AUTHOR
Brent McCauley

ABSTRACT

Adaptive education systems are based on an awareness of learner characteristics and behaviour, which enable the system to adapt the learning environment (content and delivery) to the needs and current position of the learner. This is done automatically based on the system’s assumptions about the learner, and their current level of knowledge.

The use of such systems takes place in a cultural context. Either the subject matter may belong to a particular cultural context, or the learner(s) may come from a particular cultural background, or both. This cultural context includes an epistemology, based on the particular world view of the culture. This epistemology may be fundamentally different from, or even in some ways opposed to the prevailing view directing the development of the system. This potential conflict can be illustrated by reference to the concept of indigenous knowledge. Indigenous peoples have a unique knowledge base, and there is a growing awareness of this, together with recognition of their rights to ownership and control of this knowledge. There is at present less of an awareness of the presence of a world view, which provides an epistemology which validates this knowledge, and determines how this knowledge should be disseminated.

This paper identifies three issues arising from this:

1. The ability the system to allow the teacher to apply an appropriate pedagogy
2. The ability of the system to make culturally appropriate assumption about learner behaviour
3. Homogenisation of learning resulting from the globalisation of education.

The teacher or instructor defines the knowledge base of the subject being taught, designs the learning and assessment activities, and the criteria for measuring the learning that has taken place.

The pedagogy used is determined by the underlying epistemology. While the teacher is also the designer of the system, the system can take account of these factors. Increasingly in the future, such systems will be more generic, and the teacher will be a user, rather than designer of the system. The system therefore, must be capable of adapting to the possibility of an epistemology fundamentally different from that assumed by the designer of the system. Further, it must allow each application of the system to potentially be formed by a different epistemology.

The teacher is teaching a subject grounded in a culture; the culture ‘owns’ the knowledge, and that knowledge is formed, validated and imparted according to the understanding of knowledge of that culture. The system must recognise that ownership and the validity of the knowledge itself and the pedagogy employed.

The learner may be involved in learning which is ‘owned’ by the culture, or in learning which is more general. The latter situation will be come more common in the future, as the pace of globalisation of education increases.

In either case, the system must adapt to the current situation of the learner by making assumptions about the learner, based on generalisation for the new user, or on the user’s interaction with the system. Whether the individual learner is aware of it or not, their culture and the epistemology of that culture, together with their educational experience in that culture produces certain ways of learning which they find ‘comfortable’. The generalisations and assumptions made by the system must be able to take into account the cultural ‘world view’ which has formed the person, and according to which the person interacts with her/his environment. The learner’s interaction with the system needs to be interpreted according to this world view. As the same application of the system may be serving learners from a variety of cultural backgrounds, it needs take into account the prevailing epistemology of each of these backgrounds.

The rapid globalisation of education means that the learners using the system may be geographically dispersed and culturally diverse. With globalisation comes a tendency towards homogenisation. The cultural background and accompanying epistemology of the designers of adaptive education systems may give rise to certain assumptions, which in turn may limit pedagogical approaches used in the systems. In other words, the cultural understanding of the system designers may be imposed on all users of the system, which may not always be appropriate.

An area of research is to examine the extent to which presently existing adaptive education systems recognise and validate the culture of learners and teachers, and the inclusion of these factors in the direction such systems are developing. The very nature of indigenous knowledge, and the cultures to which it belongs, means there is a paucity of published research in this area, and most of the research that is published addresses the content of, rather than the epistemology associated with, the knowledge.

AUTHOR
Barney Dalgarno and John Weckert

ABSTRACT

In September 2004 the Australian Federal Police carried out a nationwide operation leading to the charging of around 200 consumers, producers and distributors of child pornography. The operation, codenamed Auxin, was the culmination of a five-month investigation which began after receiving information from the US customs service. As part of the operation 400 search warrants were issued and in most cases computer equipment was seized for analysis. While details on the methods used are sketchy, it appears that most of the investigation was conducted by tracing credit card details and transaction log files, acquired as part of investigations in the US. To what extent entrapment was used is unclear, but it is allowable under Australian law, and was used in another recent case where a man was arrested for soliciting sex over the Internet from what he thought was a 13 year old girl, but who was actually a member of the police force.

