AUTHOR
Yohko Orito and Kiyoshi Murata

ABSTRACT

It is often alleged that with the maturation of society, people in developed countries are aware of their rights and, among them, the right to privacy is now universally accepted. However, understanding of the concept and importance of privacy is not necessarily universal. For example, there is no word in Japanese that precisely corresponds to the English word privacy. Many Japanese people use the word puraibashi, the adopted word for privacy, without clearly understanding its meaning. In fact, for ordinal Japanese people privacy is just an imported idea and they tend to consider the right to privacy means that anyone can arbitrarily refuse interference of others and because of such arbitrariness this right is a subjective, timeserving concept.

Additionally, in Japanese society group mentality is emphasised and it is supposed that formation of well-rounded character is attained by learning to be cooperative and, therefore, that to be assertive is a vice and to compromise with others is a virtue. A characteristic mark of Japanese linguistic culture is frequent usage of implication in communication: to tell or describe important things explicitly is often hesitated and a person in his or her own right is expected to sense others’ implied feelings, emotions and thoughts in the proper way. Insisting on the right to privacy as “the right to be let alone” is, on the one hand, indicative of lack of cooperativeness and, on the other, of inability to communicate. The right to privacy as “the individual right to control the circulation of information concerning him or her” tends to be considered a manifestation of excess mistrust of those who collect, store, share and use personal data and of the cooperative society. Consequently, the right to privacy is foreign to the Japanese culture and this is one reason that less importance is attached to the right to privacy in Japanese society than in Western societies.

On the other hand, the tremendous development and spread of information and communication technology (ICT) has enabled business organisations, including Japanese firms, to collect, store, process, use and share a huge amount of personal data of customers. It is alleged that such personal data use make it possible for business organisations to satisfy ever changing customer needs, to streamline their business operations and, therefore, to gain competitive advantage. Personal data use is also expected that it can gift business organisations with favorable, long-term relationship with customers through timely provision of goods and services the customers really desire and with business partners through sharing necessary data. Individual customers can enjoy benefits of the timely provision of customized goods and services at lower price enabled by the proper use of personal data on customers by business organisations.

However, personal data use is a double-edged sword for business organisations as well as individual customers. It is inseparable from the risk of invasion of privacy. Any business behaviour that arouses suspicion of a violation of the right to privacy may result in withering criticism of the business organisation and expose it to trust and reputation risk. From the viewpoint of business, in order to avoid the risk, business organisations should develop secure information systems and take measures to preserve personal data they have in safety. Simultaneously, from a social standpoint, the fact that a tremendous amount of personal data is collected, stored, processed, shared and used by business organisations may justify private-sector-led self-regulation or public regulation for the private sector on protection of computer processed personal data.

Based on the idea that ICT is the strategic technology for Japan in the 21st century, the Japanese government adopts a policy to construct a “highly-networked information society” and is undertaking development of infrastructure for it. As a part of implementation of this policy, Act for Protection of Personal Data, which covers the private sector as well as the public sector, was approved in May 2003 and will be put into force in April 2005. The main cause for the issue of this act which has penalty clauses was not an internal claim, because of undervaluation of the right to privacy in Japanese society as mentioned above, but external pressure by the international community such as OECD guidelines and Directive 95/46/EC on the processing of personal data: business activities in the global business environment in which personal data are shared among business organisations beyond national borders will not become permitted unless some form of regulation on protection of personal data exists in each nation in which the business organisations are based. Coming enforcement of Act for Protection of Personal Data in Japan is recognised as, on the one hand, business opportunity for information system vendors or ICT consultant firms to sell their customer firms security systems corresponding to this law and as, on the other, what costs system users inevitable money.

