AUTHOR

Carlos Roxo (Lisbon)

ABSTRACT

“Intellectual property has become vitally important in international commerce and its effective management has become an essential skill in business” Intellectual Property Management Institute

Introduction

As the World Intellectual Property Organisation makes strong point to remember the copyright has as I objective to protect everything what it is intellectual creation, however there are , two great ways to discuss that subjects, the first one is in favour the other one is against, in this way is difficult to forget that it analysis it of the one that is the copyright and to who it belongs, will have to seat basically to seat in solid’s Ethical bases. However the reality is well different, therefore no matter how much if we want the rights of copyright are constantly forgotten and crush under some one’s feet, this is the most important item, it can result on important practises of business, producing more value for the organisation, create new technologies which produce greater profits, which applied or sale directly the idea to third parts.

Not many time ago no body knew what intellectual propriety meant, it’s a great deal to understand what really belongs to whom. In other words no one knows where the right’s to the product of the creative mind’s really begins and where they end. Could any one think of understand this concept without using great amount of ethic’s in other words there are no way of doing that in an unethical way.

Is common sense in the working world that the mind of the worker “belongs to the employers”, is one asset and one of the ways to the profit, even when they did not pay for that, if the line o work didn’t use brains only muscle power, how many times they have to apply to is intellectual capacities ? This is the bottom line of the ideas of the persons who stand for the ideal of a world free from copyright of any type. They stand for a world whit free music, free software, in other words the only moment that any thing i do belongs tome is in the moment of creation, after that belongs to any one who can enjoy it.

Proposition of objectives

In the modern world the technology give us many opportunities, to create many situations of what belongs to who in the ethical way, did I have the right to get music from the internet, to copy pages to sale after making some changes to use programs that I don’t have pay for. In one way or the other this is using the others ideas, without pay for that it makes you a thief of capacities to produce new things and new projects.

In the industry of making music can I distinguish between a ” musical influence ” and a stolen idea, is hard to think that way, because the notes from standard diatonic scale are only 12 and the number o music’s wrote until to day are impossible to count and the sequences that some compose today must have been used some other time, is that stolen propriety and how could i use ethics to give that chaos some order ?

According to the law any thing that i could conceive in my employer time belongs to him. That any in I have developed in my workplace belong by right to my employer in generic sense, never the less I think if in the line of thinking of my work I get one idea who didn’t belongs to the core business of my organisation, ethically speaking what part of that idea could I tell that is mine, and what part belongs to my organisation?

After this mixed ideas I propose to talk about the influence of this new concept and is greatness there for I can’t forget the difficulty of changing the society who lives in the most undefined set of concepts. In other words when we come in that point must be the law to define who is right one but never the less the ethic’s must be the most important point of measurement to use in the construction of the society for all of us.

The way to achieve my goal.

• Searching for information on the web about the most diverse approach to this subjects.
• Reading books, newspapers, teases, and what i think that could give me some advantage and knowledge to produce one paper whit the most precision information.
• Try to interview personal or by the web the most differentiated position on this mater and whit is opinions search for is concept of ethics, and by that create one way to show where the ethic of one touch the ethic of the other.
• In the process i could have some new or better ideas to approach this paper, there for more way of doing and using ideas could appear.

REFERENCES

http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/copying_primer.html

http://www.wipo.org/

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Papers/pw-public-spaces.html

http://phobos.estig.ipbeja.pt/~ac_direito/dintelectual.html

http://www.ipmenu.com/iporganisations.htm

http://www.ipinstitute.org/

http://www.sice.oas.org/int_prop.asp

LEVI-STRAUSS, C.,1978. Mito e Significado. Lisboa: Edições 70

VILA NOVA, S., 1998. Donald Pierson e a Escola de Chicago na Sociologia Brasileira: Entre Humanistas e Messiânicos. Lisboa: Vega Universidade

AUTHOR

Marie d’UDEKEM-GEVERS and Virginie SAMYN (Belgium)

ABSTRACT

Promoting safer use of the Internet by combating illegal and harmful content on global networks is now a major concern for our societies. To address this concern, a lot of initiatives can be taken. Particularly, providing filtering techniques which can be used as parents/educators empowerment tools is frequently put forward. Among these techniques, some involve the electronic rating of Web sites. This kind of rating usually entails a standard called ‘PICS’ (Platform for Internet Content Selection).

The first and most important distinction that PICS introduced is a separation between labelling and filtering. From an a intellectual and ethical point of view, PICS is thus a beautiful solution: it can help to manage cultural and individual diversity.
PICS is promoted both by a part of the Internet industry and by regulators [Particularly, the European Union and the Council of Europe].

