An understanding of professional, ethical, legal, security and
social issues and responsibilities
Dear student. Consider your project for this quarter. The problem you
have worked on almost certainly has multiple professional, ethical,
legal, security and social implications. For example, suppose you had
written a compression algorithm that allows you to add a password
requirement to unzip the file.
We could imagine:
- The FBI finds a suspicious document, compressed and
pass-protected with your software. They will not tell you where it came
from, but they want your help to crack it. Should you help them?
- You want to give your code away as shareware. But you imagine
“Suppose my software has a bug, and in rare cases it cause hard drives
to be wiped!”. Is there anything you could do to protect yourself from
lawsuits? Would you do anything different if you were selling your
code, as opposed to giving it away?
- When doing the project you hit upon a new compression algorithm
that might be worth millions of dollars. Does the university or the
instructor deserve a share of the royalties? Do your teammates deserve
any of the royalties?
- How could you stop someone stealing your idea(s) and profiting
from them?
- Because of a bug in your code, even when pass protected, hackers
can tell the language (English/Spanish etc) of the compressed file(s).
Could you imagine scenario in which that could ever be a problem that
might expose you to lawsuits?
- Two companies want to buy the rights to use your compression
algorithm in an MP3 player. Company A will manufacture the devices in
California, and they will pay you $20,000. Company B will
manufacture the devices in Sri Lanka, and they will pay you
$25,000. Which company do you sell the rights to?
- While your algorithm can compress the files to a smaller size (on
average) than the current state-of-the-art compressor, it requires more
CPU time. You work out that if your algorithm became as ubiquitous as
MP3, it would cause humankind to consume an extra 10,000 megawatts of
energy per day (that is about what NY City consumes each day). On the
other hand, people would have the convenience on putting at least 100
more songs on their MP3 player...
- After you sell the rights to your algorithm, you realize that you
used someone else’s code in a minor subroutine, do you have any
obligations to that person?
Given the above text to spur your imagination: Please do any two of the following (750
words each):
- Write an essay describing how your project does or might have
given rise to an ethical issue.
- Write an essay describing how your project does or might have
given rise to a legal issue.
- Write an essay describing how your project does or might have
given rise to a security issue.
- Write an essay describing how your project does or might have
given rise to a social issue.
- Write an essay describing how your project does or might have
given rise to a professional issue.
If you prefer you may write a single 1,500 word essay that addresses a
combination of two or more of the above issues. In addition to
describing the potential or actual problem, you can discuss potential
solutions.
Hand In: An essay, with five or more cited sources, on the topic(s)
discussed above.