Streams of two segments from the NPR show On the Media:
There’s a name for how cruel people can get given a little anonymity on the internet. It’s called “online disinhibition effect” and the resulting venom can ruin your day or worse, destroy your good name.
The basic architecture of the Internet hasn’t changed since it was conceived 40 years ago. But what was once the playground of wonks is now the main staging area for the global economy and open to an array of security vulnerabilities.
The tool used to commit a crime might amplify harm and justify more severe punishment but it doesn’t change the nature of the crime.
A judge dropped the “cyberbullying” conviction against the woman who allegedly contributed to the suicide of a 13 year old girl.
The judge found the particular law she was prosecuted under, “illegally accessing a computer”, was unconstitutionally vague and could be applied to anyone who violated a social network’s terms and conditions.
The defendant says she never should have been prosecuted.
Here’s what she was accused of doing:
Prosecutors said Drew sought to humiliate Megan by helping create a fictitious teenage boy on the social networking site and by sending flirtatious messages to the girl in his name. The fake boy then dumped Megan in a message, saying the world would be better without her.
She hanged herself a short time later, in October 2006, in the St. Louis suburb of Dardenne Prairie, Mo.
If an adult, disguises him or herself as a teen and uses that false identity to approach a thirteen year old child for the purpose of manipulating and harming that child, isn’t that a crime?
If the direct result of those actions is mental anguish for that child — if the indirect result is the death of that child, isn’t that a crime?
If not, we need to reform our existing laws not distract ourselves coining a new “cybercrime” to describe people who happen to do this using MySpace.
Defendant Says Dismissal of MySpace Hoax Case Linked to Suicide Was ‘‘Proper’ – washingtonpost.com http://bit.ly/lyAoa
There’s a movement among the students of the MBA program of Harvard Business School for an MBA Oath of ethical conduct. Read the oath here.
From a June 4th article in the Economist:
The student oath is part of a larger effort to turn management from a trade into a profession…
This is the exact debate going on in Software Development — emerging profession or craft?
One of the two main criticisms of the oath and of the whole idea of turning management into a profession, particularly in business-school faculties, is that it is either unnecessary or actively harmful… (by) promising to “safeguard the interests” of colleagues, customers, and society, are the future captains of industry simply short-changing their shareholders?
Defenders of the oath reply that the goal of maximising shareholder value has become a justification for short-termism and, in particular, rapid personal enrichment. They are concerned about managers doing things that drive up the share price quickly at the expense of a firm’s lasting health.
The second complaint is that the oath’s fine words are toothless.
Even these cheerleaders admit there are differences between practising management and, say, medicine. They concede that no self-regulating professional body for managers could possibly monopolise entry to the profession
We can debate that a practice has ethical consequences, i.e. that it has a larger array of stakeholders who can be harmed or benefited by the daily decisions of practitioners – without calling for accreditation, lincensing, certification, standards bodies, and regulation.
Developers should consider end users, society and our common reputation even as managers consider long-term investors, employees, their industry and the larger economy.
Name a widespread activity that isn’t abetted/enabled by software systems. Even the debate over an MBA Oath:
As for punishing unprofessional behaviour, Mr Khurana (Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School) is inspired by the internet rather than by a closed council of grandees. From open-source software to eBay and Wikipedia, new systems of self-regulation are emerging based on openness, constant feedback and the wisdom of crowds. These could be adapted, he thinks, to provide effective scrutiny of managers.
If anything about this strikes you as not true, I’d love to hear why.