Keith Richardson
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Is using technology to circumvent rules making our lives easier, or unethical?

One of the most miraculous things about human evolution over our existence is the rapid development and use of technology over the past few hundred years to help make our lives easier and expand as a civilization. Humans have harnessed electricity, travelling through the sky, and exploring space. Some of these technological advances are much smaller in scale but may have a larger impact on our day to day lives. The creation of a personal computer has allowed me to type this essay rather than having to write it on paper, saving countless time. Technology allows us to accomplish much more while making tasks easier, quicker, and more efficient. Sometimes we are quick to adopt new technologies as a civilization without taking a step back and deciding how, or if, we should.

Sometimes we use technology to get the things we need much quicker, or cheaper. Many people search online for items while in the store to see if they can find it cheaper elsewhere. People may go television shopping at a big box store such as Best Buy but buy the one they want on the internet from a store such as Amazon. The retailer puts time in for people to try out their goods and buy them, as well as hoping that you may buy an additional product while you are in the store that may have a higher margin. Buying these items online is how business is done today, and businesses have to adapt. According to Investopedia, Best Buy ran a 2.4% profit margin in the first quarter of 2018 while posting a 3.5% profit margin during the same quarter in 2019 (Ross, 2019). Amazon has had a net margin of less than 2% for many years prior to 2019 (Ross, 2019). Due to the reduction in overhead, companies like Amazon have the ability to provide the same products at lower prices. As the rate that consumers spend time shopping in a store like Best Buy but buy online at Amazon increases, these stores will slowly disappear. These same people will no longer be able to visit these specialty stores to shop, while larger stores with a more diverse portfolio such as Wal-Mart and Target will end up filling the void. Wal-Mart has been the subject of debate for treating their employees unfairly and caring more about profits than employee with as recent as this thanksgiving. Shoppers have threatened to boycott after finding out the employees are not paid extra for working thanksgiving (Hanbury, 2019). Buying online will save you money but make companies such as this continue to grow as they can survive the online surge.

Some people may not just want to find the items at a reduced cost online but find them for free. The internet has brought many different technologies that have allowed sharing of information, including copyrighted information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) expanded copyright laws to ensure support and enforcement of digital copyrights (HOW DO I SITE DMCA?). Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing applications have been abundant before the laws were passed, allowing users to share files with each other online with ease. These applications fell quickly after the DMCA was passed. Napster was one of the first generations of peer to peer applications to fall in the court case of A&M Records Inc. v. Napster because the Napster software facilitated distribution of copyrighted content (Vincents, 2007).

While the early generations of peer to peer technologies were developed with intent to share copyrighted content, not all file sharing applications were developed and used with the intent of harm. The BitTorrent protocol was developed as a peer to peer protocol that was meant to be run by any company, allowing users to share the bandwidth of downloading files while only hosting the location of each of the users with the files (Cohen, 2017). Companies such as Blizzard Entertainment used these protocols to efficiently distribute large game patches to its millions of users without being burdened with the costs of distributing all of the content themselves (Blizzard Entertainment, 2019). Many users of the software helped further the piracy of online content as there can be many different servers hosting torrent trackers. The Game of Thrones television premier is a prime example. The 2014 premier saw over 200,000 people concurrently sharing and downloading the episode, with the total number of downloads reaching over 1.5 million after the first day (Van Der Sar, 2014). The average subscription in 2013 ran between 15 and 20 dollars per month for an HBO subscription (Klein, 2013). If all of these users were to pay for an HBO subscription, the loss of revenue would be at least 20 million dollars for the first month. The music industry is the same as the TV industry with the concept of try before you buy, as well as consumers who would not buy the content if they could not get it for free. According to the research done by Eric Boorstin the argument is still out on whether download has any affect on these industries because they have more than one revenue stream from direct sales, as many downloads have been “try before you buy” (Boorstin, 2004). There are many free streaming services today to listen to music the same way, such as Pandora. Even though the revenue stream may be unaffected, the copyright laws are still being broken.

People who feel that downloading copyrighted content is a victimless crime can see the loss of revenue that the companies are facing. Large corporations such as HBO should be able to handle the loss of revenue due to file sharing, but smaller companies and artists may not be able to. These companies that produce content generate revenue and jobs for the communities that they are made in and give jobs to the employees working on creating the content we are consuming. Content that does not generate revenue cannot be expected to continue, such as sequels to movies being cancelled or television shows going off the air. Without the demand for the content and the revenue to create the content we should expect see a decline.

