Ethics Paper

Group Name: Freaks & Geeks

Members:

1. Brendon Pond

2. Leah Bjornstad

3. Tim Wood

4. Maria Stapleford

Members Blogs:
Maria's: mstaple90.blogspot.com
Leah's: leah3bjorn.blogspot.com
Brendon's: brendonpond.blogspot.com
Tim's: teac259timsblog.blogspot.com

Ethics is a very important aspect when it comes to creating a piece of work. It is important that we use ethics regarding other people's work but also our own work. Our world today has become very lazy and we have developed an attitude that we don't want to wait for anything, or work hard for anything. We have been able to receive everything at our fingertips or with the click of a button. Unfortunately people think this way when they are working on a project. Using other people's work is unethical and disrespectful, but because it is at our fingertips it has become more common.
As a world we have grown tremendously with technology. We have gone above and beyond what people 50 years ago could hardly imagine. Online publishing is a great way to let one's work be known and seen, but there are also risks in publishing things online. Not everyone believes in using ethics when viewing and sharing work through the internet.
Plagiarism has become a huge problem and it has increased with the use of technology. Plagiarism is using another person's work or idea and claiming it as your own. We must be careful to research correctly and give credit where it is due. Using work produced by someone else, and presenting it as our own idea is considered a form of plagiarism; even though you may not specifically take something word for word from a piece of work.
Plagiarism is, yet, just one of the issues one must keep in mind while "blogging". You may ask yourself, "What can I share with my friends without it being plagiarism?" As a general rule, it is safe to share anything not copyrighted, as long as it follows the rules of public decency. The laws of eminent domain are often cited to justify this, but in fact "eminent domain" is more commonly used to describe the governments right to take private property for public use. This is loosely used by private citizens to justify using non-copyrighted images, and artwork, to enhance personal blogs and websites. Unless contacted, it is understood that permission of such materials is granted without notification otherwise.
So, yes, you "can" share certain things on your blog, but "should" you? How do I know if it is ethicProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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to use something on my blog? Obviously, anything illegal is not ethical. This means any copyrighted material you have not gotten permissions FIRST before publishing them...including passages from published books, images used in commercials, company logos, etc...things of this nature. The right people have to protect their identity has lead to the need to gain permissions to even publish pictures of kids at your son's birthday party, for example. Of course, odds are your friends will not complain if you put a picture of "little Bobby" with a silly hat on eating cake, but unless they had a clear understanding that by attending that party their son's image would be put up on the web, they "could" force you to take it down. And not done in a timely manner, they could bring legal action against you. In an example, such as this, the "ethical" thing would be to make sure everyone knows at the birthday party you are taking pictures for your blog and you'll be posting them up in the near future.
It's not just pictures, artwork, and logos. As mentioned earlier in this paper, technology has made it easy to "cheat" and simply copy the work someone else has done. Suppose you were writing a paper for a class. For example, in this paper, on "Internet Ethics", you found a set of online lectures about intellectual property as it pertains to the internet. They were done by William Fisher, of Harvard University, and you think it would be fine to use them in your paper. But just like in writing off line, unless you cite the work you refer to as HIS work, it would be assumed that it was yours. In other words, upon reading it people would take it as YOUR ideas, and YOUR experience that led you to produce these ideas you are publishing. This is of course not fact, and in effect you would be guilty of "stealing" the ideas of Dr. William Fisher. More often than not, it is not the person being plagiarized, but a reader of the "copied" work that brings the indiscretion to light. In this case, our very own professor would see it as "plagiarism" and deal out the appropriate punishment.
As future teachers, we should not only consider plagiarism violations but also consider the idea of fair use when dealing with copyrighted materials. While it is inappropriate to plagiarize, many individuals assume that it is okay to copy chapters for books to teach classes, this is only occasionally true. One website, in an article entitled "Fair Use and Copyright for Teachers," for teachers clears up the issue by explaining the "fair use" boundary/loophole that exists for educators in the copyright laws. The website names four different criteria for determining fair use for educators. They ask what is the "purpose of use," the "nature of the work," the "proportion/extent of the material used," and "the effect on marketability." The authors of the article, determine that selected portions of works are appropriate to use (in the classroom setting). Copying select paragraphs, only about 10% of the work, and using the work in a way that would not detract from its overall sales would be considered fair use, but only in face to face interactions (Fair Use).
This fair use loophole does not seem to exist in online posting. The information posted online is available to a world wide community, and therefore does not meet the face to face requirement of the fair use conditions. Online postings often detract from sales, especially when large portions of a work are shared. We can see this when we examine the music industry. Sharing music with others obviously hurts the profit of the producer, as songs that are posted online can be played at any time. In the same way that we cannot share music with our friends, or papers with our friends (violating plagiarism rules), we cannot share documents, programs or files without the permission of the author or producer.