One of ethical concerns with respect to protection of personal data and privacy in Japan is, then, that no business organisation would attempt to address privacy issues beyond abiding by the act. This concern may seem to be plausible when the following case is shown: in July 2001, Mainichi Newspaper reported that Toppan Insatsu sold a mailing list made and held by a bankrupt catalogue shipper, to which Toppan Insatsu attached a security warranty, to another catalogue shipper, and the manager in charge of this sale asserted that Toppan Insatsu did just a legal business activity. The thought that behaving morally is identical with compliance with law is wrong and, moreover, socially dangerous. However, for ordinal Japanese people it is difficult to consider how and why they should protect privacy beyond law because of their culture and, therefore, privacy protection in Japan would tend to become just superficial.

AUTHOR
Stan Szejko and Przemyslaw Ryba

ABSTRACT

Impact analysis examines the nature of individual risks on the project, as well as potential structures of interdependent risks. It includes the quantification of their respective impact severity, probability and sensitivity to changes in related project variables including the project life cycle. A determination should also be made as to whether all risks identified are within the scope of the project’s risk response planning process [1] .

Computer ethics is about integrating computing technology and human values in such a way that technology advances and protects human values, rather than doing damage to them[2] . Software development projects rarely take into account needs of all those who are affected by the project and the system in use.

Software Development Impact Statement (SoDIS) process is expected to encourage the developers to think of people, groups, or organisations related to the project as well as identify significant ways in which the project may negatively affect stakeholders [3] [4] . The goal of the SoDIS process is to identify significant ways in which the completion of individual tasks may negatively affect stakeholders and to identify additional project tasks or modifications needed to prevent any anticipated problems. This is done in several steps

extending the domain of stakeholders identification to all individuals and institutions that are related to the project,

making the related impact analysis according to the tasks of the project preliminary plan,

incorporating new tasks and modifications that can be used as means to mediate or avoid the identified concerns into the software project management plan, and auditing them later.

SoDIS Project Auditor is a decision support tool for analysing the impact of a software development project, throughout its lifecycle. It can be applied to any software development project where the outcome of the project has an impact on a set of stakeholders [5]

The paper we submit discusses an extension of the SoDIS process and introduces the related prototype tool. There was presented some discussion and motivation in [6] for extending the SoDIS process as it in fact covers two synergetic efforts: the customer’s process (including customer’s side activities, products, risks and impacts on stakeholders) and the supplier’s one.

Thus the SoDIS process modification we propose consists in:

project phases are defined for the supported project lifecycle. We follow the concept of Planning, Negotiation, Development and Deployment phases [7] as they are well-defined for both, customer and developer sides;

stakeholders are declared separately for each, customer (buyer) or developer (supplier) side. They can be assigned roles, e.g. end-users or designers and linked separately to selected project phases;

impact analysis follows the original SoDIS process but it is done separately for the customer and the developer sides risks and stakeholders;

these result in new and modified tasks required by each of the project sides; so we can get activities as on each (customer’s, developer’s) side as the project plan modified accordingly. The related prototype tool (named SoDIS/SSIA – Software Support for Impact Analysis) is a standalone application running under Windows and implemented in C++ in Visual Studio .NET environment. ODBC connection allows linking different database systems for handling project descriptions while mapping to/from XML allows for export and import of project schedules. Still, there are some limitations of the tool, for example, there is no multi-access for the defined stakeholders and the resulting lists of tasks are not linked to the time axis [8] .

A specification of a project example is used throughout the presentation to illustrate the proposed SoDIS process modifications and the usage of the SSIA tool in the process of stakeholder impact analysis. Summarising, comparison of the obtained results to ‘classical’ SoDIS process are discussed.

REFERENCES

[1] www.projectauditors.com/Dictionary/I.html

[2] Bynum T.W. and Rogerson S.: Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility. Blackwell Publ., 2003

[3] Gotterbarn D.: Reducing Software Failures: Addressing the Ethical Risks of the Software Development Lifecycle. Proc. of the 5th International Conference on The Social and Ethical Impacts of ICT ETHICOMP 2001, Gdansk, June 2001, vol. 2, pp. 10 – 19.

