Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A friend of mine is in a terrible automobile accident. While he recovers, he will need to
stay quiet for a month. I know he has no money to spend on music. In fact, people are
doing fund-raisers simply to help his family pay the medical bills. I don't have money to
contribute to a fund-raiser, but I think of another way I could help him out. I can give
my friend a copy of the CD. He will be grateful for having a diversion during his time of
bed rest.
What would be the consequences of my action? The benefit to my friend is at least
$15, the price of the CD. I will be very happy to have been able to do something that
pleased him so much. We assign the value $10 to that beneficial consequence. As far as I
can tell, there is no lost sale, because even if I do not give my friend a copy of the CD, he is
unlikely to purchase it. In fact, giving a copy of the CD to my friend may actually increase
the sales of the CD if my friend likes it and recommends it to other people who do have
money to spend on CDs. So there are no negative consequences to the record label and
may even be some positive consequences. We assign a value of $0 as the consequence to
the record label. I am not likely to be prosecuted for what I did. Therefore, there will
be no impact on the criminal justice system. No extra police detectives, prosecutors, or
judges will need to be hired as a result of my action. The calculated consequence of my
action on the legal system has a value of $0. Adding up all of the consequences, the total
is $25 worth of benefit. If I do not give my friend a copy of the CD (i.e., do nothing),
there are no consequences, so the total benefit is $0. Therefore, making a copy of the CD
and giving it to my hospitalized friend is the right thing to do.
There is nothing intrinsically immoral about copying a CD. However, our society has
chosen to enact laws that grant intellectual property rights to people who do creative
work and distribute it on CDs. From the perspective of social contract theory and
Kantianism, we have a prima facie obligation to obey the law and respect everyone's
property rights. From the viewpoint of rule utilitarianism, the beneficial consequences
of following the moral rule “Obey the law” greatly exceed the harmful consequences.
From the point of view of all of these theories, the law should be obeyed unless there is a
strong overriding moral obligation. Copying a disc to save a few dollars or help a friend
does not fall into that category.
From an act utilitarian viewpoint, it is possible to come up with a circumstance
where making a copy of a copyrighted CD is the right action. However, it would be
wrong to extrapolate from this particular case and conclude that an act utilitarian analy-
sis would always determine CD copying to be morally acceptable.
We live together in communities for our mutual benefit. Every society has guidelines
indicating what people are supposed to do in various circumstances. We call these guide-
lines morality. Ethics, also called moral philosophy, is a rational examination of people's
moral beliefs and behaviors. In this chapter we have considered a variety of ethical the-
ories, with the purpose of identifying those that will be of most use to us as we consider
