Academic integrity violations on college campuses continue to be a significant concern that draws public attention. Even though AI has been the subject of numerous studies offering explanations and recommendations, academic dishonesty persists. Consequently, this has rekindled interest in understanding AI behavior and its influencers. This paper focuses on the AI violations of plagiarism and sharing homework for freshman business students, examining the factors that influence a student’s intention to plagiarize or share homework with others. Using a sample of more (...) than 1300 freshman business students over 2 years, we modeled intent to plagiarize and intent to share homework using factors in the Theory of Planned Behavior in addition to past violation behavior and moral obligation. Based on the results of this study, attitude, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, and in addition past behavior and moral obligation, were found to significantly influence an individual’s intention to violate academic integrity, explaining 33 and 35 % of the variance in intention to commit an AI violation for sharing homework and plagiarism, respectively. These results contribute to a better understanding of individuals’ motivations for plagiarizing and sharing homework, which is a necessary step toward reducing academic integrity violations. (shrink)

Doxing is the intentional public release onto the Internet of personal information about an individual by a third party, often with the intent to humiliate, threaten, intimidate, or punish the identified individual. In this paper I present a conceptual analysis of the practice of doxing and how it differs from other forms of privacy violation. I distinguish between three types of doxing: deanonymizing doxing, where personal information establishing the identity of a formerly anonymous individual is released; targeting doxing, that discloses (...) personal information that reveals specific details of an individual’s circumstances that are usually private, obscure, or obfuscated; and delegitimizing doxing, which reveals intimate personal information that damages the credibility of that individual. I also describe how doxing differs from blackmail and defamation. I argue that doxing may be justified in cases where it reveals wrongdoing, but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing. Revealing additional information, such as that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation, is unjustified. I illustrate my discussion with the examples of the alleged identification of the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, by Newsweek magazine, the identification of the notorious Reddit user Violentacrez by the blog Gawker, and the harassment of game developer Zoe Quinn in the ‘GamerGate’ Internet campaign. (shrink)

I suggest that the social justice issues raised by Internet regulation can be exposed and examined by using a methodology adapted from that described by John Rawls in 'A Theory of Justice'. Rawls' theory uses the hypothetical scenario of people deliberating about the justice of social institutions from the 'original position' as a method of removing bias in decision-making about justice. The original position imposes a 'veil of ignorance' that hides the particular circumstances of individuals from them so that they (...) will not be influenced by self-interest. I adapt Rawls' methodology by introducing an abstract description of information technology to those deliberating about justice from within the original position. This abstract description focuses on computing devices that users can use to access information and information networks that information devices use to communicate. The abstractness of this description prevents the particular characteristics of the Internet and the computing devices in use from influencing the decisions about the just use and regulation of information technology and networks. From this abstract position, the principles of justice that the participants accept for the rest of society will also apply to the computing devices people use to communicate, and to Internet regulation. (shrink)

Like the ownership of physical property, the issues computer software ownership raises can be understood as concerns over how various rights and duties over software are shared between owners and users. The powers of software owners are defined in software licenses, the legal agreements defining what users can and cannot do with a particular program. To help clarify how these licenses permit and restrict users’ actions, here I present a conceptual framework of software rights and duties that is inspired by (...) the terms of various proprietary, open source, and free software licenses. To clarify the relationships defined by these rights and duties, this framework distinguishes between software creators (the original developer), custodians (those who can control its use), and users (those who utilise the software). I define the various rights and duties that can be shared between these parties and how these rights and duties relate to each other. I conclude with a brief example of how this framework can be used by defining the concepts of free software and copyleft in terms of rights and duties. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to examine whether there are morally defensible reasons for using or operating websites that offer distributed denial-of-service attacks on a specified target to users for a price. Booters have been linked to some of the most powerful DDoS attacks in recent years. Design/methodology/approach The authors identify the various parties associated with booter websites and the means through which booters operate. Then, the authors present and evaluate the two arguments that they claim may be used to justify (...) operating and using booters: that they are a useful tool for testing the ability of networks and servers to handle heavy traffic, and that they may be used to perform DDoS attacks as a form of civil disobedience on the internet. Findings The authors argue that the characteristics of existing booters disqualify them from being morally justified as network stress testing tools or as a means of performing civil disobedience. The use of botnets that include systems without the permission of their owners undermines the legitimacy of both justifications. While a booter that does not use any third-party systems without permission might in principle be justified under certain conditions, the authors argue that it is unlikely that any existing booters meet these requirements. Practical/implications Law enforcement agencies may use the arguments presented here to justify shutting down the operation of booters, and so reduce the number of DDoS attacks on the internet. Originality/value The value of this work is in critically examining the potential justifications for using and operating booter websites and in further exploring the ethical aspects of using DDoS attacks as a form of civil disobedience. (shrink)

