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Should You Break TOS Because Work Asks You?
An anonymous reader writes "My boss recently assigned me a project that was all his idea, with two basic flaws that would require me to break multiple web sites' Terms of Service (TOS). Part requires scraping most of the site, parsing the data and presenting it as our own without human intervention. While we're safe on copyright issues, clearly scraping like this is normally not allowed. At times it might also put a load on those sites. The other is, for lack of better words, a 'load balancing' part that requires using multiple free accounts instead of purchasing space and CPU time for less than $2,000 USD per month. The boss sees it as 'distributed' computing when in reality it's 'parasitic.'
My question is: am I wrong about the ethics? If I do need to walk, how best can I handle it without damaging my reputation and future employment opportunities?"
If you can access it, it was designed to be accessed.
What your boss is trying to do is not unethical, just cheap. And to be honest, doing something at a lower cost and achieving the same results is actually good business.
So you can either be on board with your boss, or you can acquaint yourself with the unemployment line.
So wait, when someone asks you to invade Iraq and kill anywhere between 500.000 and 1.000.000 natives your answer would be "I'll e-mail you that this is a rather bad idea, but if you clarify the request, I'll do it"?
Great thinking there, Einstein.
If your boss asks you to do something morally questionable, tell him you can't and take the consequences.
By the book my ass. Who wrote the book anyway? Depending on the book you're reading, the consequences of such a line of thinking could be disastrous.
No, I do not "get it", if "getting it" means singling out a one form of an accepted practice simply because it differs in scope to its relatives.
Why not? You have two similar, but not entirely analogous actions. One is vastly more damaging than the other. Why SHOULDN'T they be treated differently?
Differences between spam and direct mail:
Direct mail: pays the Post Office more than it costs to mail, and subsidizes first class mail.
Spam: pays a fraction of its costs, and often pays nothing, and is in such quantity that the majority of the cost of running a mail server is dealing with spam.
Direct mail: is limited by economics. The costs of a direct mailing, including materials, postage, and mailing lists, is upwards of 50c per address... and often several dollars per target.
Spam: has no economic limits, since the cost is negligible... and if it's sent by a botnet that cost is born by secondary victims.
Not analogous at all, when you compare them. No reason to treat them the same.