Consider the scenario in which a group of your fellow students approach you to see whether you are interested in participating in a project that is intended to be a commercial venture. The group has become up with a novel approach to obtaining large numbers of e-mail addresses. This requires the development of some software, and once this is used it will be possible to develop a very extensive e-mail address list. Subsequently, this information is to be sold to companies involved in spam advertising. Your voice some initial reservations based upon your concern that this may not be entirely legal/ethical. However, you are assured that the software will only be used to obtain e-mail addresses for people who are normally based overseas- specifically in third world countries. Since the team is to be based in the UK and the software is going to be used to locate e-mail addresses that are normally based outside the UK, you are assured that you will be breaking no UK law.
How would you proceed?
In this case, we would continue to ask some information to clarify what this commercial venture is all about. Moreover, we would ask also who are the higher personnel involve with this kind of project so we could approach them. We won't easily believe of what they are saying. We need to thoroughly analyze if we would join or not, and think if there is a misuse of rights of privacy in this scenario.
Do you consider that this is a legal/ethical undertaking?
No, we will not consider it as a legal/ethical undertaking. It is because spam advertising is one of the threats of right to privacy. Even if we are assured that the development of software would only be used to obtain e-mail addresses for the people based outside UK, and we couldn't be breaking any laws or rules of UK but the fact in selling to other companies involving spam advertising is still an unethical act.
Would you still be willing to participate if the level of remuneration is sufficient?
In this scenario, we would say to my fellow students that we are not interested to participate for the commercial venture. Since it's affecting the issues of privacy because it will be sold to the companies involving spam advertising, and probably it's not good even if the level of remuneration is sufficient. Helping to others is good but if you would know that there is a discrepancy of the things that you would involve, better not to.
At what point would personal remuneration override any ethical reservations that you may have?
The benefit of the total compensation that we could receive in exchange for the service what we would perform is really the point that remuneration overrides the ethical issues. However, we also need to consider first that what we work is for good to help people and not to satisfy our needs. As a concerned citizen, we really need to carefully plan and think about doing those things.
Does this compromise your legal position?
Yes, it compromises our position. If we were involved with this, knowing that the software you develop was not only being used to locate e-mail addresses that are based outside UK but also within the country that specialize in spam advertising. At the first place, our fellow students who approached and told us about this fraud things and not even saying the truth. It's not an ethical act. Second, our position as a citizen would be threatened because we created this kind of software, so we as an innocent and victim could become a criminal, so we could violate the laws of UK.Third, selling it involving spams in expensive price is not right.
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