[4] Rogerson S.: Project Management. An Issue of Ethical Sensivity. Invited lecture, 2001.

[5] SoDIS Project Auditor User’s Manual. Software Development Research Foundation, Inc., 2002. http://www.sdresearch.org

[6] Szejko S.: Incorporating Ethics into the Software Process. Proc. of the VIth International Conference on The Transformation of Organisations in the Information Age: Social and Ethical Implications, ETHICOMP 2002, Lisbon, 2002, pp. 271 – 279.

[7] Marciniak J.J. and Reifer D.J.: Software Acquisition Management. J.Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1990.

[8] Ryba P.: Design and Implementation of Software Aimed to Support Impact Analysis. MSc thesis (in Polish), Department of Software Engineering, ETI Faculty, Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, 2004.

AUTHOR
David Lea

ABSTRACT

It is the aim of this paper to consider the moral arguments that support and also those that deny the proposition that intellectual property rights as applied to software have a moral basis. Undeniably ownership rights were first applied to chattels and land and so we begin by considering the moral basis of these rights. We can then consider if these rights make moral sense when they are extended to intellectual phenomenon.

In this paper I am not so much concerned to reach a final judgment as to the moral basis of intellectual property rights in general, but rather seek to offer a more specific treatment of the possible moral basis of intellectual property as applied to computer software. One of the questions encountered when one protects software by copyright and patent is whether this creates a barrier to new invention. There are the costs to society incurred by arrangements to make people pay for a program and the licensing of copies.i Losses are also associated with extensive searches to determine if a produced piece of software has already been protected by existing patents or copyrights. Depending on what is found, one may have to pay significant fees to license a process that has been patented or draft a copyright claim “?in contorted ways to ensure that its claim does not infringe on others.”ii We will proceed with a Lockean and Kantian analysis.

Locke and Kant

Ultimately, despite the emphasis on obligation rooted in a command of God, Locke’s defense of private property for modern liberal secular thinkers really depends on the utilitarian aspect, i.e., private ownership and the attendant rights to use, exclude and alienate, are justified as conducive to the survival and flourishing of the individual and mankind. At the same time there are those who eschew the utilitarian approach for various reasons and prefer to argue a defense of private ownership based on individual autonomy. This is a Kantian approach that stresses the ultimate value of the human individual. On this view private property as an institution is seen as essential to a program whereby one autonomously controls one’s individual destiny. This view has been popularized by libertarians who follow the lead of Robert Nozick.

We go on to distinguish between control rights and income rights – rights that apply to the holding per se, such as the right to use, exclude and alienate and rights that apply to income that flows from holding the legal title. The right to income refers to the right to the economic rent accruing to scarce goods.i Returning to the utilitarian issues and concerns for individual autonomy, which form the moral basis of ownership, we have seen that they offer us powerful reasons for acknowledging a moral point to the existence of the institution of ownership as it applies to land and chattels. As we have repeated ownership includes the most important rights to use, exclude and alienate. However, the peculiarity of information and information technology is that there is really little reason to protect rights to use, exclude and alienate. I still retain capacities to perform these activities even if others have access and use the same information or information technology.. This is not the case with physical property. Intellectual property actually protects income or right to potential income that is maintained through legal restrictions on the reproduction of the product or the dissemination of information. Once information and information technology are made subject to intellectual property rights, one creates a unique form of ownership that legally restricts the transferee by ensuring the he/she receives a title that falls short of full ownership as is the case with physical things. Unlike ownership of physical objects, the recipient is prevented from alienating the product by selling or freely disseminating. This ensures maximum profitability for the originator in so far as each recipient of the information or information technology must represent a monetary return to the originator.

But these realities also throw doubt on the possibility of using the moral issue of autonomy as a defense of intellectual property. For example, intellectual property would therefore contravene the Nozickian understanding of ownership because it interferes with the freedom to exercise the right of transfer. In suppressing the individual’s freedom we are treating the individual as a means to other ends either utilitarian or the more narrow objective of rewarding the original creator. On this interpretation, intellectual property restrictions are inconsistent with Kantian principles. It follows that the principle of autonomy and issues of personal integrity cannot be consistently applied to offer a coherent moral defense of intellectual property. This entails a moral defense that relies on consequentialism.