This case, Operation Auxin, highlights a number of challenges posed by the Internet, but one that is perhaps not so often recognised. Many of those caught (assuming that at least some are guilty) presumably did not realise that the Internet is a web in two senses. It is a web of interconnecting nodes, but also in the sense of a trap for the unwary. Using the Internet in the privacy of one’s own room gives a false sense of security and makes certain activities easy. Many of these people might not have engaged in this activity if the act of procurement of the material required more effort and had to be undertaken in public. So they were lured into the trap not only by their desire for the material, which initially may not have been great, but also by their ignorance of the architecture of the Internet.

Contrary to the belief of many Internet users, activities undertaken online are relatively easy to monitor or trace. Firstly, most people’s web browsing is carried out via an intermediate proxy-server either maintained by their Internet Service Provider (ISP) or as part of their workplace network. These proxy-servers keep a permanent log of all page requests. This is in addition to the logs kept on the server to which the requests are sent. (The server log files on a server in Belarus were obtained as part of the US operation that provided the initial information for Operation Auxin). In addition to most users being unaware that their web browsing habits are being recorded on a server, many users are also unaware of how difficult it is to permanently remove files from their own computer. Many users believe that if they delete files, empty their recycle bin or trash can, and clear their temporary internet files or cache, there will be no evidence of what they have downloaded or viewed. This is of course not the case, with utilities available to recover files deleted in any of these ways.

As a consequence of this widespread ignorance of the traceability of activities carried out online, the Internet can provide a kind of unintentional entrapment. Entrapment by law enforcement authorities is generally thought not to be justifiable if it entices people to undertake activities that they would not have under normal circumstances, and it is at least plausible that some of the charged would not have engaged in this activity if it had not appeared to be so easy. There is evidence that gambling increases with the availability of gambling facilities, so there is reason to think that the same might be true of participation in child pornography. Perhaps then the computer industry and the law enforcement authorities have a responsibility to educate people on the nature of the Internet and alert them to the fact that Internet activities are potentially just as open to exposure as activities undertaken in broad daylight in front of a crowd of people. The exploitation of children in pornography is particularly abhorrent to most, and there appear to have been a number of suicides of those charged. The shame of being charged was too great, it would seem. Education on the nature of the Internet is imperative, primarily of course to protect children, but also to warn potential offenders that it is not as safe as it looks.

The proposed paper will begin by describing Operation Auxin in more detail, focussing on the degree to which the activities of the police and those charged can be seen to be different in nature to the equivalent activities undertaken in the non-online world. The paper will then expand on some of the themes presented above. In particular, the concept of entrapment will be analysed in more depth with reference to relevant philosophical theory and research. The degree to which the Internet, by virtue of the way it implicitly encourages the undertaking of illegal activities, can facilitate a form of unintentional entrapment, will be further explored. The impact of other related technologies, such as digital cameras and particularly those in mobile telephones, on the prevalence of online pornography networks will also be discussed. There has been at least one recent case in Australia where photographs taken of young children on the beach were put on the Internet for pornographic purposes. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the implications for Internet service providers, technology vendors and educators.

AUTHOR
Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska

ABSTRACT

Ten years ago, at the first ETHICOMP conference in Leicester, UK, I presented a paper The Computer Revolution and the Problem of Global Ethics. I argued then that the computer revolution has a global character, and that the Computer Ethics has to be therefore a global ethics.

I am happy that I was not wrong then. But what about now? Where are we, and where are we headed? Looking back to the future I would like to take a closer look at some of the many issues related to the ethics of the new, global society, a society we today usually call the ICT Society.

Firstly, I would like to focus on the significance of the changes in the names given to the technology we called, among others, computer technology,digital technology,information technology, and information and communication technology. This evolution reflects also the changes in the perception of a computer: from “number cruncher” to universal tool whose most prominent feature is its “logical malleability” (James Moor); from a purely mathematical machine to the tool of real-time verbal and visual global communication.

