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It is easy to say "YES" for the purpose of ethics and to protect
information technology professionals especially on copyright,
software piracy, computer virus, computer worm,
flaming, spamming issues.
But you know, the U. S. Congress has this controversial DMCA ( Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
law passed in 1998. This law was designed to secure copyright protection of digital works.
Unlike earlier copyright laws, the DMCA prohibits not only copying but also the use of technology
to get around technical measures designed to prevent copying even when the copying itself is legal.
The law also makes it illegal to distribute circumvention technology, so in this case freeware and
trial versions of software are already prohibited. One debatable feature also of this law is that,
people also are prohibited to experiment on certain software to learn how it works even when the
software is already running on their computers. The DMCA also enables copyright owners to block people
from reading and viewing material that they possess not just copying and redistributing it.
Do you think this law sounds interesting?
With the advent of different computer crimes, it is really much
needed to enforce laws on computing, but the people who
will be designing the law should also think the social consequences
of the law they should be formulating. The law should not be as strict
and accurate as computers; they should still put some "human factor" in them.
The law should be implemented regardless of race, country, belief, custom or character.
Ethics should be the basis of these laws and
that ethics be specifically defined.
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