how it's created, if it is, if it's hearing every  voice, or if there's a subset of your population that are creating this code. But  sometimes it isn't enforceable. Either it's a code of conduct, conduct, it's not a  legal document. So although in some organizations like the Bar Association,  when you when you sign, or like, if you're in a university and you sign a code of  conduct there, you know, there are very spelled out, enforceable, you know,  things that will happen if you don't hold up your end of the bargain. And there's  consequences that will naturally occur many times. Though these ethical codes  kind of ambiguous and not exactly enforceable in those gray areas that we're  going to get into. So AUP, those are going to be our guidelines for behavior  when using technology. This acceptable use policies, and chances are, if you  have taken a job somewhere. Anywhere you will have to sign this AUP before  being issued technology, a computer or connecting to the internet. Even if you're if you go to Starbucks and you want to join the Wi Fi, you're going to have to  agree to this acceptable use policies. And basically what it's going to say is, you  know, don't, don't behave like, like a jerk, that you need to be held accountable  for your behavior, what you say and what you do using that technology, you  know, you are held liable and accountable for that behavior. So some of it is the  physical things that you may not you know without access, copy or add or alter  or delete or destroy data that you find on that computer system that does not  belong to you unless you are very specifically authorized to do so that you're not allowed to make changes, for instance, to the network at An organization where  you are one employee of that organization, in terms of a university setting,  students shall be accountable for their own behavior, and let's say that part of 

the course that you're taking is an online discussion board. So that is would fall  under our technological acceptable use policy AUP and so that you are just held  accountable for anything that's inappropriate that's coming out of your unit or  your computer, that includes making sure that your passwords are secure, that  you're up to date in your software, that you that any no security breach Is that  that you are responsible for just by practicing those, those good technological  hygiene practices that we talked about a couple modules ago, so that  acceptable use policy is very standard, and something that you're probably  going to have to agree to before you start work, we're going To get into the IP  This is intellectual property. So property as an idea, an invention, a process that  derives from the work of the mind or intellect. So if you have a really good idea,  something comes to fruition from that idea. If something is invented, something  is created that wasn't there before. That is intellectual property, and that's those  could be a computer program that you offer song lyrics, that you write, a  painting, that you make, a book, that you author a new process to manufacture  something that didn't exist before this could all exist as intellectual property. So  when we look at intellectual property, the problem is, if it's an idea and it's not  something that you physically made in your hands, it's a lot harder to protect that idea. So that's why there are laws that protect IP that result of an idea, this  intellectual property. So advocates of international property, they would argue  that it gives inventors a reason to innovate. We know it's not going to be totally  stolen. Your idea is going to be stolen because everyone has a right to profit  from their own labor and their own ideas, and without that IP that intellectual  property protection, there's less incentive to be innovative and to invent. So IP  laws are different where you go in the globe, and so depending if you're working  on a project with a global team, like we were talking about in the last module of  that globalization, the IP laws might be different in the team that is working with  you. So you might just want to make sure that if you are participating in a project that might result in some of these IP issues that you get on the same page, first,  possibly part of that ethical plan that we talked about so that the IT laws can be  discussed before it would become an issue similar to intellectual property. We're  going to talk about that copyright so anything that has an author, any work with  an author, whether that be books, computer programs, songs, that author owns  the copyright, or the owner of the copyright controls who can make copies of it,  who can make derivative works from the original. If somebody is going to take  what you did and kind of create their own thing with using that as a baseline,  you have control over that. You can control who performs it publicly, who can  display it publicly and who can distribute or profit from your work? That's all part  of copyright controls. So as part of that, it lasts for the entire life of the original  author. Plus 70 years. Pretty random, right? So let's say you you pen the next  great American novel or or, let's say that you write a song that is number one  song in 40 different countries that copyright protection on your your property, 

