CyberEthics

Diane-Razel Diolanda Flores

CCT260: Web Culture and Design

Professor E. Littlejohn

Ethics is quite hard to define. Many people relate their sense of ethics with their emotion, their religion, the law, and what is acceptable in the society they are involved in. However, all these things can make one deviate from what is ethical, in result, ethics comes down to people's personal sense of right and wrong. In the real world, there is a universal understanding that anyone who has done something "wrong" will result to a hurtful consequence. We learn this through life experiences and/or discipline by authority (i.e. parents, the law). It is human nature to avoid being punished which is why most people are intimidated to do anything illegal or socially unacceptable.

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee created a new world called the World Wide Web. This is where people can communicate with other Internet users, share and collect information with each other all in an almost instantaneous speed. The Internet is a very exciting, yet uncontrolled space - not even Berners-Lee can nor want to control the Internet. For this reason, people have the difficulty to transfer their ethical behaviors in the real world to the cyberspace.

One reason why people act different online is the sense of anonymity. People feel as if they are "invisible" online and cannot be identified. Many people treat the Internet as a world of make-believe, where everything they do is not real. This is why users have their "online identity." People feel that they can do around the Internet and act to be however they want other Internet users to see them and get away with it - in some cases, they do. For instance, when I was 12 years old, I took on an online identity. I lied about my name, my age, and sometimes I played around with my ethnicity. I feel as if people believed what I said and had the sense that I could get away with more things online. Many people lie about their real identity online everyday, and this is one of the reasons why people feel that they cannot be traced and be identified on the Internet.

Another reason why people behave differently on the web is because of the distance. One nature of the Internet that makes it amazing is that people can communicate with other users all over the world. People do things online that they would not normally do in a face-to-face environment because the distance feels safe, people do not see a direct consequence of what was done. An example of this is Michael Ian Campbell's story as "Soup81." Campbell, similar to my experience, put on an online identity and decided to threat a stranger's life online. Campbell, living far away from the victim, thought that what he did was not harmful. He did not think through of what the possible consequences of what he has done - in this case, 4 months in jail and a three-year ban from the Internet.

Anonymity and distance are the two natures of the cyberspace that causes people to behave differently online. However, crime is crime. What is wrong on offline is just the same online. Many users online do not see the dangers of being involved in illegal and hurtful activities online.

There are more cyber identities online than the number of users online because one user can take on different types of personalities. People online are usually not really who they are. Even on video logs on YouTube, though they post up videos of themselves doesn't mean they are portraying themselves as their true self. Simply because we can see them, doesn't mean it's real. A fairly recent example is YouTube's lonelygirl15. Lonelygirl15, also known as Bree, posted up videos presenting herself as a real 16 year old, home-schooled, video logger. Her vlogs became very popular online and many of her viewers were suspecting that her identity is fake. Later on, the producers decided to reveal that lonegirl15 really is a disguise. Bree is really Jessica Lee Rose, who is a 19-year-old actress playing a role. Even though not everyone, on YouTube, are professional actors like Rose, people online might as well be because everyone is playing a role.

This role becomes a mask that users believe that is detached from the real world and themselves, so most feel that the law and moral conducts do not apply to them. However, this belief is untrue. The cyber identities are attached to the real bodies that are behind them and when an individual's cyber identity has done something wrong, the person behind that identity will be punished. Online identities will not stop the law from tracing the person behind it, just as the law traced "Soup81" identity to Michael Ian Campbell.

Ethics online are becoming important on the Internet, especially in today's age in a North American society where everyone is connected to the Internet. There are websites and television commercials that are contributing to cyber-bullying awareness in the society. In many forums, people are discouraged to download pirated programs on the Internet. On Facebook, many users report groups that are targeting victims. People connected to illegal downloading software such as LimeWire are being traced and in consequence are sent to jail for a period of time. The Internet may not be tangible but everything that happens in it is real and it is affecting the offline life.  People are slowly understanding the realness of the deed done online, and they are also slowly bringing ethics from the real world to cyberspace.

Sources

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