This, often confusing l’embarras des richesses of names documents quite well the evolution of social perception of computer-based technology. Moreover, it reflects the confusion we all experience to some degree when trying to understand the world we live in. It seems that there is little doubt that “our era” is the era of that particular technology; but what are the main characteristics of the technology itself? There seems to be some disagreement here, and again it is reflected in the names: the “computer era,” the “digital era,” the “IT era,” the “ICT era” to mention just a few most popular. And we name “our” society accordingly; if we live in a “computer era” we live in a “computer-based society,” if ours is the “ICT era” we are members of the “ICT society,” and so on.

Interestingly enough, the terms describing core characteristics of our leading technology become progressively more inclusive. It seems that the more we are aware of how many areas of our lives are affected, or even controlled, by this technology, the more general, more inclusive its name. In addition, one takes it now almost for granted that ICT (I will use this name from now on) is global. Therefore, the society of the ICT era can be called the Global ICT Society.

Secondly, I would like to share some thoughts on the ethics of the Global ICT Society.

ICT can be used very effectively in supporting freedom and democracy worldwide. But there is also a high potential in ICT to become an efficient and useful tool for autocracy or even totalitarianism. The technology can serve either to foster the well-being of human kind, and to make it flourish and reach a higher level of development; or it can be used to subdue, enslave, and de-humanize humans physically, intellectually, and emotionally. One of the co-creators of this technology, Norbert Wiener, was acutely aware of this dual potential and power it has. A half century ago he issued warnings about the dark side of the new technology, becoming this way the founder of Information Ethics (Terrell Bynum).

ICT still has this dual potential, and the danger of ICT being used to harm humans is real. I am strongly convinced that one of fundamental tasks of Computer Ethics/ICT Ethics is to be a watch dog, guarding the global society from becoming a society of slaves to the few who using ICT can pull the strings of power to their own exclusive advantage.

In this respect the earlier mentioned evolution of the technology name is a hopeful sign. Bringing the “communication” component to the name of the technology that defines our times can strengthen the elements of democracy and freedom in the structures of the Global ICT Society; provided, of course, that the communication factor will be taken seriously. I will elaborate on this issue in my paper.

Thirdly, I intend to address another aspect of the Global ICT Society that I consider to be of crucial importance from the ethical point of view. Looking back to the future I would like to look with special attention at the role of knowledge in the Global ICT Society.

It is obvious that knowledge becomes rapidly one of the most precious commodities. Already the economy of the new global society is called by some (e.g., Paul Romer) “knowledge economy” or “knowledge based economy.” There is no doubt about the importance of ICT in the production, transfer, and storage of knowledge. There is, however, an important difference between “knowledge economy” and knowledge society. I intend to examine the meaning and the significance of this difference. Then, I would like to present some thoughts I have about the difference between Global ICT Society as knowledge society, and Global ICT Society as a society based on knowledge economy. This will allow me to address selected ethical issues pertinent to each of these two models of society. These issues include privacy, freedom, intellectual property, equity, and social justice.

The conclusion of the paper will be devoted to the question: What kind of Global ICT Society knowledge society or knowledge economy society should we promote, if the primary ethical concern were to be “the human use of human beings” the way Norbert Wiener saw it?

AUTHOR
Mikolaj Kocikowski

ABSTRACT

Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games, or MMORPGs, put tens of thousands of simultaneously connected players in a virtual world. Since Sony’s release of Everquest, the first large, commercial MMORPG in March of 1999, a number of titles were added to the fastest growing genre of computer games. Though the majority of MMORPGs follow the dragons-swords-magic paradigm of the original “Dungeons and Dragons” role playing games, a number of worlds have opted for other settings. As the market diversified, some of the games altogether did away with monster killing and treasure hunts (be it in deep dungeons or in deep space), and focused instead on building communities, which in time turned into on-line societies. The government of these societies presents an interesting case for computer ethics because of the fundamental differences between the workings of virtual and of real societies (area of volition), and the fundamental similarities (area of property).

