HW 4: Professional Ethics
Assigned: 27 October 2012. Due: 2 November 2012 at 17:00
The ACM is the professional society for computer scientists and
information technologists. Find the ACM code of Ethics on
the ACM website (
acm.org).
Read it.
You have already read Chapter 7 of
Quinn. Take one example of an ethically-dubious
actions discussed in the chapter (for example, the Morris worm, or
Butler's creation and release of
Firesheep), and analyze it using the ACM Code of
Ethics. Which sections of the code does it violate, if any.
Would Social Contract Theory, or Act Utilitarianism, treat
the same episode differently?
Your essay in answer to this question should be between 300 and
400 words. Cite your sources (your bibliographic citations
are not included in the word limit). Try to be objective
when reciting the facts.
When submitting your assignment (to the dropbox on
D2L), please follow these rules:
- Submit a PDF document.
Not a Microsoft Word document, not a text file. Having
all of the documents in PDF makes it much easier for us to
print them all out.
- Put your name at
the top of your essay. D2L doesn't do this; it really
helps in assigning your grades to know who wrote the paper!
- Avoid plagiarism.
Minimal re-writing of source text is not OK. The whole essay should be your
own work, except for explicit quotations.
- Wikipedia is not an appropriate reference source. If a
Wikipedia article references a source, you should check the
source to make sure that it really states what is
claimed. Then cite the original source. If a
Wikipedia article does not reference a source, you probably
should not believe it.
This is the grading rubric that we
will be using.