your IP, your copyright, is going to be your entire lifetime, plus 70 years, if it's not owned by an individual, if it's owned by a publisher, that copyright can last for 95 years. And so an example that's a pretty common example of this copyright  principle is going to be the birthday song, the Happy birthday to you song. It's  rarely in movies and some restaurants have they sing a different tune because  of the copyright that exists for the happy birthday song. That's actually  copyrighted song. So if you're wondering why, when there's a birthday in your  favorite TV show or movie, when they're not singing the actual birthday song?  Because there are copyright rules that go with that, depending on, again, your  geographic area, where you are. This article here the happy birthday song,  copyright is not valid from the LA Times in 2015 I'm going to put that article for  you in the recommended reading for you to kind of get both sides of that  argument and to see where you come down on that, that argument of the Happy Birthday copyright. So how do we get a copyright protection? Let's say you  create something, the act of creation gives you the copyright. So if you write a  book, you don't have to specifically, you know, go and apply and get a patent  lawyer and have a copyright deemed for you. If you created it, it is yours, and  you already have an inherent copyright on what you have created. It says here,  even your doodles, on your notes, those are yours. Those are copyrighted.  Someone can't take that from you. Make 1000 copies and profit from your work.  You don't need an official copyright if it's going to be used commercially, then  you want to go ahead and register for a copyright with the US Copyright Office,  apart from the copyright, then we have fair use. And this is sometimes you can  use a small piece of copyrighted work with permission. And so the guidelines  aren't super well defined for this, it kind of depends on why you're using it,  what's the purpose, what's the nature of the copyrighted work, how much you're  actually going to copy and use, and the effect of the use on the potential market. So this is something that would go in front of the Fair Use principle would go in  front of an attorney or a judge, and they would determine if the purpose and the  nature and the amount of work copied fall under these fair use guidelines, the  Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is going to be in 1998 this came about to  extend copyright laws to digital technology. So it's not just, you know, the  manuscript you have in a desk drawer or the song you have on a CD  somewhere, or an mp three file. This is going to be digital technologies as well.  So it was deemed in 1998 that it's illegal to circumvent technologies that enforce copyrights. So for instance, games that require you to be connect to the internet, the safe harbor law limits the liability of online service providers. For instance,  YouTube, if somebody posts a video on YouTube that is copyrighted material,  and that video gets posted onto YouTube, YouTube isn't held liable for the fact  that somebody posted that content on there that safe harbor limits them their  liability with intention. So this Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA, it's not,  it's not super popular with everyone. So a lot of users are unhappy with this. The

Electronic Frontier Foundation and others feel like it can really limit free speech  issues. And so these two, these two articles here, we can't let John Deere  destroy the very idea of ownership. And everyone hates the DMCA not really  beating around the bush there. These two articles are going to be available for  you in a supplemental readings. I would suggest that you read those to kind of  get more. Of a flavor of the other side of the DMCA argument, and kind of you  know, just to make sure that Digital Millennium Copyright Act that you really  have a comprehensive understanding on on both sides of that issue, we have  Creative Commons. This offers an alternative copyright licensing. It's not as  restrictive as a traditional copyright, and that would be like the textbook you're  using right now, this textbook, and so this, this means that we can share it for  specific purposes. We're sharing this textbook to further the knowledge, to share the education. We are not, you know, we're not on the fly making copies of a  published textbook. And you know, in emailing these, this is a legit license under this Creative Commons license that allow you to use this textbook free of charge as part of a licensing agreement. Next about patents and the difference here, so  a patent is a protection for somebody who creates a new product, a new  process. It's not necessarily the widget itself, but it could also just be the process that went into making the new widget. So a patent holder has the right to and  here we're going to read it directly here exclude others from making, using, or  offering for sale or selling the invention. So if it's not yours, you can't profit from  it. That's what a patent holder has the right to, say, a US patent lasts 20 years.  It's not the same in every country. In some countries, there are no patents. It's a  free, open marketplace. So in the United States, if you apply for a patent for  your product or the process that was needed to create that product. It's going to  last you for 20 years. You have to apply for this. It's going to go through, and a  decision will be made by a judge. A patent attorney will argue your case in front  of a judge, and it must be something that's original, not an obvious thing, and  useful, and if it meets those three areas of criteria, original, useful, not obvious,  it would be in the running to receive a patent. Similar to patents, we have  trademarks, and that's going to be a word, a phrase, a logo, a shape or a sound  that identifies the source of goods or services. So this is going to be more at the  organizational level. I would imagine, in the graphic up on your screen, you  would recognize a vast majority of those trademarked images if we were to play  some sounds for you, I bet you could have a very you'd probably get most of  those sounds that are trademarked, sounds that would identify which  organization we're talking about, continuing that trademarks, that common  trademark is TM, or we That's a common law trademark. The registered  trademark is the symbol that you see there, the R in the circle. So if we see the  difference with the LinkedIn using the R in the circle with the registered  trademark for LinkedIn, we see that Google has a common law trademark and  that has that's indicated by the TM there, all right for privacy. The Privacy is 

