AUTHOR
Antonio Marturano, Nicola Marturano and Roberto Tononi

ABSTRACT

In Italy, on national and EU funding, ENEA has launched Project ICIV (Concurrent Engineering for the Virtual Enterprise) to set up service centers for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s). These centers will be promoting aggregations of SME’s based on a Virtual Enterprise model, i.e. an organizational architecture and a set of operational mechanisms devised and tested within Project ICIV; in addition, the centers will be providing technological services in order for the grouped SME’s to implement concurrent engineering practices.

The Virtual Enterprise (VE) model applies to co-operations of firms which have their activities mainly in the field of complex goods and service productions. Within the aggregation, a firm performs the coordination function (called Control Unit), other firms have technical roles, such as the management of the information system, but most of the grouped enterprises are engaged in productive activities and may join or leave the VE depending on the current productive needs.

This paper analyses:

• the normative definition of the VE; particularly when the VE is placed in the international context;
• the responsibilities and ethical problems into the VE and customer relationship;
• the responsibilities and ethical problems within VE partners and between these and the Control Unit.

The paper will expands on the solutions proposed within Project ICIV:

1. a reference architecture of the aggregation of SME’s is described;
2. an ethical and legal framework for civil, penal, financial and administrative responsibilities;
3. an analysis of Intellectual Property Rights problems emerging from the relationship within all VE members.

Finally, the paper wraps up with a brief mention to some practical applications and case studies being foreseen in Italy.

AUTHOR
Antonio Marturano

ABSTRACT

The actual problem of the regulation of the Internet is pretty similar to which Kelsen has faced when he studied the philosophical rooths of the International Law. In fact, International Law shares several features with the proposed cyberspace regulamentations and also it has analogies with the “ontology” of the cyberspace. Kelsen proposed an ethical (i.e. a non-juridical) background for the International Law. In fact, Kelsen compared it to a primitive juridical system within no coercions and no legal boundaries (strictly speaking) are present in it. For these reasons Kelsen argued International Law is like an ethical system.

The aim of this paper is to explain the reasons because exist an analogy between the International Law and the Internet. Secondly, to analyze Kelsen’s proposal and to understand if Kelsen’s suggestions hold good as a framework for the Cyberspace regulation. Thirdly, I will argue that Kelsen’s proposal is pretty similar to some liberal and autoregulamentative views for the governance of the Internet.

AUTHOR
Mark Manion and Abby Goodrum

ABSTRACT

The latest form of cyber warfare unites the talents of the computer hacker with the social consciousness of the political activist. Adapting a variation of civil disobedience, with its practices of “trespass” and “blockade” to the electronic age, millions of individuals can participate in virtual sit-ins without leaving the comfort of their computer terminals. Participants in electronic civil disobedience can attack the Web sites of any individual, corporation, or nation that is deemed responsible for oppressing the ethical, social, or political rights of others.

Hactivist groups such as the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Cult of the Dead Cow, and the Hong Kong Blondes, among others, have used electronic civil disobedience to help advance the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico, protest nuclear testing at India’s Bhabba Atomic Research Center, attack Indonesian Government websites over the continued hostile occupation of East Timor, as well as protest the anti-democratic crackdown in China. In addition, hacktivism has been used to inveigh against the corporate domination of telecommunications and mass media, the rapid expansion of dataveillance, and the hegemonic intrusion of the “consumer culture” into the private lives of average citizens.

In fact, the advent of hacktivism may very well mark a critical threshold which could, with the aid of the new computer technologies, lead, on the one hand, to the rapid expansion of individual freedoms and the breaking of barriers to participatory democracy. Hence, hacktivism could play an active and constructive role in the overcoming of political injustice, to educate, inform and be a genuine agent of positive political and social change. On the on the other hand, there is the fear that cyber-activism could reduce to simply a more sophisticated and organized form of computer “cracking,” the breaking into sites for kicks or cash, or, even more disconcerting, to more radical and violent forms of cyber-terrorism. In any event, researchers concerned with ethical issues in computing, policy makers, and computer professionals must come to terms with the complex set of issues surrounding the potential power of hacktivism.