But, PICS, which is an already ‘old’² standard, did not expand as expected and the PICS standard home page seems to be now nearly dead.

Between 1998-99 and the end of 2001, there have been several changes in PICS rating services.

First, we note that four of nine PICS services available and analysed in 1999 (see d’Udekem-Gevers 1999) were no longer to be found in 2001: two PICS Self-Rating services (Adequate.com and IT-RA) as well as two PICS Third -Party Rating Services (evaluWEB and Net Shepherd’s Rating) seem to have disappeared.

Secondly, three self rating Web sites, Vancouver Webpages Rating Service, SafeSurf and Safe For Kids Web sites, still exist but are not very active.

Thirdly, one pioneer third party rating service, SurfWatch, is still alive but is now a “part of the SurfControl family of Internet management products. It is presented today as being dedicated exclusively to Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). And the SurfWatch Web site does not refer to PICS anymore. What has really occurred is thus not so clear.
Fourthly, one (national) Self-Rating (RSACi) was folded into an international system (ICRA). This seems to become more and more important.

Moreover, two other PICS Third-Party Rating Services are analysed in this current survey: ESRBi and SafetyOnline. (Both were already in existence in 1999 but were not included in our previous survey.)

Among the seven PICS rating services Web sites available, ICRA’s seems to be the most dynamic and active. And ICRA system is the only one currently trying to tackle the challenge of the cultural diversity. The others are written only in English except for SafetyOnline which is only in Japanese.

One conclusion we can draw of our current survey is that 3/4 of the current self ratings services have been developed by organisations or individuals with a non-profit goal. But there is no doubt that beyond some so-called ‘non-profit organisations’, as it is the case for ICRA, the economic and financial considerations involved are both enormous and world-wide. Moreover, filtering criteria have been defined by a non profit body for two current third party ratings services and by an Advisory Committee for the last one which has a commercial goal.

Which filtering services can use the current PICS ratings? We have found only 28 (of 146) filtering tools (suggested by GetNetWise) which are PICS compliant.

The number of PICS rated sites is a very relevant parameter to evaluate the efficiency of PICS based filtering techniques. Currently, the number of PICS rated sites still seems to be very low when compared to the total of existing Web sites. They are very far from reaching the critical mass needed to have efficient PICS based filtering techniques. But this situation could improve notably due to increased public support and incentives and due to technical progresses (such as the planned ‘robotic third party labelling’).

We think that the filtering techniques can provide a useful help for parents but are only one part of a whole set of elements which have to be implemented in the framework of the so-called Internet “co-regulation” (see d’Udekem-Gevers § Poullet, 2001). We underline that the market alone is unable to answer the need for a variety of European user opinions and cultures.

It is certainly worth providing parents with PICS based techniques. How to reach the critical mass of rated sites? We think that it would be contrary to the freedom of expression that the state impose a label on each Web site. But the public authorities can provide support and incentives to rate Web sites. Moreover, one way to reach a critical mass of PICS rated sites more easily is to concentrate the efforts on a few rating services or perhaps even on a single one.

Since 1998-99, several PICS rating services have disappeared and several are not very active. But only one, ICRA system shows a very positive evolution. It has received the support of the EU authorities and of the Council of Europe. It is the only one to try to tackle the challenge of cultural diversity. Moreover, because of its international nature, the ICRA system could be the focus of concentrated efforts and so perhaps more easily reach a critical mass of PICS labelled sites. Will the (financial) support of the industries which are behind the ICRA ‘non-profit’ association and the support of some authorities be enough to have this system and, finally, PICS also succeed?

REFERENCES

d’Udekem-Gevers, M., 1999, The Internet Filtering Criteria : a Survey Raising Ethical Issues Proceedings of the 4th ETHICOMP – International Conference on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Information and Communication Technologies, (ETHICOMP99, Look to the future of the Information society, 6 to 8 October 1999, Rome), Luiss CeRSIL, ISBN 88-900396-0-4.

d’Udekem-Gevers, M. & Poullet, Y, 2001, Concerns from a European User Empowerment Perspective in Internet Content Regulation, Communications & Stratégies issue 43, 3rd quarter 2001, pp. 143-190.

1. This paper was carried out within the framework of the Internet Action Plan 3W3S (World Wide Web Safe Surfing Service) funded, in part, by the European Community under the contract IAP PROJECT 26653-3W3S.

