Etika informasi adalah bidang yang mengivestigasi masalah etika yang timbul dari pengembangan dan penerapan teknologi informasi. Floridi menjelaskan teori Information Ethics sebagai 'macroethics' (firman-Nya), mirip dengan etika moralitas, deontologism, konsekuensialisme dan kontractualism yang dimaksudkan untuk dapat diterapkan pada semua situasi etis.
Di sisi lain, IE berbeda dari teori-teori tradisional karena IE tidak dimaksudkan untuk menggantikan mereka, melainkan untuk melengkapi mereka dengan pertimbangan etis yang lebih baik, meskipun terkadang dapat menggantikan etika tradisional sebelumnya.
Komponen fundamental dari Etika Informasi adalah setiap entitas yang ada di alam semesta, bila dilihat dari 'tingkat abstraksi' tertentu, dapat ditafsirkan sebagai 'objek informasi' dengan struktur data karakteristik yang merupakan sifatnya dan untuk alasan ini, alam semesta dapat dianggap sebagai keseluruhan yang disebut
'InfoSphere'.
Kategori etika informasi menurut PAPA model adalah:
Privacy
The ethical issue of privacy in the Information Age involves the ability of others to access personal information from computer files and databases. Data that we readily provide to creditors, health providers, financial institutions, and others may be accessed or used for purposes other than the purposes for which we provided the information. For example, an individual fills out a warranty registration card online, and the company providing the warranty for its product uses that information to conduct their own market research. Most of us would readily accept that use as being beneficial to product owners since it permits the company to determine its markets and pricing more effectively.
However, if the company sold our warranty data (name, address, income range, etc.) to another company so that the second company could send us advertising material or use our data in a telemarketing campaign, it could be perceived as unethical, provided the first company did not inform us of the possibility that it might sell our data to a third party.
Accuracy
How accurate is accurately enough? Who is responsible for accuracy? Who will be held accountable for accuracy? A simple mistake, whether in posting a grade or updating the price of a stock or a credit report, can have serious consequences. Investment and lending decisions rely on the accuracy of the data that is input to the decision support system or other application being used, as well as on the accuracy of the programs themselves. As we increasingly depend on information systems, it is important that the programs in these systems are error-free, that the data the systems use is accurate and up to date, and that all parts of the system work together to produce accurate, error-free outputs.
Property
The key issue of property is copyright. Most software and computer files are protected by copyright laws, regardless of the country of origin. Violating copyright is theft—plain and simple. The author of the software or computer file is robbed of either money (their portion of another sale) or credit for the creation of the software or file. In either case, the author is viewed as being diminished by the violation of copyright.
Research shows that many individuals do not understand what clearly violates copyright. For instance, a student loans another student a CD-ROM containing software that cost $100. The second student installs the software on his computer to see if he likes it and would like to purchase it. This act is a violation of copyright. Even if the student then uninstalls the software after the test, it is still considered copyright violation. Violation of software property rights is also known as piracy. It has been estimated that if the computing public did not illegally duplicate and use widely available software like Microsoft Office, such software would cost less than half of what it costs today. All of the research and development costs, along with advertising and other overhead costs, would have been spread among three or four times as many purchasers, resulting in a much lower cost of the individual software package.
Access
Ethical use of information includes the ability of all people to access information in the public domain. The purpose of public libraries is to provide the general public with access to information, primarily in written form. Public libraries provide equitable access, regardless of race, creed, age, gender, or income level; of course, an overriding assumption is that the general populace can read. Online information access is challenged even more than public libraries by the notion of universal access. First, individuals attempting to access and use online information must be educated enough to read, write, reason, and even calculate. In other words, they must have at least a minimal level of education; today, that minimum level is probably close to a high-school education to be able to fully understand the accessed content. Second, individuals attempting to access and use online information must have physical access to the technologies—hardware, software, databases, telecommunications—that are necessary to retrieve information. For many less-affluent individuals, particularly minority groups, this is a major expense—too expensive for many lower-income households, since they require centralized facilities, such as schools or libraries, to view online information via information technology. In sparsely populated areas like the NorthWest Territories and Nunavut, this is particularly a critical issue, as Internet access is scarce. Finally, the issue of property rights may restrict access to online information; unless individuals can pay to obtain the information, it may not be in the public domain.
It has been said that a society that does not provide universal access, including education and physical access, creates a society of Knows and Know-nots. Knows are a class that has access to knowledge and learning, while Know-nots are an underclass of less-educated, less-affluent people who have little access to information and who suffer a disadvantage in the modern workplace. Here in Canada, governments take this premise seriously. At both the federal and provincial levels, governments are issuing and funding mandates for universal access and training, primarily through high schools, so that the general populace will be computer literate and have universal access to the technology needed to gain access to online information.
Ethical Issues in Electronic Information Systems
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