We observe that intellectual property rights have created apparent monopolistic conditions associated with higher prices and unconstrained profits are inconsistent with the utilitarian consequentialism, which favors greater availability through lower prices and expanded volume. This reality is becoming evident in the recent spate of course cases based on Microsoft’s alleged monopolistic practices.

The final issue is whether we can mount a valid utilitarian defense of intellectual property despite problems associated with excessive profit taking. Ian Maitland has defended the use of patents in the prescription drug industry arguing that innovative drugs and the plethora of new drugs would not be available if not for patent protection because industry would not be prepared to finance risky, expensive research and development without the possibility of reaping healthy profits. However, as Maitland states, drug companies spend more on research and development than any other industry.i Research and development in the software industry are less expensive and time consuming etc. The need for massive industrial investment does not necessarily apply for the production of new and innovative software. It is well known that the home computer industry got its start not through massive investment from industry and industrial giants like IBM but through the activities of amateur hobbyists, who met in clubs such as the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley.ii In point of fact some see copyright and patent law as constraints on the exercise of creative talent, because software engineers are precluded from redeveloping, improving, disseminating, or sharing software that has been copyrighted or patented. In fact, innovative software would probably continue to be produced regardless of the possibility of creating a “wildly profitable” product because software research does not require that that massive sunk costs be covered. And in any case, for many talented individuals, the creation of software is something that it is inherently enjoyable and does not require the same monetary motivation.

REFERENCES

R. M. Stallman, ‘GNU manifesto,’ in M. D. Ermann & M. S. Shauf (eds) Computers, Ethics and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 153-161.

D. G. Johnson, Computer Ethics 3rd Edition (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001): 143.

R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

Ibid.

Ibid., 466.

Bob Cringely, The Triumph of the Nerds: Impressing their Friends, Volume 1, Ambrose Videos, 1996, recounts the activities of the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley, which witnessed the first demonstration of the personal computer.

AUTHOR
and

ABSTRACT

Because of ICT, the term Globalization now is employed everywhere, such as economic globalization, globalization age, globalization communication, and globalization society and computer ethics globalization. With the spreading of Internet, now we humankind is nearly living in an international village — this is an actually globalized, virtual community, or “second world”. [1] Currently, more then 700.86 million people who are from more than one hundred countries and regions all over the world are surfing the Internet, by which they communicate each other globally, and do e-business, collaboration, chat, or videoconference, hardly limited by time or place. However network has seriously impacted national cultures. Some countries disallow link with the Internet. Should the people on Internet observe the universal ethics and same law? Obviously the answer to this question is “Yes”, since the order and relations in our lives need it. We must pay more attention to what computer ethics globalization is, firstly.

In Chinese Confucianism we have the proverb: All under the heaven are equal. “When the great way prevails, the world community is equally shared by all. The worthy and able are chosen as office holders. Mutual confidence is fostered and good neighborliness cultivated. ” The age of great harmony is our wish. That is a Chinese traditional sense. The modern perception is that globalization is an international culture revolution,is a way in which can moral beings get survival from the cultural crisis caused by the industrial civilization. It is also a new culture model —information culture, to be constructed worldwide [2]. The purpose of globalization is all kinds of beings in the world can happily live together.

Second, how can we fulfill the dream-computer ethics globalization? Let’s think about it from the following two viewpoints:

1. Which things has already globalized? Peace and friendship-the spirits of Olympic game, the beauty of arts: both in music, paintings and drawings. All the people in the world appreciate them. It means that there is a common sense in human moral recognition. We may trace some general rules form worldwide ethics global one, such as respect life (all kinds of life in nature, tree, bird, air, hill and mountain, stream, grass?), faithfulness, justice and freedom.