Through an investigation of hacktivism from an international perspective, this paper identifies and discusses four core issues in our understanding of computerization and its potential for advancing social justice around the world. Four proposals in defense of an ethic of hacktivism are developed in light of these issues. The first is that hacktivism, in its advocacy of civil disobedience, demonstrates the necessary relationship between ethics and politics. Second, establishing the validity of grass-roots activism reinforces the potential of computerization for civic empowerment. Third, the debate over control of intellectual property demands that we address issues of social justice such as wealth distribution and equality of opportunity. Fourth, hacktivism, with its focus on pluralism, relativism, and pubic control of information and technology, reinforces and legitimates a “social constructivist” reading of (future) technological progress.

AUTHOR
Cheryl Knott Malone

ABSTRACT

This paper will analyze the implications of having several ethical codes operating in an evolving system of library and information science (LIS) professions and suggest a comparative approach for introducing graduate students to the sometimes conflicting ethical expectations they will face as information professionals.

Master’s degree programs in LIS prepare students to work as professionals in public and private libraries, archives, museums, knowledge management divisions of corporations, and other information settings. The ethical issues LIS graduates confront as information professionals are rooted in their responsibilities to their employers, their clientele, their profession, to themselves and to the society in which they live. But those issues are complicated by the competitive terrain of the information professions in an era characterized by ever-evolving communications and information technologies.

The mutability of librarianship and of the information professions in general poses problems for LIS faculty. As preparation for students’ entry into the unwieldy information sector, the educational process involves challenging students to examine stereotypes, assumptions, and expectations about the vocation they think they have chosen. It also requires at least an introduction to ethically responsible professional behavior. One of the functions of professional schools is to socialize students, to introduce to them the values and practices that characterize people in the profession. But the LIS professions manifest values and practices that change as the occupations and the people in them change. The situation confounds the presentation of ethics in the LIS curriculum. It is perhaps not surprising that the American Library Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics tried to create a syllabus for a course in LIS ethics but gave up on the grounds that “the subject is too all-encompassing.”

According to Mark Alfino and Linda Pierce, “. . . the process of articulating professional values reveals professional identity. . . .” A parallel assertion would hold that a useful method for beginning to socialize students into LIS would be to introduce them to the professional code. A typical teaching tactic in professional schools relies on introducing and explicating the profession’s recognized code of ethics, often through the mechanism of case studies. In LIS, however, no single code can convey the ethical expectations of the LIS professions. To learn about professional identities, students need to learn about the variety of ethical codes that apply in the various LIS fields. Such an approach can reveal how the different fields within LIS delimit their domains and express their similarities and differences through their claims on ethical practice. In the process, students also learn about the behavior that will be expected of them as professionals in their own chosen specialties. The resulting reflection on the moral roles of professionals as professionals can shape not only the ways in which LIS graduates go about their business but also the ways in which they understand the business of LIS. Such an approach also can help students and new professionals comprehend the ethical standpoints from which their mentors give advice. An exploration of ethical codes representing the belief systems that the information specialties endorse thus can help students begin to appreciate the sometimes subtle distinctions among the LIS subfields while at the same time surveying the professional conduct expected of practitioners within those subfields. To address the issues involved in educating information professionals for a deeper understanding of ethics and identity, this paper will compare various professional codes of ethics adopted by different LIS associations. Further, the paper will report on the implementation and evaluation of an assignment requiring students in a required graduate course on information, libraries, and society to compare the ethical codes of different LIS associations.

AUTHOR
Christine Mallin and Sue Newell

ABSTRACT

Information technology has a key role to play in the distribution of corporate information. Increasingly companies are using the Internet as a means of distributing information to their shareholders and other groups. Already many companies have Internet sites which contain information about their company and products. There is an ongoing debate about whether companies should distribute information about their annual general meetings via the Internet and whether if this is done, it would disadvantage private shareholders, who may not have internet access.

In this paper, we look at this area from two viewpoints. Firstly we look at the type of information that companies disseminate via the Internet, what additional information might be made available, and what barriers, legal or otherwise, may need to be overcome. Secondly, we examine the ethical dimensions to the use of the Internet for distribution of corporate information, for whilst opportunities are created, there are also important ethical dimensions to consider, for example, whether provision of information is equitable for all investors/stakeholders, or whether some are denied access to information whether on economic, logistical, or some other grounds.