One of the fundamental issues which confronts political theory is the question of volition and the broadly understood social contract – a concept which has undergone many mutations since Rousseau’s time, but which, in essence, has always signified a binding agreement which an individual has made with the society, in which the responsibilities and duties of both sides are stated. The problem of volition in this case boils down to the simple fact that in the modern world the social contract is handed down to an individual, who has no choice in the matter; one can immigrate only so much, and in practice has no opportunity to reject the social contract, to live outside the society. But while in the “real” world an individual’s options are limited, the choice is free when it comes to the MMORGPs. Here, almost all the participants participate out of their free will, out of desire to do so; and while not everyone who wishes to do so can participate (for financial or other reasons) almost no one is forced to participate against their will; moreover, in the virtual world one doesn’t have to concern oneself with physical survival – all of which means that Utopia finally has found a fitting place. Almost.

The “almost” has to do, as it often does in “real” societies, with money and property. The MMORPGs are the fastest growing segment of the multi-billion dollar electronic games industry. Because MMORPGs’ revenue model is based on subscriptions, not on one-time sales, a single player usually generates more revenue for a company than in “traditional” gaming market – while maintaining a significant amount of real control over the game-maker. It is as if in the real world the taxpayer could simply stop paying his or her taxes if he or she became dissatisfied with the government’s doings. But more important than the fees each user has to pay to participate in a virtual society are the internal economies which these societies have developed.

For all the MMORPG societies, property is paramount. Be it a magic sword, a space yacht, or a piece of land, every type of property has value: abstract, expressed in the currency of a given world, and real, expressed in the amount of real world time that it takes to manufacture, buy, or otherwise obtain given item. It might take months of player’s real life time to find the enchanted spear of […], a quantity of real-world time which has begun translating into quantities of real-world money.

As I write this, EBay lists just under twenty thousand of in-game items (and characters with highly developed skill sets) for sale. The currency is the US dollar; the prices often reach into thousands. And so Utopia has become a place of work for the real-world folks; but not only individuals work on-line to sell virtual products for real cash. Because on-line games are protected against the use of automated players, or “bots”, there are companies which employ real people to work for meager wages in on-line factories (or, maybe better to say: sweatshops?), where hour after hour they hammer out magic swords or whatnot. Not all of Utopia’s denizens play out of their own free will: some do so to survive in the physical world. The non-negotiable social contracts of the real world have bled their way into the virtual.

Currently, all but one of the MMORPGs have strict rules against real-world trading of game items – rules which they can not enforce. The market for trading of virtual items is estimated at $2 billion, which puts it ahead of economies of some smaller countries, and is growing. In the real world, questions of property, when translated into more immediate questions of food and greed are notorious for breaking the best thought-out social systems. How will the real-world economic concerns influence the virtual Utopias which could have, it seemed, been genuinely free (of compulsion to participate, of compulsion to eat, of the overbearing power of the rich)?

In the paper I will analyze some of the existing MMORPGs with the aim of developing above themes. I will seek to correlate the development of on-line societies with the history of western societies, focusing on the relationships between various forms of freedom and property. I hope to find space to touch on some more financially complex aspects of virtual societies’ economies, such as real estate development and currency trading.

The title refers to a recent US$26,500 purchase of an island in a MMORPG world called “Entropia.”

AUTHOR
Chuck Huff and Simon Rogerson

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Much has been made of the difficulties facing computer professionals who would be ethical. We have little evidence of success stories. This is an early report of a project to identify moral exemplars in computing and to use life-story interviews (McAdams, et al. 2001) to document their developmental histories and values.