2. Localization, the parity of globalization. There are more than hundreds of religions and social systems nowadays in our world, so it is true to say a number of social, economic and political issues and problems may emerge during the course of globalization. For example, culture conflicts, global digital divide (that means rich people get richer, while the poor get poorer), multi-culture co-existence, knowledge monopolize and so on. Meanwhile localization may make some cultures pass away, even some kinds of language may elapse. So we think globalization have the meaning multi-culture co-existence, and all kinds of people should respect and understand each other. The biggest problem in ethics globalization is the culture and history we believe. That the civilization develops equilibrium globally is the key to fulfill the aim ethics globalization. Depending upon Chinese tradition sense, the core of ethics is equity and justice, we have one earth, and all under the earth are one family. According to the Internet Usage and Population Statistics [3], it is clearly to know that in our world there are still more then billions of people do not have visited the WWW, even have no computer, how can they know something about computer ethics?

Another side of localization is, different people have different understanding for the globalization, so they do the things in individual way, maybe they are in the same country, it mostly depends on their local culture and their history, the experience of education. So both globalization and localization need tolerance.

Conclusions

It is true that computer ethics globalization has its nature, and it is a hard work for individuals, governments and international society to do with. Technique (such as ISO standards), International Institutions and Regional organization (OECD, ISO, UNESCO, WHO, WTO?), ethics, and law may be the points to work starting with. Everyone in the world must have to keep an open mind, and be ready to construction a new world -a great harmony world. This paper will give the author’s teaching experience on computer ethics in Zhejiang Wanli University, PRC, to study the different understanding of computer ethics. Especially on privacy, intellectual property right, and pornography.

REFERENCES

Bynum, T. and Rogerson, S., Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

Li, Qing-xia, Culture Conflicts in the Course of Globalization, Teaching and Research, 2004,6. PP 17-23.

AUTHOR
Den Pain, Rania Shibl, Kay Fielden and Andy Bissett

ABSTRACT

‘Trust’ may be a more useful concept with some types of computer systems than the narrower, more technical definitions such as ‘dependability’ or ‘reliability’ that software engineering tends to employ. Trust is a continuing theme within ETHICOMP, and its use (Raab, 1998) and misuse (de Laat, 2004) have been discussed. The term has the advantage that an implicit ethical dimension is captured. We found, when investigating clinical decision support systems (CDSS) in New Zealand, that the term was used unprompted by several different stakeholders when discussing their relationships with other stakeholders.

There is a plethora of trust definitions to choose from (Corritore et al., 2001). Nearly all definitions of trust share the condition that one party (the truster) must willingly place himself or herself in a position of vulnerability to or risk from another party (the trustee) (Gallivan, 2001). Karahannas and Jones (1999: 347) note that trust is ‘closely related to risk, since without vulnerability?there is no need for trust’.

CDSS incorporate a knowledge base, effectively a database of information. They also use patient specific data ranging from quite detailed to minimal. The CDSS employs these two components to provide the doctor with patient specific advice. Depending on the system, the degree of support given to the clinician will vary.

Trust in a CDSS at the highest level could be the general practitioner’s trust in the CDSS and in turn the patient’s trust of the GP and CDSS working together successfully. From an information systems perspective, however, it is clear that there are a number of other systems involved, each of which has to work effectively and be trusted by other parties for this top level of trust to be on a sure footing. In particular, consider a CDSS where the data is maintained by one company (often a publishing company) and is presented through application software developed by another, yet all of the associated hardware and software are managed by GP clinics themselves. In New Zealand the majority of GPs are organised in groups called Independent Practitioner Associations (IPAs). IPAs are now part of ‘Primary Health Organisations’ which provide the first line of health care to a particular area. In addition, IPAs also provide a range of support services including information technology support – and therefore CDSS operation – for their GP members.

Naturally there are other systems involved, such as the distribution of data updates from the original publishers through to the GP’s desktop. Thus a chain or network of trust exists. This concept of needing a network of trust has been recognised in the literature; see Muir (1994), for example.