While there may be extenuating circumstances to pirating content, such as not being able to afford it or sharing it with family, sharing copyrighted content is still against the law. These decisions that you may make to steal and distribute copyrighted material are ethical decisions that many people do not understand. A report by the American Assembly concluded that younger adults were much more likely to share copyrighted content (American Assembly, n.d.). Ethical decisions made at a young age help mold and guide your morals. The reasons behind these decisions were not always widely known when these technologies came out but should have. Questioning a young person about something as easy as sharing copyrighted content may help change the way they perceive these moral issues as well as others in the future.

Another piece of technology that has helped the younger generations learn the roadways at a much quicker rate is GPS navigation technology which is available on most every smartphone and some vehicles. The navigation application Waze has gained popularity due to it’s crowd sourcing of information between users such as construction hazards, accidents, and police presence (Bloch-Wehba, 2019). Many people utilize the technology brought by Waze as a way to avoid speeding tickets because they are warned where the police are and will slow down. Greg Ransom, Dispatch Manager at Haun Welding Supply, says that other people using Waze helps make the roads safer to help all users avoid hazards, but also slow down the people who are using it to avoid speeding tickets that may not slow down without it (Ransom, 2019). Speeding, even when you don’t get caught, is still breaking the law.

There are other ethical issues when it comes to using Waze. Although the act of reporting a visible government official is not against the law, there are many arguments against it (Bloch-Wehba, 2019).The New York Police department demanded that Waze stopped reporting police presence as it allowed users to bypass DWI checkpoints (Parascandola, 2019). Criminals can use the software to seek out police and cause harm, or avoid them altogether (Covington, 2015). Although you may not feel bad about getting to your destination faster, you may be reporting police that may stop a potential crime. There are many cases where traffic violations in a rural interstate such as New York State route 390 that have led to drug arrests (The LCN Staff, 2019). These criminals may not be kept off the streets if they are warned about the police. A decision to report police to other speeders may have a much broader impact than you may know.

Not all ethical dilemmas with technology involve stealing or potentially breaking a law. Breaking a rule may not get you in trouble, but they are there for a reason. Breaking rules questions your morals, even if there is a good reason to do it. Many businesses and families have restrictions on the technology that can be used. I have spent many years at schools, businesses, as well as my own house ensuring technology is protected and rules are followed. My children feel that the internet blocks at night are just because I do not want them on the computer late at night and try to find ways around it. They do not see what the big deal is. I am trying to not only teach them to follow the rules but have better sleep habits. I am ensuring they are not looking at content that they should not be looking at when they are too young to be looking at it. My oldest son shut off his wireless access on his cell phone to use the internet late at night rather than sleeping and ate up his allotment of data for the whole month. He did not see what the issue was and would just have to forfeit using his data until it renewed. He did not understand that the data is less about his fun and more about his safety. We need to get ahold of him in case of an emergency while he is away and want to know if the bus has any issues on the hour-long ride that he has through his GPS tracking application with his phone. He did not understand why the rules were in place and made the decisions to break them. Once he was caught and was made sure that he understood why they were in place, the restrictions were less of a problem and agreed with them.

Businesses do not typically have the benefit of a close relationship between the people setting and enforcing the rules and the employees that must follow them. There are many more dangers through technology use at a business than simply not being able to get ahold of someone as in the example with my children. Many businesses commonly overlook their internal employees as being a threat to their business and typically protect from measures on the outside (Sharkasi, 2015). Many companies use endpoint security technologies such as antivirus and reducing access to help protect their business. This software helps control the access of information as well as prevent attacks on the devices that they are installed on. Many users need access to their files wherever and whenever they want and resort to using common file sharing applications to handle these jobs (Sharkasi, 2015). Some employees resort to installing personal unmanaged software on business computers to perform their tasks (Sharkasi, 2015). Policy enforcement is a constant struggle for the World Surf League, as the IT Manager Jesse Duell struggles daily with securing their network from internal threats, including requests to bypassing security measures because they have to for their jobs without valid reasons (Duell, 2019).

These rules and protections are put in place for many reasons that employees who do not work in the information technology field do not understand. When you send data off to a cloud source, they are obtaining a copy of it. You are trusting the company to keep the data safe. The data stored may have company private data or personal data that would be detrimental to the business if it was to get stolen, such as credit card information. A compromised password of a financial employee may be used to cut fraudulent checks. Viruses may get into the network and bring the company to a halt, stalling business. A small 24/7 telephone answering service would be crippled due to having their telephone service being down. A company with a revenue of only $13 million would lose an average of $1,500 per hour of being down. The total cost of a breach extends beyond lost revenue, including remediation and potential legal costs. The retailer Target spent $202 million in related costs due to a breach that took place in 2013 (Reuters, 2017). The impacts of breaking a single rule would not only harm the company, but also your reputation. Employees who break rules and are caught may be terminated per company policy and risk harming their chances at future employment.