Method

In November, 2002, a panel of seven experts in computer ethics met to identify criteria for selection. Final criteria were similar to those used by Colby and Damon (1992):

1. Either a) a sustained commitment to moral ideals or ethical principles in computing that include a generalized respect for humanity, or b) sustained evidence of moral virtue in the practice of computing.
2. A disposition to make computing decisions in accord with one’s moral ideals or ethical principles, implying also a consistency between one’s actions and intentions and between the means and ends of one’s actions.
3. A willingness to risk one’s self-interest for the sake of one’s moral values.
4. A tendency to be inspiring to other computing professionals and thereby to move them to moral action.

Panel members nominated exemplars from the UK, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The panel approved all nominees, based on biographies provided them. Concern about any nominee from any panel member was cause for removal of the name. Only one was removed for this reason. Sixty three exemplars were nominated and 35 were contacted. We conducted interviews with 24, 12 in the UK and 12 in the other countries, a response rate of 71.43%.

Thirteen exemplars had experience in academia, 15 in industry, and 3 in government. These categories overlapped, with seven exemplars having experience in two areas. Eleven exemplars were in the final decade of their careers and 4 were retired. Four were in the first decade of their career and 5 in the middle of their careers. There were 9 women in the sample.

Findings

We were able to identify exemplars in academia and industry in about equal numbers, suggesting that situational pressure in each sector does not drive out or constrict those who want to be principled in their profession.

The self-presentation of these exemplars in computing parallels that seen in much of the social service exemplar literature (see Colby & Damon, 1992). Particularly, they appear to have two orientations to their work. In the social service exemplar literature, the two approaches are called helper vs. reformer. We have called the helper orientation the “craftsperson” approach because of the ways these exemplars integrate their ethical values into their technical craft. We found more “pure” craftspeople than “pure” reformers in our sample, though many exemplars were mixtures of the two.

Craftspeople tended to:

• Focus on users: They focused on helping users/customers.
• Viewed users/customers as having needs: Their primary focus was designing computing systems to address these needs.
• Viewed barriers as inert obstacles: They viewed difficulties as puzzles to be solved, or negotiations to be worked out.
• Believe in the efficacy of helping users: They believed their efforts helped users and customers and kept their focus on that work.
• Be positive in emotional tone: Because they felt they were effective in designing technology to help solve problems for others, they were the most positive in emotional tone among the exemplars.
• Design computing technology towards ethical ends: Craftspeople saw their computing work as their way to address the needs of users or customers. Their ethical principles (e.g. user focus, customer need, software quality) were deeply intertwined with the way they approached their work of design.

Reformers tended to:

• Focus on the social system: They saw the social system as needing basic reform. This usually meant the computing industry, though some felt societal change was required for industry change.
• View individuals as victims: The people they were trying to help were seen as people who needed justice or some other public good. Thus they saw the system as lacking the values they wanted to bring to it.
• View barriers as active opposition. They viewed barriers to reform as active resistance to reform by those who had different interests.
• Took the role of moral crusader: Their approach was that of the crusader out to reform the system.
• Believed in the necessity of systemic reform: They did not think individual help to users was effective. They saw systemic reform as necessary.
• Be negative in emotional tone: Partly because systemic reform is difficult, and partly because they saw themselves as a minority trying to inculcate values in a resistant system, these often felt less effective in their efforts and had a more negative emotional tone about their work.

Most of the exemplars actively cultivated a social support network (see also Colby & Damon, 1992; Fischman, et al., 2004). Almost all of the exemplars cited a large number of people who influenced their ethical development. Those who did not were the most negative in emotional tone.

There were several reasonably pure reform exemplars. These saw their reform efforts as independent of the technical work they did on computing and saw the computing industry as resistant and inhospitable to the values they were championing. Craftspeople, on the other hand, held values already intrinsic to computing and their skills were intertwined with their technical expertise. Values such as user focus, customer need, and software quality mean specific things in the computing community. And though the implications of these values are the subject of debate, there is general consent that the values are important. This is not surprising given that value commitments are often learned as a part of technical expertise (Collins & Pinch, 2002).

There is, then, a variety of ways that computing professionals can be ethical. This finding undermines the monolithic approach and suggests that there might be a social ecology of computing ethics. In such an ecology, different skills sets, values, and emphases would work together (and occasionally at cross purposes) to support ethical concern in computing.

