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Ethical Decisions and Views in Cyberspace: Focusing on copyright issues
Journal of Lifelong Learning Society
Abbr :
JLLS
2010, 6(2), pp.169-190
Publisher : Institute of Distance Education
Research Area : Education
2010, 6(2), pp.169-190
Publisher : Institute of Distance Education
Research Area : Education
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With the increased uses of information and communication technology in society, the number of socio-cultural issues found in cyberspace has sharply increased and the impacts of such issues on the society in general have become more serious than ever. While an integrated approach combining legal, institutional and technical actions is effective to address those issues emerged in cyberspace, the internalization of cyberethics by the actors in cyberspace is fundamentally important in bringing in safe cyber environment. The purpose of the research is two-fold. First, it investigates the current level of cyberethics with regard to copyright issues in using digital resources. Second, it examines underlying reasons for ethical decisions made in cyberspace. 184 college students in a Korean university are given a survey with 10 two-tiered questions. The first-tier questions ask the participants to make a decision on whether or not a given action is ethical by answering yes or no to each question. The second-tier questions ask reasons why the participants made such decisions as answered in the first-tier questions. The results show that about 45% of the students correctly answered 10 first-tier questions. But there was a big difference in correct answers (between minimum of 5.4% and maximum of 83.6%) across the questions. The results also reveal that main ethical views were absolutism and utilitarianism when the participants pointed out a certain conduct in cyberspace as fair. However when the participants indicated a certain conduct as unfair, they used utilitarianism, ethical egoism and absolutism in explaining their ethical judgment.
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