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Universities Creating Computer Discipline Offices
geisler writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has a very good article on how larger colleges are beginning to create departments to deal with the social issues related to computer problems and not depending solely on technical solutions. The University of Maryland's Project NEThics is used as a prime example."
When the NEThics office gets a tip that a computer-savvy student has been doing something he or she shouldn't -- like hacking into a company's computer system, or downloading MP3s illegally, or using computer-lab machines to look at pornography -- the staff steps in to deliver stern warnings or, in the worst cases, contacts the police.
They're going to be a very busy department. How many people do you know that don't have illegal mp3's on their machine?
[student]
"Uh, ya, so'n'so, who i hate, has illegal mp3s on their computer."
[NEThics office]
"O.K., we'll get right on it."
[news]
"in the news today, 3000 students were disciplined or expelled from University of Maryland at College Park for being 'computer savvy' and having mp3's on their computers."
There goes all the CS students...
-Tolerate my intolerance
They are sending an unmistakeable message here: It's only wrong if you get caught.
This is just another example of setting up an agency or department to deal with the symptom, not the problem. The real problem is a lack or morals and ethics in general, compared with a generation or two ago. (For you non-US readers, I'm referring to the US in particular, although it might apply to your country as well.) It was socially unthinkable in my parents and grandparents childhood environments for men to stalk and harass teenage girls, for children to kill their fellow-classmates with guns at school, and the like. (Insert your own typical news headline here.)
I'm not trying to get on a morality soapbox, but this is a classic example of setting up another social program to deal with the end-result of a root cause, not the cause itself. When our (programmers) code breaks down, we don't look for the code that causes the breakdown and build a Cherynobyl-style sarcophagus around it to determine when an error occurs and clean up after it. Instead, we logically find the cause of the error and fix the errant code that caused it! This should be painfully obvious; unfortunately, we seem to always set up a new program to deal with the aftermath of the issue, not the issue that caused it.
So, to people working in offices mentioned in the article, good luck. Not that you'll need it--you're assured of a job from her till eternity because you're not really fixing the problem.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Of course, everything is logged and tied to your UID, but as long as you're SSHing, firewalling, and doing as much secure tunneling as possible, you're ok. If they ask about my abnormally large bandwidth usage, I'll show them my Linux ISOs :)
It was socially unthinkable in my parents and grandparents childhood environments for men to stalk and harass teenage girls, for children to kill their fellow-classmates with guns at school
I know no one who thinks harassment/murder is acceptable. Maybe you hang with a bit rougher crowd than I do...
In terms of 'unthinkable', I suggest you read up on your history. Children have been killing each other during every major war of the 20th century, back through medieval times, all the way back to the stone age. The sanitized 40's and 50's taught people not to TALK about it, that's all. Much before that, people talked a lot about it, and even glorified it - a lot of nobles' children were REGALED for killing another child in armed combat.
Never mind the whole morality issues with slavery, oppression of women, class-based justice, etc, etc, etc...
Stop getting your history lessons from Leave it to Beaver and learn a bit about how the world really WAS. A bunch of over-played CNN stories do not a society make.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Despite being beaten over the head by the concept for several years, I still don't understand why the second that a computer is concerned, a whole new bunch of rules, regulations and authorities is created for the special case, rather than simply placing the situation under the jurisdiction of things that already exist for the general case.
What if someone's sending me harrassing email? Do the same thing that you'd do if someone was harrassing you via the phone, snail mail, etc. Go to the authorities, who will deal with it, involving the necessary organisations (telco, postal office, network admins etc) as required.
Someone's looking at porn in the computer lab!! If the concern is that someone can't get on the computer to do their assignment, I'm sure that rules already exist to stop people who need to work from being held up by people chatting, playing games etc. If the concern is that people will be offended, surely there's existing rules regarding offensive material in public - could the person bring in a big X-rated poster and show it around?
People are pirating music! Once again, if the concern is the effect on the network, get them under the rules that exist to deal with recreational use of the network being detrimental to it's proper use. If you're actually just offended because you think copying music is wrong, take exactly the same action as you would if, 20 years ago, you'd seen the person copying casette tapes. There's no need to codify things under "net ethics."
Won't work. Step 2 fails on our campus network: between our firewall and Packeteer. My guess is that most schools aren't too different.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"