Article: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/09/italy.euthanasia/index.html

The debate on Euthanasia is definitely not new. It is interesting in this case where Euthanasia is illegal in Italy, but patients have the right to refuse treatment.

It is on that basis that Englaro argued his daughter should be allowed to die, because some time before her accident she had expressed the wish not to be kept alive while in a coma -- indirectly refusing treatment. I think this case proves to be problematic because Englaro is speaking on behalf of his daughter and it is based on his own account. In cases where the patient is in coma or in a position whereby he/she is unable to make his/her own decision, is it ethical for their next-of-kin to decide it for them? Is it right for them to decide whether the 'quality' of life is worth living or not? What about the right of the patient to live?

It brings us to the question of ethics at many levels. As quoted in the article '"It is the duty of the doctors, of society, and of the political institutions to administer her essential foods to keep her alive. No one has the right to take her life away from her," According to the deontological theory, it would be the duty of the state and doctors to keep her alive, so where would this put the ethics of doctors and the state? Would there by possible abuse if euthanasia is to be allowed? Who has the right to decide the life or death of another person, and on what grounds?

This case study is dated back at 2001, when a pro-democracy activist in China was put on trial in western China for publishing political materials on the Web. Huang Qi was arrested after publishing articles commemorating the 1989 protests in Tiananmen square on his Web site, 6-4tianwang.com. He also uploaded information on his site about the democracy movement, Falun Gong and the independence movement in the northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang. In fact, Huang Qi remains in detention (as reported by a news article in Feb2009). This brings us to the question of whether it is ethical for the State to curtail an individual's rights to freedom of expression. After all, he was merely publishing articles about an event that has already happened, and he should have the right to upload whatever he feels on his blog. There is also an issue of the violation of human rights as he has been detained for almost ten years and some have reported that he was beaten while in custody. Does the state have the right to intervene and lock the man up for close to a decade over a political blog post? Does the state have the right to stifle any opposing viewpoints or dissent on the internet? Should political views be allowed to aired or should they be moderated for the well-being of the society? After all, dissenting views could lead to bloody events in conflicts between opposing groups and the state. How much should the government intervene in the regulation of the internet? Where is the line to be drawn in terms of freedom of expression?

Link: http://news.cnet.com/Judges-protest-workplace-surveillance/2100-1023_3-271457.html

Summary:

A panel of influential judges are taking a closer look at the issue of electronic monitoring at the workplace during the U.S Judicial Conference meeting next month. While it may not translate into any tangible results soon, it does reflect a change in attitudes with regards to monitoring.

Until now, most cases involving employee surveillance have been decided in favor of the employer. The reasoning in such cases primarily has been that the employer owns the equipment the employee is working on and therefore has a right to track its use.

In fact, employers don't even have to tell employees that they're being watched. A bill introduced in Congress last year would have required employers to at least notify workers they're being watched, but, like most privacy-friendly legislation, it never made any headway. California Governor Gray Davis recently vetoed a similar bill.

Ethical Question:

Is it ethical for companies to keep watch over their employees without informing them or obtaining consent? Even if they do inform their employees, does that give them the right to put their employees under electronic surveillance? How much of personal space should be given to employees on their computers?

Problem:

On one hand, employers do have the right to know if their employees are doing their jobs. However would such electronic monitoring be an outrageous invasion of privacy? Can there by privacy when one is working on a computer that belongs to a company? Can employees fire their employees based on discovering songs and personal files on work computers?

I think the question was phrased with the assumption that online pornography is bad in the first place. However, is pornography really bad? Has research accurately shown that pornography will lead to a whole long list of anti-social behaviour? Also, we can see from this case with online cartoons, about the ambiguous definition of pornography. So what is pornography to me, may not be to you, and hence how will we be able to determine if pornography is good or bad?


Chen Guo Lim wrote:
> I think when curiosity is concerned, there may still be a certain level of gratification that is involved.
> Say a young boy growing and begins to take notice of his genitals and sexuality, he is now curious with what his body can do, and so he turns to pornography.
>
> Is this level of gratification accceptable? He is satisfying his lust (pun intended) for information at expense of the "privacy" others, in this case the actors in the pornography.
>
> Of course one may argue that the actors did it willingly, but how do we know if this willingness stamps out from other factors such as financial lure, which ultimately objectifies, perhaps demean the human body?
>
> Going a little further, the negativity, or positivity for that matter, of pornography, is a very contextually specific issue. Given negative and positive, we are assuming that we can attach a (numerical) value to the elements, say the human body.
>
> But these values are totally arbitrary and meaningless. Therefore, the argue that pornography is meaningless is also futile, as now the morality behind pornography has been neutralised by the removal of value attached to the Human body.

