Information Ethics

This anthology focuses on the ethical issues surrounding information control in the broadest sense. Anglo-American institutions of intellectual property protect and restrict access to vast amounts of information. Ideas and expressions captured in music, movies, paintings, processes of manufacture, human genetic information, and the like are protected domestically and globally.

The ethical issues and tensions surrounding free speech and information control intersect in at least two important respects. First, the commons of thought and expression is threatened by institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret. While institutions of intellectual property may be necessary for innovation and social progress they may also be detrimental when used by the privileged and economically advantaged to control information access, consumption, and expression. Second, free speech concerns have been allowed to trump privacy interests in all but the most egregious of cases.

At the same time, our ability to control access to information about ourselves--what some call "informational privacy"--is rapidly diminishing. Data mining and digital profiling are opening up what most would consider private domains for public consumption and manipulation.

Post-9/11, issues of national security have run headlong into individual rights to privacy and free speech concerns. While constitutional guarantees against unwarranted searches and seizures have been relaxed, access to vast amounts of information held by government agencies, libraries, and other information storehouses has been restricted in the name of national security.

Adam D. Moore is assistant professor of philosophy and also teaches in the Information School at the University of Washington.

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction--Adam D. Moor and Kristene Unsworth

Part I. An Ethical Framework for Analysis

2. Introduction to Moral Reasoning--Tom Regan

3. Utilitarianism--John Stuart Mill

4. The Metaphysics of Morals--Immanuel Kant

5. Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory--Virginia Held

Discussion Cases

--Trapped in an Underwater Sea Cave

--The Case of Reluctant Donation

--Killing 1 to Save 9

--Torturing for Good Consequences

Part II. Intellectual Property: Moral and Legal Concerns

6. Intellectual Property is Still Property--Frank H. Easterbrook

7. Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified?--Tom G. Palmer

8. Biopiracy or Bioprivateering?--Richard Stallman

9. Intangible Property: Privacy, Power, and Information Control--Adam D. Moore

10. Why Collaborative Free Works Should be Protected by the Law--Lawrence Sanger

Discussion Cases

--Libraries and Fair Use

--No Harm No Foul--Right?

--Making an Extra Back-up Copy; File Sharing

Part III. Privacy and Information Control

11. The Right to Privacy--Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis

12. The Social Life of Genes: Privacy, Property, and the New Genetics--Margaret Everett

13. Employee Monitoring: Evaluation Surveillance v. Privacy--Adam D. Moore

14. Personal Autonomy and Caller ID--James Stacey Taylor

Discussion Cases

--Video Voyeurs and Privacy

--Menos Greece and Sickle-cell Anemia

Shahar v. Bowers

Part IV. Freedom of Speech and Information Control

15. Rationales for Freedom of Speech--Kent Greenawalt

16. Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society--Jack M. Balkin

17. Privacy, Photography, and the Press--T. Allen et al.

Discussion Cases

--Who Owns Your Image: Cape Pub. v. Bridges, Florida 1982

Sipple v. San Francisco Chronicle Inc.

Photographs and the Protest against the War in Vietnam

Part V. Governmental and Societal Control of Information

18. Carnivore, the FBI's E-mail Surveillance System: Devouring Criminals, Not Privacy--Griffin S. Dunham

19. Privacy Isn't Everything: Accountability as a Personal and Social Good--Anita Allen

20. National Security at What Price? A Look into Civil Liberty Concerns in the Information Age under the USA Patriot Act--Jacob R. Lilly

Discussion Cases

--Encryption and National Security

--Wearing an Anti-Disclosure Suit

--Racial Profiling and Terrorism

Selected Bibliography

Index