Several factors underlying trust in automation have been identified including predictability, reliability and dependability. Rempel et al (1985) concluded that trust would progress in three stages over time from predictability to dependability to faith. Muir and Moray (1996) extended these factors and developed a trust model that contains six components: predictability, dependability, faith, competence, responsibility, and reliability. Muir (1987) states that trust is a critical factor in the design of computer systems as trust can impact the use or non-use of computers, and later findings by Vries et al (2003) confirm this tendency.

We found that different strategies were adopted to deal with the problems of information quality identified by a lack of trust in certain areas. Typically these were: creating a new role or job; providing a technical solution; providing an organizational solution, relying on contractual responsibility and using an agent to manage issues of trust.

We conclude by considering what lessons may be generalised, both in terms of the nature of trust and what this might mean within other computer systems and beyond, into the wider business world.

REFERENCES

Corritore, C., Kracher, B. and Weidenbeck, S. (2001) Trust in the online environment, in Smith, M., Salvendy, G., Harris, D., Koubek, R. (eds), Evaluation and interface design: cognitive engineering, intelligent agents, and virtual reality. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1548-1552.

e Laat, P. (2004) Open source software: a case of swift trust? in T. Ward Bynum, N. Pouloudi, S. Rogerson, T. Spyrou (eds), Proceedings ETHICOMP 2004, Vol. 1, University of the Aegean, Syros, Greece, 14th – 16th April 2004. ISBN 960-7475-26-7. 250-265.

Gallivan, M. (2001) Striking a balance between trust and control in a virtual organisation: a content analysis of open source software case studies, Information Systems Journal 11, 277-304.

Karahannas, M. and Jones, M. (1999) Inter-organisational systems and trust in strategic alliances, Proceedings of the International conference on Information Systems, Charlotte, NC, 346-357.

Muir, B. (1987) trust between humans and machines and the design of decision aides, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 27, 527-539.

Muir, B. M. (1994) Trust in automation, Part1: Theoretical issues in the study of trust and human intervention in automated systems, Ergonomics, 37(11), 1905-1922.

Muir, B. and Moray, N. (1996) Trust in automation: Part II Experimental studies of trust and human intervention in a process control simulation, Ergonomics, 37(11) 429-460.

Raab, C. (1998) Privacy and trust: information, government and ICT, in J. van den Hoven, S. Rogerson, T. Ward Bynum, D. Gotterbarn (eds), Proceedings ETHICOMP’98, Erasmus University Rotterdam, March 1998. 565-577.

Rempel, J. K., Holmes, J. G. and Zanna, M. P. (1985) Trust in close relationships, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 95-112.

Vries, P., Midden, C., and Bouwhuis, D. (2003) The effect of errors on system trust, self confidence and the allocation of control in route planning, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58, 719-735.

AUTHOR
Paul B. de Laat

ABSTRACT

It has become generally accepted, that trust is an important `lubricant’ of social relations, both in `real life’ and in cyberspace. However, what are the prospects for trust developing between `pure virtuals’? Recently, using some very sophisticated arguments, Philip Pettit (forthcoming) answered this question in the negative: trust on the Internet can only be fantasy. My article will be devoted to an analysis and critique of his arguments.

In Pettit (1995), the author argued for the existence of two mechanisms of trust. First, people can be seen as trustworthy because they are considered to be loyal (say a friend or colleague), virtuous (say with religious convictions) or prudent (meaning that they appreciate the benefits of establishing a long-term relationship). Next to this primary trust, a more subtle form is to be distinguished (`secondary trust’). I may trust someone, because I assume that (s)he desires my good opinion. My act of trust gives the trustee an incentive to behave well; alter is supposed to be `trust-responsive’. Here we witness, as the author phrases it, the `cunning of trust’. This secondary kind of trust might explain the existence of trust in very unlikely situations (e.g., between perfect strangers).