2. It has been developed since summer 1995.

AUTHOR

Cristina Caramelo Gomes (Portugal)

ABSTRACT

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Then are dreamt of in your philosophy” William Shakespeare 1564-1616: Hamlet (1601)

INTRODUCTION

James Rachels argues, in Elements of Moral Philosophy, that there is a core set of values that are common to all societies and are necessary for it to exist. The values Rachels found in common were the duty of care to the children, the appreciation of truth and the interdiction of murder. This was probably true in what we may call the traditional or classical forms of society. Remains to be seen if that is the case in the Information Society where, in facto, it seems that moral relativism found its way. There are two ways that we can approach morality: as de facto morality or as ideal morality. De facto morality concerns they way people in fact behave and involves the moral principles that are actually in place in a given culture. By contrast, ideal morality concerns the way people should behave, irrespective of their actual behaviour.

The ideal morality may be founded within two main approaches: the ethics and the aesthetics and, as Kant demonstrated, the later may be the reason why some principles are included in the first. This is probably the truest idea about the de facto morality in the last century and, truly, in the first years of the present: the culture and morality since the industrial revolution are essentially consumerist and consumerism is dictated by aesthetic reasons and principles. Aesthetic principles are not ethical principles (though in same cases may influence them). They are essentially connected to the way people appear in society and the way other people judge their behaviour. The de facto morality is essentially based in aesthetic principles. Either way, morality is the boundary people set to their one behaviour.

The Information Society and its major tool, the Internet, ground these remarks. In the first place, the Internet is a consumer oasis. In the second place, the Internet is a place of complete freedom of expression, a place where people express themselves with no limits whatsoever, except for the ones that one imposes himself. What use people make of it! … Child abuse, nazism, fascism, racism, satanic rites: Internet may be (is) home for all sort of perverted, twisted and evil personality. And the number of people anonymously showing themselves there is growing and, frightening as it may seem, that is the mirror of the world population and mankind in the present century. When no ethic morality constrains the behaviour and no aesthetic considerations arise, the human being unlashes his real self.

There is also the other face of the coin. Many people are reacting to this complete absence of moral and ethical values, searching for some light within the darkness. Those people are the ones that give reason to Jung, when he said that the 21st century would be the century of spirituality or wont be at all.

AIMS and OBJECTIVES

Ethic and aesthetic are issues which have been discussed from the antiquity by different philosophers. Aristotle considered that ethic was the mean to achieve virtue and justice. Kant considered aesthetic connected with the beauty, the taste, the judgement and the moral. The human behaviour is always tackled by one or both concepts.

The new information and communication technologies allow the user to be anonymous. This allows the freedom to pronounce his/her convictions with no fear of retaliation and without cultural or aesthetic constrains. The constraints left are the ethic.

According to these statements it seems crucial to realise that the society as we know until now has been regulated fundamentally by aesthetical behaves, people act as the society expects, to avoid social exclusion.

ICT can promote new forms of communication and social interaction. The new hypothesis endorsed by ICT provide evidence that Ethic is a major issue which should be discussed and be part as a principle of the homo-informaticus.

METHODOLOGY

An integrated research methodology is important in this type of investigation. Qualitative methods will be crucial to understand the main issues where the society has been establish along history. It is important also to identify the new hypothesis opened by the new technologies and the personality of their user. It is fundamental to identify the history definitions of these subjects and see how these definitions can be understood and validated in the contemporary society.

The list below describes the research methodology being used in this study:

• Literature review of all relevant material – IT and ICT, New ways of working, human being evolution, history of philosophy – using text books, research papers and mainly the world-wide-web.
• Interviews to survey the practice of ethic or aesthetic behaviour.
• Produce written account of the findings of the research.

REFERENCES

Fieser, J. and Dowden, B. (ed.), (2001) “Moral Relativism”, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy [Internet]. Available from: < http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/m/m-relati.htm Fieser, J. and Dowden, B. (ed.), (2001) "Aristotle (384-322 BCE.) Overview." The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy [Internet]. Available from: < http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aristotl.htm#Ethics Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (2001) "David Hume", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Internet]. Available from: < http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/hume/ Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (2001) "Friedrich Nietzsche", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Internet]. Available from: < http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/nietzsche/ Parliament of the World's Religions (1993) Declaration Toward a Global Ethic. [Internet]. Available from: < http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/stiftung-weltethos/dat_eng/st_3_e.htm Leddy, T. "Kant's Aesthetics - Tattoos, Architecture, and Gender-Bending" in Review of the International Yearbook of Aesthetics. [Internet]. Available from: < http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/leddy.html Aristotle (350 B. C. E.) Nicomachean Ethics. [Internet]. Available from: < http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/categories.html

AUTHOR

Beata Krawczyk – Brylka (Poland)

ABSTRACT

Social skills can be defined as the different competencies deal with person’s ability of coping with different types of social situations, following with our social experiences. Application of Internet in interpersonal communication process adds the new important elements of these experiences and it probably changes users’ social skills. Understanding of existing relationships allows to create new quality of virtual classes or organisations. The wide knowledge about nowadays people’s social behaviour is necessary to make the distance learning students and teachers friendly, to use human resources systems effectively or to support electronic commerce satisfactorily for producers and clients.

