Transcript Research Activities - University of Hull

Raphael Cohen-Almagor
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Lecture Plan
 Section I -- Introduction
 Section II -- moral and social responsibility.
 Section III -- responsibility of Net agents.
 Section IV -- responsibilities of Internet providers and
web-hosting companies.
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Introduction
 The Internet is a macro system of interconnected
private and public spheres: household, literary,
military, academic, business and government
networks.
 The mix of open standards, diverse networks, and the
growing ubiquity of digital devices makes the Internet
a revolutionary force that undermines traditional
media and challenges existing regulatory institutions
based on national boundaries.
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The Internet
The Internet contains the best products of humanity 
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Ufff…
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Worse of Humanity
Unfortunately, the Internet also contains the worse
products of humanity:
 Child Pornography, Pedophilia
 Terror
 Racism, Hate speech and Holocaust denial
 Crime-facilitating speech
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Relevant Factors
 History
 Culture
 Morality
 Law
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The Object of this Paper
 The object of this Paper is to discuss moral and social
responsibility of people who utilize the Internet for
their own purposes.
 The Paper addresses the ethical problems rooted in
technology in response to potential risks on the
Internet. The Internet is not the problem. The
problem arises where it is utilized to undermine our
well-being as autonomous beings living in free
societies.
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Moral and Social Responsibility
 Legal responsibility refers to addressing the issue by
agencies of state power. In moral responsibility, the
personal responsibility of the agent to conscience is at
issue, with appeals to moral consideration. Social
responsibility relates to the societal implications of a
given conduct.
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Aristotle
 Only a certain kind of agent qualifies as a moral agent and
is thus properly subject to ascriptions of responsibility,
namely, one who possess a capacity for decision.
 Choice is important, to have desirable ends and relevant
means to pursue the end.
 By moral responsibility it is meant that autonomous agents
have the understanding of the options before them, have
access to evidence required for making judgments about
the benefits and hazards of each option, and able to weigh
the relative value of the consequences of their choice.
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William J. FitzPatrick
 all cases of moral responsibility for bad actions must
involve a strong form of akrasia, i.e. acting against
one’s better judgment. If an agent does something bad,
either she does so in full knowledge that she should
not be doing it, which is clear-eyed akrasia, or she is
acting from ignorance. In the former cases she will be
held responsible. In the latter case whether she is
responsible or not will depend on whether or not her
ignorance is culpable.
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Online/Offline
 The Internet has a dis-inhibition effect.
 The freedom allows language one would dread to use
in real life, words one need not abide by, imagination
that trumps conventional norms and standards.
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Agent's Responsibility
 An agent will be held blameworthy for her bad
conduct when she clearly aims at doing bad or when
she can be held culpable for her ignorance in making
bad choices.
 As Aristotle said, an autonomous agent is aware of
what she was doing.
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Power of Words
 Words can wound. Words can hurt. Words can move
people to action. The anonymity of the Internet is
most convenient for spreading unfounded allegations,
for backstabbing, for malicious rumours, for pushing
people to conduct harmful actions to others as well as
to themselves.
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Suicide
 suicide pills and "exit bags”
 "save the planet, kill yourself”
 Notwithstanding the extent of the agents' liberalism,
they should consider the prudence of such postings
given the vulnerability of the people that such sites
might attract.
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The Megan Meier Affair
 “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.”
 Lori Drew and her co-conspirators are blameworthy
and morally culpable for their involvement in this
tragedy, for playing on Megan’s emotions in a crude
and cynical way without thinking which way this game
might lead. They were fully aware of what they were
doing. No one coerced them to take this crude path.
They chose it freely, exhibiting a strong form of cleareyed akrasia, acting against their adult better
judgment.
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The Megan Meier Affair
 parental responsibility
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Responsibility of Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) and Web Hosting Services
 Those who object the idea of holding ISPs responsible for
content on their servers argue that the Internet is like a
telephone carrier.
 But the Internet is different from the phone in some critical
technological, organizational and geographical ways that
make the comparison unconvincing. Let me uncover some
of the major differences.
 Better analogies than the Internet and a phone carrier are
those between the Internet and a large first and second
hand bookstore, or between the Internet and a large
library.
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Cryptome.com
 Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that
are prohibited by governments worldwide, in
particular material on freedom of expression, privacy,
cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security,
intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and
classified documents
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US Nuclear Weapons Storage
Kwajalein, Marshall Islands
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ISPs and web-hosting rules and regulations
 ISPs and web-hosting companies have the right and
the duty to report potentially criminal activities to the
appropriate law enforcement agency.
 ISPs may prohibit posting legally seditious or offensive
content.
 What a legitimate realm includes may vary from one
ISP to another.
 child pornography.
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Should ISPs and host companies be
proactive?
 They are obviously reluctant for very practical reason –
the costs involved in employing professional staff who
will scrutinize the information.
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Rowdiness
 The Red Light District in Amsterdam.
 Likewise, there are rowdy websites entertained by
rowdy ISPs.
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Restricted areas
 In many research libraries, books known to be
problematic for their content are kept in designated
area, under the open eye of an experienced librarian.
 Similar arrangement can be made on the Net. Some
problematic material will have restricted access and
people will have to sign up for reading it, providing
some details about their identity and why they wish to
read this particular piece of information.
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VampireFreaks.com
 It is possible to monitor traffic on large websites. It is a
question of will and of priorities in allocating
resources for monitoring.
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Child Pornography
 The ISP can detect criminal behavior by analyzing
patterns of use, much as a bank can detect credit card
theft by monitoring each customer's pattern of
purchases.
 It is difficult to understand why newsgroups which are
known to carry child pornography are allowed to
survive, let alone made available to ISP subscribers.
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Child Pornography
 In February 2009, Facebook removed more than 5,500
accounts of convicted sex offenders. This came after
Myspace announcement that it removed more than 90,000
accounts of sex offenders.
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Suicide
 In mid-2004, Internet Service Providers, police,
academics and NGOs in Japan discussed what actions
should be taken regarding suicide chatrooms and
prevention of online suicide pacts.
 ISPs should continue to develop and embrace
initiatives designed to protect users, especially
children. These include technological tools as well as
educational campaigns.
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Hate
 Anti-Defamation league (ADL).
 The YouTube Abuse & Safety Center.
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Business aspects
 80% of the British public believes that large companies
have a moral duty to society.
 Four forms of Corporate social responsibility .
 Economic concerns.
 Naming and shaming Internet Service Providers.
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Conclusion
 The Internet does not have any borders but it does
have limits.
 Aristotle’s Rule of the Golden Mean.
 ISPs should scrutinize their servers.
 Readers should use tip lines and alert the authorities
upon encountering dangerous, anti-social content.
 Global cooperation.
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From
Alberto Ríos/In Us This Day
Sometimes, we are brutal and dark green.
We are the fishhook thorns on the wild cactus.
But sometimes as well, we are the sky itself,
That great blue living room filled with endless space
In every direction there is to see.
We are,
As things turn out, the answer and the problem both.
Every day we must choose our suit of clothes.
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On the occasion of the Inauguration of Janet Napolitano
Governor of the State of Arizona
January 2003
We are in a border time,
The border between countries, between centuries,
The border between yesterday and tomorrow,
What we have been and what we are going to be.
We are a state of many languages, many cultures.
We must translate this into a state with many ideas.
Let us choose the best from this treasury of dreams.
Let us create a future
We would want to speak in any language.
We should not try to predict the future—
Instead, let us make it, and let us make it our own.
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Thank you
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