Then, in Pettit (forthcoming), he `applied’ this analysis to the Internet. Pure virtuals, he argued, cannot make use of the usual mechanisms of knowledge about the other: face (`bodily presence’), frame (watching the other interact with others), and file (my record of alter’s past behaviour). As a result, primary trust is impossible. Can we trust, instead, upon the mechanism of secondary trust? No, Pettit argues, we cannot. Alter will only possibly be motivated by my future display of esteem, if (s)he believes that my act of trusting reliance is motivated (as well) by my belief in his/her trustworthiness. Secondary trust has to hide, so to speak, behind primary trust. If ego is seen to play exclusively on alter’s trust-responsiveness, the mechanism will backfire, while the move is seen as straightforward opportunism. So in the case of Internet, both mechanisms of eliciting trust from the other are blocked.

My article aims to undermine this argument. I intend to show that Pettit’s analysis can be turned around and used to argue for precisely the opposite proposition: trust on the Internet is theoretically possible. My counterarguments are the following:

(1) `Pure’ virtuals do not exist. Each cybercommunication carries clues and meanings about oneself. These may look tiny but are significant nevertheless. Even more so, while the usual interpersonal clues of face-to-face communication are lacking. A decade of research into CMC has established that these clues are being blown up in significance, in a process of over-attribution; we construct so called `hyperpersonal’ cyberpartners. In addition, participants seem to manage these clues. Details of one’s social life are being circulated, even when these do not seem directly relevant to the group’s purposes. As a result, contrary to Pettit’s argument, virtuals do have clues upon which primary trust may be imputed.

(2) Empirically, there is evidence that sometimes internet interaction between unknown virtuals starts off with trust being assumed ex ante. In order to anticipate upon the anxieties of cyberspace, participants pre-invest attitudes and actions that signal high amounts of trust. This process has been explored in Jarvenpaa & Leidner (1999), and dubbed `cybertrust’ in a 2004 article of mine. Such cybertrust, it will be argued, is the analogon of `swift trust’ in real life situations, when temporary groups engage in tasks characterized by high time pressure, mutual interdependencies, and high risk (a term coined by Meyerson et alii, 1996). How is this anticipatory action to be interpreted? I would suggest that it is nothing else but a kind of secondary trust seeking as described by Pettit: cybertrust is an ex ante appeal upon one’s fellow virtuals to respond and be nice.

Why is the display of cybertrust not interpreted as ludicrous? A possible answer is, that it is not directed to a specified individual, but to a group, with fuzzy boundaries. One’s act does not say: `I trust you’, but `there is surely someone out there whom I can trust’. The virtual that takes up the invitation, by so doing identifies himself as trustworthy; trustworthiness is self-declared, not other-attributed. A cycle of trust may ensue.

(3) Once virtual communities have formed, these may construct their own mechanisms of (primary) trust building, whether by themselves, or aided by `cybermediaries’. For one thing, monetary trust in one’s partner can be created by cybermediaries that take on the escrow function. Moreover, systems of reputation tracking may be constructed. Their most famous pioneer, of course, is eBay. For each transaction, buyer and seller may rate each other; based on these scores, one’s reputation may rise or fall. Finally, groups may build collective frames of mind that guide expectations towards one another. An example coming to mind is the hacker culture, into which open source software projects are embedded.

(4) Finally, it would seem that trust building is much easier than usually assumed if competence trust is involved. Technicians exchange technicalities that gradually confirm or refute the talkers’ competencies. So the issue of competence trust sorts itself out without any social cues needed. In Pettit’s terms: from the outset, professionals assume each other to be competent (primary trust). While such an assumption is quite normal, the way is also paved for the motivating effect of secondary trust: alter feels flattered and challenged to respond. Note, that I do not (like Pettit does) collapse competence trust into confidence or reliance, in which case a trust analysis would not apply. If my analysis is correct, the Internet is just as good a setting for professionals interacting as `real life’.