Tomorrow in ET, we'll be trying out an ethics exercise that Steve is
pretty enthusiastic about. In the exercise, participants get
experience
debating ethical issues and identifying the kinds of arguments being
employed in those debates.
In order to keep the meeting focused on the exercise itself, instead
of
the specific scenario, please take a look at the following ~450 word
scenario. Think about who the stakeholders are (i.e., who does
or should
have an interest in the outcome of the situation). Try to identify
some
of the ethical decisons that were made. Which do you agree with,
which do
you disagree with, etc, etc. You may want to consider how the
last
paragraph affects your opinion of the situation.
Tomorrow, we'll use an interesting technique to discuss the scenario.
Schwa
*** *** ***
Several years ago, the XMedia Corporation developed a new system that
allowed high quality audio and video media to be delivered in streaming
fashion via the internet.
To sell content-provider-side software, XMedia gives away their client,
but receives revenue from their fee-based media portal and from selling
advertisements that are displayed on the client's console, or at the
beginning of otherwise free content.
Today, the XMedia Corporation is working on the next generation of its
streaming media system. Advertising revenue in the current version
has
been somewhat disappointing. Advertisers want to know that their
ads
will reach certain target audiences, and XMedia doesn't have the
information necessary to provide that assurance. When purchasing
advertisements from specific content providers (such as Yahoo! Movies,
or Nickelodeon Online), advertisers may infer who is seeing their ads
based upon the content being provided, even if the provider releases
no
other consumer information. Since XMedia provides the mechanism,
and not the
content, it cannot do this.
Chris is a VP at XMedia and is in charge of making advertising
profitable. After discussing options with marketing, development, and
legal teams, she decided that the new version of XMedia's product would
categorize each piece of content the user views and send these
categories, timestamped, to XMedia's servers. Advertisements are then
sent out to individual users based on rules negotiated between XMedia
and advertisers. The advertisers receive statistics describing how
often
their ads are displayed, but actual user traces are given only to a
small group of people at each advertising firm in order to "audit"
XMedia's actions. These individuals must sign non-disclosures
for
specific trace data, and even then, no identifying information is
included.
Terry is a developer at XMedia who repeatedly warns his superiors of
a
security flaw in the data collection routines that would allow a third
party to snoop on the sequence of URLs the user views through XMedia's
product. Frustrated by the lack of attention to the problem, he finally
develops a program at home that will exploit this flaw, and e-mails
an
executable and source code to several of his superiors along with his
resignation.
The next day, the new release of XMedia's product is made available
(without a fix for the problem... yet), and a week later a program
which
exploits the same security flaw Terry noticed starts appearing on
bulletin boards. Terry did not create the program, nor did he discuss
the problem with anyone outside the company.