To explore the subject several experiments were prepared. An amount of students of different faculties are going to be asked about their social skills and tested in some negotiation situations in order to check their subjective and the objective assessment of their interpersonal skills. The main factors precisely controlled in these experiments will be: the gender, students’ involvement in Internet activities and its reasons, students’ social and communication competencies in both: real and Internet environment.

The experiment consists of following parts:

1. A questionnaire asking students about amount of time they spend surfing the Internet, their reasons of using Internet, the most important Internet services they most often use.
2. Two psychological questionnaires exploring students’ social skills:
   • Questionnaire of Social Skills (by Anna Matczak) – testing social skills in three essential aspects here. The first one is Intimacy meaning the ability to develop close interpersonal relationship, to share private information and feelings with another person. The second one is Self-Presentation which is connected to your behaviour in formal situations and being an object of assessment of many people. The third factor is Assertiveness dealing with competence for reaching your own aims by influencing on other persons. All of them relate to different roles each person play in her or his life. The last two ones are especially important for achieving personal job successes.
   • The Communication Activity Scale (by Zbigniew Necki) -testing many communication habits (like reach non-verbal behaviours, telling the truth, refusing, breaking in on conversation or intently hearing) that determinate the effects of all interpersonal based situations.
3. A questionnaire showing students’ opinions about importance of some factors involved in the psychological tests cited above in some situations in real life and during Internet using.
4. A set of some negotiation situations where tested students (in pairs or groups of three) will play roles to reach the well-defined result. Some pairs will negotiate face to face and some will fill the task on Internet (using a chat program). Their communication skills will be assessed for verification of existing relationship.

The experiment is aimed at answering three important questions:

1. Do Internet users note the differences between their social behaviour in real life and on Internet ?
2. What is the direction of changes in social competencies owing to frequent use of the Internet?
3. What are the most important interpersonal factors while negotiating face to face and via Internet? What is essential for high quality of both kinds of meeting?
4. What are the most important factors for modern education, business and private interpersonal relationship?

Answering these questions seems important because it can explain the new quality of negotiations that are basic for new age organisations. The paper will illustrate quantitative details of the experiment using tables and diagrams.

AUTHOR

Patrícia Martins and Filipe Cerqueira (Portugal)

ABSTRACT

The transformation of the organizations to a high rhythm demands new forms of performance in the organisational context where these are obliged to use more aggressive processes of implementation and maintenance. With the development of the new technologies, new possibilities open to the organizations, and employees on control methods and deviations of their functions. It is on these variables that a balance point has to be found where organizations and employees define the form of better executing the functions demanded for the organizations and exploitation that the new technology. “The secret of the success in the life is in being honest and just.” – Groucho Marx.

The Internet as a technology in constant development and as form by excellence of access to the information provides a virtual opening of easy access to it. The electronic mail is a complement of this opening and a form of contact between people and organizations. As the majority of organizations nowadays has access to these technologies, available for all more direct collaborators thus running the risk of loss of productivity if used this resource of abusive and less appropriate form to the interests for the organization. Therefore forms of management of availability of these resources had been created and the access to the same ones.

According to Michael Porter, an organization can be considered as a set of people whom if they organize to make to relieve its talents, specific differences and abilities. However the personal objectives to the edge of the process of the organization can provoke conflicts and a prejudice for the intention of the organization.

It is in this context that appears some questions related with the ethics of these procedures. What’s the limit that the organization should control and sanction the access of its collaborators to these resources? When presenting an inflexible position, will not have the organization to lose productivity when causes psychological issues on their employees, feeling they’re being surveilled and watched? Which is the barrier between the invasion of privacy and the correct management of the resources? What about the employees? Can it be consider an abuse in the access to the resources on the part of the collaborators of the organization exists? The use of available less proper information and great amount of information became the technological platform on which the Internet functions slowest?

This paper tries to focus both perspectives previously described incised mainly on the ethical and social implications in the management of the information in the point of view of the organizations, as well as the one involving the environment of the organization (customers, suppliers, employees, etc.).

