Watch the video “Blogs, Twitter, Wikis and Other Web Tools”. Are there any legal and ethical issues raised by imperial scholars that apply to your work? Write a blog post about the legal/ethical issues that you think are most critical in your field of research. Statistics of the Internet World. 2007. Accessed March 21, 2008, by www.internetworldstats.com. This module covers the legal and ethical issues you need to be aware of when using social media to ensure your search profile is high for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. The key is to remember that all laws, policies, and social rules that apply in real life also apply on the internet. The global ethical issues of the Internet that I will consider are freedom of expression on the Internet, the regulation of websites with a global presence, and the role of the Internet in facilitating globalization. Some articles have expressed concern about the “digital divide,” where Internet-based recruitment strategies may limit researchers` ability to reach groups disadvantaged by socioeconomic status or education who do not have access to the Internet or digital literacy [36, 54, 59, 74]. This may result in bias and limit the representativeness of the study sample [60, 75].
Conversely, some researchers have argued that the digital divide in online recruitment of youth is not a problem, given the high rates at which young people, including disadvantaged youth, use and access the Internet [52, 54, 76]. In some studies involving children and adolescents, the waiver of parental consent has been considered a methodological and ethical necessity. For example, Moinian [58] conducted an ethnographic study of children`s diary entries in an online community to examine online activities that children engaged in outside of their parents` knowledge or control – a topic that “made the process of obtaining parental consent virtually impossible” [58, p. 56]. In other studies, parental consent has been lifted if parental consent could discourage participation [54] or endanger participants. For example, in two U.S. studies of 13-year-old gay and bisexual adolescents [52, 55], parental authorization was lifted because it was assumed that youth could be put at risk by disclosing their gender identity to their parents. Some studies have found that when parental consent is required by law, younger participants are underrepresented because they refuse parental permission [61, 67, 68] or because parents did not provide consent [69]. These articles dealt with the age at which a teen should be able to give informed consent without parental consent, although this was not specifically discussed in the context of online research. Employers can maintain a strong ethical and legal foundation by monitoring internet use only for business reasons, as recommended by the Nolo Law Information website. For example, you might walk past an employee`s desk and notice a game page on the employee`s computer screen. In such cases, you have good reason to believe that the employee is wasting the company`s time by playing online games.
You would also have a good business reason to monitor that employee`s internet usage. A related ethical question is whether companies should provide devices that enable Internet censorship. Cisco Systems is accused of modifying equipment at China`s request, a claim Cisco has denied (Earnhardt 2006). Nokia Siemens has also been accused of supplying Iran with equipment to be used for censorship purposes (Risen 2010). Microsoft has strongly opposed these practices. In a proxy statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft stated: “[Microsoft] will refrain from providing government agencies in countries subject to Internet restrictions with devices or training designed to facilitate the censorship of Internet communications (MSFT Def 14A 2007). Just over half of the research papers reported that a combination of offline and online methods was used to engage participants (n=32/58; 55%), with 45% (n=26/58) using exclusively online methods. As summarized in Table 2, websites, Facebook and e-mail were the most commonly used Internet technologies. The use of websites or emails for participant engagement appeared stable throughout the registration period (2006-2016). Studies that use social networking sites like Facebook to engage participants were first published in 2011 and consistently used thereafter. In addition, some clicks-and-mortar retailers claim that their e-commerce operations are separate legal entities that have nothing to do with their business. Your Internet outlets therefore have no physical presence and are not obliged to collect sales tax.
(Institute for Local Independence 2007) But many, including Nordstrom, follow the principle of locality value-added tax (Nordstrom.com): the behavior of record and film companies seems clearly legal, but unethical. Those who make and resell copies of music and movies are rightly labeled pirates, and it is both legal and ethical for record labels and film companies to prosecute these people. But the spectacle of giant corporations harassing their own customers in a seemingly false effort to increase profits is not encouraging. 12 Even worse, these companies are clearly committed to eliminating digital copies wherever they may occur. Film studios have raised concerns about TiVo, which allows users to transfer movies recorded on TiVo to other devices (Wong 2004). On the other hand, a California District Court ruled in 2003 that file-sharing service Grokster is not liable if its software is used to make illegal copies. Although this court ruling is in line with the Supreme Court`s 1984 Betamax decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it and ruled in 2004 that Grokster was indeed liable for any copyright infringement.