There are workplace rules in the government which are very similar as other businesses, that may not be laws. Many of these rules rely upon how to use technology. You can apply the same loss of information on a business to the government and have much larger impact. The Office of Personnel Management announced in 2015 that it was hacked twice, having the background investigation records of all current, former, and prospective candidates for federal employment were stolen (Office of Personnel Management n.d.). These records contained in depth personal information that have to be filled out as well as information that has been gathered during an investigation performed by the OPM (Office of Personnel Management n.d.). This is just one example of a breach that has happened.

A major controversy that surrounded the 2016 presidential election was regarding the email use of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while in office. Secretary Clinton was reported to have used a private email server exclusively during her tenure as Secretary (Jacobson, 2017). At the time, this was not against the letter of the law. (Jacobson, 2017). The Code of Federal Register states that the business records need to be provided and maintained of all communications and matters dealt with agency business (What records are required to provide for adequate documentation of agency business? 2019).

Running your own email server is not against the law, as many businesses and individuals do so. I personally subscribe to a business grade email service for my family rather than free email accounts that are typically used, as I have more control over it than ones provided for me. I am responsible for maintaining the security of the system and data integrity. Secretary Clinton had the same responsibilities and benefits of using her own email server rather than the accounts supplied by the government. One would assume that an individual such as Secretary Clinton would not have the same security measures protecting her email server as the United States government would have. Throughout the investigation, the government found at least 5 phishing attempts on her email in attempt to steal information (Jacobson, 2017).

The government would also be entrusting that the staff that used the server followed any confidentiality and security clearance designations on any communications. It was difficult to ensure as the government had no control over the private server. The investigation uncovered information that was sent that was deemed to be classified at the time of the investigation (Miller, 2019). The investigation into the private email server required all emails to be turned over. Over 31,000 emails were deleted before being sent over by the Clinton staff as they were deemed personal (Jacobson, 2017).

There is much speculation as to why Secretary Clinton lost the 2016 election to President Donald Trump. The email investigation was released publicly and most certainly affected many voters, as it came up in discussion with me and my family during the election cycle. Many discussions were about breaking the law and being put in jail, but there were other implications of her actions and the perception of what was done. The right thing would have just been to do the government business using the email account that was provided to you, just as you would do with any other business. Why did her staff delete 31,000 emails, rather than turning them all over and let the investigators decide which was personal? If she had been separating her government email from her personal email this would not have any problem. The question that many had was trustworthiness, and the ethical decision to bypass what you should do for something that you technically could do. Making someone question your morals may be much worse than making them question a specific decision. Was an election worth doing something as simple as sending email that was technically not against the law?

Virtue Ethics is the ethical theory that looks more at living a morally virtuous life while taking into account your emotions, education, and relationships (Quinn, 2020, p. 87). Your moral virtues are learned through your character traits that are learned from experiences and making right decisions. The abundance of technology that is accessible to people at a young age requires parents and children to make informed decisions to help build the foundation for someone to lead a virtuous life. On average, children ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven hours a day looking at screens (Welch, 2018). Children find out about new technology to help them get ahead and use it. We see it with the adoption of peer to peer technologies and Waze, allowing people to get ahead while cutting corners. Teaching children to earn the money to pay for copyrighted content rather than finding a way to obtain it for free would help shape their work ethic at a young age, as well as teach them to do the right thing, even if it is not the easiest.

As adults, we are always looking to get ahead. Time is the most precious resource that we can have and never seem to have enough of it. Technology allows us to gain time back by accomplishing our tasks much easier. The ethical pitfalls of some of this technology is not always apparent, and we must be diligent in reviewing each technology we adapt to ensure we are still abiding by our morals and virtues. Although we may steal a few extra minutes by getting around rules to make things easier, we must always be aware of the hidden costs. We must be sure that we use technology to advance our virtues, and not our vices. The long-lasting effects of making poor choices is bigger than the little time we may save.

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This paper made me think about all of the things that many people do in their lives without thinking twice about it, even though there may be dire consequences to it. I like that it really made the other students think about what they were doing and start asking themselves if they should be doing it. I would have liked to go more in depth on some subjects, but the paper would have been way to long! This paper has made me think about my daily ethical decisions using technology. Maybe you will after reading this!