going to be the ability to control information about yourself, how much of your  personal information is out there. So information systems have eroded some of  those personal privacy in the United States, a lot of these great advances in  technology that we're talking about, and a lot of the personal computing, the  cloud computing, the mobile technologies, some of these mash ups that are  used with layers of technology on each other to help make life easier, to get you  from one place to another easily, with GPS And to layer on traffic and to layer on weather into a map, those kind of things, they come at a price, and a lot of  times, that price is the balance between your protection and the commerce. So  that's not the case in the United States, but in Europe, the EU considers privacy  as a fundamental right that outweighs commerce. That is not necessarily always the case. If you are in the United States, kind of just depends. It's a case by  case basis on it's not as easy as outweighing. Commerce, and look at Nora, N,  O, R, A, and that's the process of collecting large quantities of information and  combining it to create profiles of individuals. And this is something where it's not  necessarily about you personally, but it could be all of your information that you  have. So even if it's not identifiable to you, it's still collecting information about  you. So what I mean by that is the individual profiles that you see in the middle  here are made up of all of these different types of data points your click stream  on what you're searching for, the order of clicks that you make in your personal  computing, security cameras and facial recognition certainly is a bit more  obtrusive the social networks that you visit and what you're searching for in  those networks, commercial transactions, what are you buying? What websites  are you visiting? How long are you staying on those websites, your telephone  records, your credit reports, mobile phone data, incident and arrest systems, all  of these things that could be public could be private. It's all collecting that  information. And so because that's happening, there needed to be some  legislation in place. So here we have privacy legislation, COPPA, the Children's  Online Privacy Protection Act, and this means that organizations need to make  an effort to find out how old you are before you are accessing a website. If  there's something with a sense of nature, if there's something that requires adult access that there is a safeguard in place to at least attempt to detect  somebody's age prior to accessing that area the internet. There's FERPA, the  Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. This prevents this protects records in a school setting. And then we've got the HIPAA, which is the Health Insurance  Portability and Accountability Act. This protects your records just like FERPA  does, but in medical your patient records in a medical facility, so that you can  rest assured that your information is kept private and the hospital or the doctor's  office or your university isn't going to sell or share your information. It is, it is  protected as private, according to the legislation. So we're going to shift gears  just a little bit and talk about, wrap it up with what's trending now. We talked  about some of those ethics issues and and now we're going to talk about what's 

trending for the future of information systems. So what's trending right now is  definitely social. When we talk about social media personal, having things  customized and branded and having an experience that is personal to you when you're online, of not having a cookie cutter experience. That's not the  expectation anymore of having our technology be mobile. We need. We want  exactly what we want, wherever we want it. So we want anything that's available on our desktop to be available also in the palm of our hand, on the top of a  mountain. Should we choose our technology is wearable, and that's certainly  trending with all kinds of wearable technologies and and those are advancing as we as we go, printable, findable and autonomous. These are some of the things  trending. And then as we go into IoT, which you may have heard of, IoT. You  might not be too familiar with the Internet of Things. It's going to be embed  embedded sensors that collect data and they send it to a cloud host, and they  tell us something. What do we mean by that? It means that so something like  the like a baby monitor that is worn around the foot. So those little owl socks that are constantly taking a baby's vital signs and reporting it back to mom and dad's phone, these things that are constantly embedded sensors collecting data is a  trend that we see in the IoT air quality egg so an army of people monitoring air  quality worldwide in this interconnected way is definitely another trend of things  that are happening in IoT. Finally, we have big data. We're coming back to big  data as one of our very last we saw that it has been a trend, and will continue to  be a trend moving forward with as part of our analytics and big data and what  we're what we're getting, so we can collect a ton of data for not a lot of money,  and we can create new and different purposes for this information and keep  innovating and building, and then we're going to find out, how do we monetize  this information? So these vast amounts of information and data points that are  being collected, once we have that data as we know in context, it turned into  information, that information is turned into knowledge. And of course, knowledge is then turned into wisdom. How do we monetize this wisdom, or the lower  levels, and is it? Is it worth it? Is it possible? Is it ethical to do so? I guess it  depends on how that information was gleaned through what through what  measures. But regardless how to monetize that information, is a trend going into the next era of computing 3.0 so we need to talk about who needs big data to  solve problems and what privacy issues arise from that. What new careers will  be created by this by this data revolution. So all of these trending topics will  certainly be on the horizon. So we're going to end here. We're going to wrap up,  I would say, our module, but we're actually going to be wrapping up our course  with the summary of, what does Information Systems ethics mean? What is a  code of ethics, and what are the advantages and disadvantages having one of  those code of ethics in your organization. Are you able to define that intellectual  property, what it is, what it means, and then all the different layers of that  intellectual property, copyrights, patents, trademarks, all those things that can be

used to protect us and our privacy, and then finally, describing the challenge that IT brings to individual privacy like we just talked about, the vast amounts of data  that are that are collected each and every day, how it's being used, and what is  our expectation to that right of privacy depends on where you are  geographically, sadly, on what that that expectation to privacy should be. But it's  definitely some food for thought. So I, I so appreciate you hanging with me for  12 full modules, or 12 full weeks as we went from learning the big overview on  what components make up an information system, all the way through those  components to some bigger, bigger ideas, and just allowed ourselves to really  think bigger on what could be possible with these information systems, I hope it  has piqued Your interest. I hope we did talk about several career paths that  would be made possible with a deeper study into some of these fields of  information systems, if you whether that's a systems analyst, or whether it's an  IT project manager, or the dozens of career the careers that we discussed over  these last 12 weeks. And I wish, I wish we were in a classroom together, and  you were sitting across the table from me, and we could chat about it, on what  your goals are and how we can help you get there. But I hope you enjoyed  learning a little bit about information systems and wrapping up with, of course,  the ethics and what's to come moving forward. So I'm just so grateful that you've joined me and congratulations for completing all 12 weeks of this course. And I  hope to, I hope to see you again for another one. So congratulations and thanks again.