In the UK, and many partner EC countries, there are a number of existing legal impediments which effectively prohibit the full utilisation of electronic commerce facilities. For example, existing legal requirements may stipulate documents as hard copy and there is doubt also as to whether an electronic signature is necessarily valid, or whether the signature must be in “writing”. In the UK, for example, there is currently doubt over whether the Companies Act 1985 permits companies to send documents to shareholders by electronic means. In some cases, such as the sending of accounts and reports, the Act clearly does not permit documents to be sent, and in other cases it is doubtful. For example, a copy of the company’s annual accounts, together with a copy of the directors’ report, and the auditors’ report, must be sent to every member of the company, every holder of the companies’ debentures, and every person entitled to receive notice of general meetings. The conventional interpretation is that “copy” implies a hard copy, since there is no provision in the Companies Act specifically enabling delivery in non-legible form.

Proposed changes to UK corporate law may enable any document which the Act requires the company to transmit physically to members to be sent, where the member has so agreed, to a fax number, or electronic address, nominated by the member. This would enable the report and accounts, the notice of meeting, and subject to EC constraints, other corporate actions to be communicated electronically. Similarly there is a proposal that a company may place any company communication required by the Act on a web-site or other electronic site accessible to members.

However in some cases it is a requirement of EC law that documents be transmitted in written form. This is the case, for example, in relation to pre-emption rights under the EC Second Company Law Directive (77/91/EEC). Any general power which is formulated will, therefore, be subject to certain specific derogations required by EC law.

The wide ranging review of company law in the U.K. and the significant amendments to the rules and regulations governing electronic communications which are likely to result are fully discussed. These changes will empower companies to utilise e-commerce to a much greater extent. We examine the significance of these proposed changes particularly in respect of the implications for individual as opposed to “group” users of such information.

This paper has the advantage of two perspectives: both an ethical viewpoint incorporating knowledge and innovation process, and a governance viewpoint incorporating the practicalities of corporate information dissemination in an information technology context.

AUTHOR
George D. Magoulas and Nancy Pouloudi

ABSTRACT

The concern about the ethical implications of the use of artificial intelligence techniques in medicine is ongoing. On the one hand, the use of artificial intelligence increasingly provides opportunities to facilitate and enhance the work of medical experts and ultimately to improve the efficiency and quality of medical care. On the other hand, the debate about the appropriate level and the role of intelligent decision support has become more complex, as technical, organisational and social issues become intertwined. In this paper we use a research project that applies neural network-based methodologies as an opportunity to study the ethical issues that may rise from the application of artificial intelligence techniques in a medical context.

Advances in neurocomputing have opened the way for the establishment of decision support systems which are able to learn complex associations by example. It is acknowledged that the appropriate use of the neural network-based methodologies in medical problem solving could be very effective to improve the efficiency and the quality of medical care. The growing number of projects that employ neural network based methodologies in medical care makes necessary to examine the level and the role that neural networks will play in the development of automatic diagnostic systems.

This paper considers the use of neural networks in image processing and knowledge representation in image interpretation systems from an ethical perspective. The diagnostic attributes of such systems are based on the result of the feature extraction procedure from digital images, in conjunction with previously available medical knowledge, in order to expand this knowledge. A key issue in the use of neural network methods in a medical application of this kind is that it is unclear how decisions are reached. Most neural networks suffer from the opaqueness of their learned associations. In medical applications, this black box nature may make clinicians reluctant to utilise a neural network application, no matter how great the claims made for its performance. Thus, there is need to enhance neural networks with rule extraction capabilities. In addition, it is necessary to examine how productivity can be increased and how quality can be assured. This examination addresses the specification of the problem, the development of appropriate representations for the network input and output information and the preparation of the training, testing and validation data.

Using the acquisition, processing, storage, dissemination and use stages of an information life cycle as a basis for the different stages for the development and use of neural network medical imaging applications, this paper elaborates on the broader ethical implications of the use of neural applications in medicine. These include issues of interpretation, coordination between the technology and the human expert, validation of results and professional responsibilities. Although we concentrate on the use of neural network-based methodologies, the ethical issues discussed in this paper are relevant to a broader spectrum of artificial intelligence and information technology applications in health care. To illustrate this broader set of topics, the paper concludes with suggestions for future research in the area of medical informatics that can support ethical practice.