Different forms of controlling the information exist nowadays. As the prohibition of the access to the information, and the monitoring of the contents acceded for posterior analysis. If the access ceasing of certain Internet contents, such as sites of pornography are ethically acceptable and even recommendable, instead people accessing sites without having conscience that are being monitorized, believing they are accessing freely and without any problem, but being registered all the sites where they entered, processed the information and downloads/uploads made, being later analyzed, will be consensual? Is this monitorizing ethical? Should the organization do this kind of surveillance on employees without their acknowledge?

Being the electronic mail one value for the organization, therefore allows a bigger rapidity in the communications between partners, greater easiness in document transference, greater communicational agility intra organization, among others benefits, many studies carried out in several countries demonstrate that most of the electronic mail that circulates in the net, has personal contents and amusement, do not refer labour contents.

With the great proliferation of this type of e-mails the system is overloaded and less efficient that effectively in which it is destined. Can we measure the amount of harmful of the technological resources wasted to the normal performance of the organization and for its productivity, arising itself in this way an ethical question of the employee with the organization. On the other hand, the use of abusive of the resources of the organization in this aspect will be condemnable, if not to intervene with the productivity of the employee?

These among others ethical questions are arisen constantly in the current times, as the technology allows each time a new and better form of access the information and control of it. The impact of this technological advance will revolutionize the relation employee/organization constantly.

AUTHOR

Anton Vedder (Netherlands)

ABSTRACT

The Internet is quickly becoming one of the most consulted sources of information about diseases and medical treatment. Important characteristics of the Internet are the easy accessibility of the medium for people who look for information and for people who provide information. One can easily seek and find an abundance of information through the Internet. It is also almost equally easy to diffuse information through the Internet. Because of both the ease with which the information is accessible and the ease with which information can be dispersed, it is also relatively easy to disperse incorrect information, or to diffuse manipulated information, or to manipulate the presentation of, in other respects, correct information, intentionally or unintentionally. Conversely, the seeker of information can relatively easily be misled, misinformed, or be tempted to misinterpret information that, in other respects, is correct. Because medical information can be the basis of important decisions and actions regarding health and life, the phenomenon calls for critical ethical assessment.

From a moral point of view, the situation as described gives rise to three main questions:

• How should this situation be evaluated in moral terms from a general point of view? (Is it at all bad that medical information on the Internet is not always reliable? In what way could answers to this question in any respect amount to collective actions aimed at warranting or enhancing reliability of medical information on the Internet? Is it not, for instance, the responsibility of the users of the information to check its reliability?)
• What can or should be done eventually in order to warrant the reliability of medical information on the Internet?
• Who or what institution can be considered to be responsible for guaranteeing the reliability of medical information on the net?

In this paper, I deal with some preliminaries to these questions. Central to it is the question whether the reliability of medical information on the Internet is really a matter of concern to people. I will, first, give a critical overview of previous research on this topic. The main part of the paper, however, will be dedicated to the results of an enquiry (through in-depth interviews held in the spring and early summer of 2002) among a group of patients/consumers, physicians and content providers in the Netherlands in order to investigate what people actually think about the problems indicated. The first results of that inquiry will be published in this paper. (The inquiry is carried out as part of a research project of Tilburg University and the University of Maryland financially supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). The paper will focus onthe respondents’ views on the reliability of information on the Internet when compared to other media, the factors that cause the (un-)reliability, the ways in which they assess the reliability of information, experiences of possibly negative consequences of (un-)reliable information on the Internet, possible remedies, and the possibly arising conflicts between these solutions and commonly accepted principles of freedom of speech, privacy, tolerance, and the informational freedoms. Among the respondents will be also content providers and general practitioners. The former are included in order to see whether there is an awareness of the possible problems. The latter are included in order to see whether and how they are confronted with patients who obtain information from the Internet, and what influence this has on the doctor-patient relationship.

With the results of the inquiry, I will be in a better position to measure the extent and seriousness of the problems relating to the reliability of medical information on the Internet. Furthermore, I will use the results to point out the different ways in which people assess the reliability of information from traditional media and from the Internet. Especially, I will clarify what I have elsewhere called secondary epistemic criteria and culturally embedded credibility conferring systems.

(Please, note that the term medical information is used here to refer to medical information in databases on sites of the World Wide Web that can be consulted by patients and consumers or, simply, the general public. Excluded are: (information through) newsgroups and email-distribution lists aiming at the communication to or among patients, electronically enhanced transactions for ordering and selling and buying products, making appointments etc., and online consulting of cyberdoctors or traditional health care professionals. Furthermore, sites (predominantly) aiming at obtaining information from the public, e.g., for purposes of trials and monitoring, and at telemedicine are excluded.)