AUTHOR
James GS Wilson

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at copyright in software, in the light of Microsoft’s increasing attempts to make it impossible to run Windows on any computer without having paid the requisite licence fee.

If one looks at it from Microsoft’s point of view, then their goal is clearly laudable:

1. Those who are using Windows illegally have no moral claim on Microsoft to allow them to use it.
2. Microsoft are merely enforcing their copyright: they are just finding ways of preventing people from using Windows illegally.
3. Illegal use of programs is unfair, as it reduces Microsoft’s revenues, and second, it leads to the losses being passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. The illegal user is behaving unfairly: he is taking advantage of all those others who have bought a legitimate copy.

The bulk of the paper consists in a reply to this underlying view of copyright. The central assumption of this view of copyright is that the copyright holder is unfairly harmed whenever someone copies the copyrighted entity outside of the terms that the copyright holder deems to be legitimate.

But it is not clear why we should accept this claim. I reply to it in three stages. First I clarify the nature of the legitimate claims that we should see copyright as involving; second I clarify the nature of the sort of entity that a computer program is, and what this means for the ethics of copying; and third I argue that there are important cases where breaches of copyright can benefit both the supplier and the users of a good.

The nature of copyright

This section argues that we must make a distinction between fundamental inalienable rights, and merely legal rights, which are granted by a society as a way of bringing about good consequences.

If a right is inalienable, then something is wrong as such when it violates the right. Where a right is merely legal, violating the right is not wrong as such: the morality of the violation will turn on the likely good or harm that will be caused by the violation.

It is highly implausible to think of copyright as an inalienable right. Hence the morality of breaching copyright turns on the question of the degree of good and or harm that will be caused by the breach.

Computer programs are inexhaustible and networked goods

I argue that there are two significant features about computer programs that questions of the harm of breaching copyright must take into account.

1. A computer program suffers no depreciation or degradation as more and more people use it. A computer program is an inexhaustible good, in that however many people make use of it, there is always as much and as good left for others.

2. Computer programs such as operating systems are networked goods: their value to their copyright holder, and their usefulness to their users is proportional to the number of people who use the program. This is because the greater the operating system’s market share, the more sense it makes for others to make programs to inter-operate with it; and the fact that others have made more programs to inter-operate with it itself increases the usefulness of the operating system.

When Breaches of Copyright are Beneficial

This section argues that it is only legitimate to consider oneself as being harmed by someone performing action X, if things would have gone better for you, in the circumstances you found yourself in, if that person had not Xed.

Microsoft’s case is that it is unfairly harmed by those who use Windows without paying them the license fee. So its presupposition is that things would go better for it, given the circumstances it finds itself in, if no one used Windows without paying the license fee. Their argument must be:

1. If no one were able to use Microsoft Windows illegally, then each of the pirates would have to buy a copy.
2. If each of the pirates bought a copy, then Microsoft would be richer to the tune of several billion dollars.
3. Therefore Microsoft is harmed by software piracy.

But why should we accept premise 1? For eliminating the illegal use of Windows would not necessarily entail that all those who currently use it illegally would buy licenses: perhaps many would be too poor, too mean, or too ideologically opposed. They could refrain from using Microsoft products illegally by switching to open source alternatives.

This would be catastrophic for Microsoft: they would lose a large proportion of the networked good that they and they users of their software currently enjoy. Microsoft, and their customers would both be harmed. It follows that, under some circumstances, Microsoft would be harmed if people were prevented from using its software illegally.

But what about the real world situation: is Microsoft currently being harmed by the illegal use of its software? I argue that, although it is difficult to be certain, there is a good chance that Microsoft is currently benefiting more from the enhanced network effects than it is losing from the illegal use of its software.

If this analysis is correct, then it is not true to say that Microsoft is being harmed by illegal use of its software; and a fortiori it is not true that Microsoft is being unjustly harmed by illegal use of its software; and there would therefore be no reason to think such illegal use wrong.