Article: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/30/china.green.dam/index.html

Summary:

China has passed a mandate requiring all personal computers sold in the country to be accompanied by a controversial content-filtering application, The Chinese government has said the software is chiefly a way for parents to protect children from pornography. But a wide range of outside parties have expressed concern about the software.

Firstly, the software has many security vulnerabilities as well as many problems. For instance, Hal Roberts, a Harvard University researcher, showed how the program could freeze a browser every time the user types the letter F into the location bar. In his demonstration posted on YouTube, this happened after the letter became associated via the browser's auto-complete list with the Web site falundafa.org, which is related to Falun Gong, the religious sect banned in China.

Through Green Dam's auto-update feature, authorities can keep PCs current on which content is forbidden, such as politics and pornography. Its main features are keyword and URL-based filtering, image recognition, and contextual phrase recognition, all of which have been used before by other filtering programs.

The Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium focused on censorship and surveillance, reported that it was "unprecedented" for a government to demand, at an individual level, nationwide use of a particular company's software.

Concern about the software goes beyond censorship watchdogs. PC makers are being ordered to include software that could affect the quality of their products

Ethical issues and problems:

The filter poses ethical issues in terms of security, privacy, system reliability, the free flow of information and user choice. By implementing the compulsory filter, the state can then decide what is good or bad for its citizen.

While this filter is implemented under the guise of 'protecting the young from pornography', one must ask who really benefits from this software? What is the true intent of the software? On its black list are 2000 words related to pornography and 6000 other types of politically sensitive key words like 'Falun Gong'. In addition, Green Dam is produced by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., which is said to have ties to China's military and security ministry.

Is this software simply another move to strengthen the government's control and censorhip of the media and to maintain its hegemony?

Also, as mentioned in other news articles, the extent to which the software's can block harmful content is highly questionable. While Green Dam considered a cartoon of a cat in blue clothes safe, pictures of Garfield the Cat were sometimes blocked by the software because it is programmed to categorize images with large areas of "yellow" as pornographic.

Who has the right to decide the criteria to filter out the websites?

Case study:

Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/06/08/pirate.party.eu.win/index.html

Summary:

A Swedish political party campaigning the legalizing of file-sharing on the Internet won a seat (out of 18)in the European parliament. The single-issue party was founded in 2006 through anger in Sweden at controversial laws that criminalize file-sharing. The Pirate Party's aims to include free file-sharing, abolishing the patent system in Europe, reform of copyright law and outlawing digital rights management, which inhibits the ability to copy computer files.

Ethical issues:

Is it ethical to use someone else's work with/without someone else's permission? How much copying should be allowed before it becomes 'unethical'? Would it be ethical to share coputer files and not value the right of the creator? At the same time, would it be unethical to share with your friends, for example, a song from a CD that you have just purchased? Who has the right to decide if intellectual property should be protected and to what extent it should be protected?


Problems:

Should there be a change in the Sweden laws in the issue intellectual property (copyright, patents, digital rights), what would be the implications of it internationally? How can international bodies (eg WIPO) reconcile the differences in the laws? What kind of implications would it have on creators and consumers?

The case study can be found here:

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/06/report-private-educational-provider-threatens-online-forum-with-defamation/

Summary:

Private educational provider (Harriet Educational group) sues online forum (SGForum) for defamation based on their online forum postings. Harriet Educational group makes two demands. It demands that the website pays for the damages to reputations as well as disclose full names and particulars of the people who made the comments in the forum.

The thing is that the educational group is not one that is without controversy. It seems to have a dubious background with numerous complaints about the school that it has used false testimonials to entice them to fork out money to be a licensed agent of the school. Also, the website appears to be agreeing with the accusations, with the usage of bad english. Hence, the accusations or comments made in the forum was probably not groundless.


Ethical Question:

Was it wrong for users of SGforum to share their honest views and opinions about Harriet Educational Group? After all, they had grounds to doubt the school's credibility given the impression given from their online website and they should have the free of speech to voice their concerns and opinions in the forum.

Problem:

Even if it were a case of defamation, should SGForum bear the responsibilities of users? Would it be ethical for SGForums to also fully disclose the names of the users in such events? Does Harriet Educational Group have the right to make such demands from SGForum?