This paper describes how the ethical problems raised by scientific data obtained through harmful and immoral conduct may also emerge in cases where data is collected from the Internet. It describes the major arguments for and against using ill-gotten information in research, and shows how they may be applied to research that either collects information about the Internet itself or which uses data from questionable or unknown sources on the Internet. Three examples demonstrate how researchers address the ethical issues raised (...) by the sources of data that they use and how the existing arguments concerning the use of ill-gotten information apply to Internet research. The problems faced by researchers who collect or use data from the Internet are shown to be the same problems faced by researchers in other fields who may obtain or use ill-gotten information. (shrink)

Software ownership allows the owner to restrict the distribution of software and to prevent others from reading the software’s source code and building upon it. However, free software is released to users under software licenses that give them the right to read the source code, modify it, reuse it, and distribute the software to others. Proponents of free software such as Richard M. Stallman and Eben Moglen argue that the social disutility of software ownership is a sufficient justification for prohibiting (...) it. This social disutility includes the social instability of disregarding laws and agreements covering software use and distribution, inequality of software access, and the inability to help others by sharing software with them. Here I consider these and other social disutility claims against withholding specific software rights from users, in particular, the rights to read the source code, duplicate, distribute, modify, imitate, and reuse portions of the software within new programs. I find that generally while withholding these rights from software users does cause some degree of social disutility, only the rights to duplicate, modify and imitate cannot legitimately be denied to users on this basis. The social disutility of withholding the rights to distribute the software, read its source code and reuse portions of it in new programs is insufficient to prohibit software owners from denying them to users. A compromise between the software owner and user can minimise the social disutility of withholding these particular rights from users. However, the social disutility caused by software patents is sufficient for rejecting such patents as they restrict the methods of reducing social disutility possible with other forms of software ownership. (shrink)

Computational design uses artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise designs towards user-determined goals. When combined with 3D printing, it is possible to develop and construct physical products in a wide range of geometries and materials and encapsulating a range of functionality, with minimal input from human designers. One potential application is the development of bespoke surgical tools, whereby computational design optimises a tool’s morphology for a specific patient’s anatomy and the requirements of the surgical procedure to improve surgical outcomes. This emerging (...) application of AI and 3D printing provides an opportunity to examine whether new technologies affect the ethical responsibilities of those operating in high-consequence domains such as healthcare. This research draws on stakeholder interviews to identify how a range of different professions involved in the design, production, and adoption of computationally designed surgical tools, identify and attribute responsibility within the different stages of a computationally designed tool’s development and deployment. Those interviewed included surgeons and radiologists, fabricators experienced with 3D printing, computational designers, healthcare regulators, bioethicists, and patient advocates. Based on our findings, we identify additional responsibilities that surround the process of creating and using these tools. Additionally, the responsibilities of most professional stakeholders are not limited to individual stages of the tool design and deployment process, and the close collaboration between stakeholders at various stages of the process suggests that collective ethical responsibility may be appropriate in these cases. The role responsibilities of the stakeholders involved in developing the process to create computationally designed tools also change as the technology moves from research and development (R&D) to approved use. (shrink)

A stable democracy requires a shared identity and political culture. Its citizens need to identify as one common demos lest it fracture and balkanise into separate political communities. This in turn necessitates some common communication network for political messages to be transmitted, understood and evaluated by citizens. Hence, what demarcates one demos from another are the means of communication connecting the citizens of those demoi, allowing them to debate and persuade each other on the proper conduct of government and on (...) issues of common interest. For the ancient Athenians, their public sphere was the agora (marketplace); for the Federalists in the American colonies, the newspaper; for us today, it is the Internet. Until now, the physical nature of these communication networks has resulted in a trade-off between the reach of political messages (the numeric and geographic composition of the demos who receive political messages and may participate in the public sphere) and the ability to target the content of a message on that network towards individual citizens. One-to-one interpersonal conversation in the agora was highly targeted but could reach only as far as a voice could carry. The speakers and audience were well known to each other through personal interaction. As the printing press and later television allowed for greater and greater reach, the content of these messages became more generic as the speakers became more distant from their audience. The wider the audience grew, the less a message could be targeted at a particular audience segment without alienating others. (shrink)