Blog: Euchre on LiveVideo.com

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2008 (9:22 AM)

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Cyber Accountability - A Double-Edged Sword

Cyberspace seems like a wild untamed territory, but in truth it is merely an extension of our own world.
The part of our world that it extends is what makes it unique, and makes the concept of responsibility for what's done there a bit more challenging than it may initially seem.

The idea of ethics in any human behavior is not purely fixed, although there are a few very basic ideas that the vast majority of the population can agree on. The foremost of these is that one's actions should not willfully and without cause be of any harm to another. Sounds simple, right? It is - when you can see the results of your actions. This has long been the quandry of applying accountability for actions - you have to prove that these actions had any results.

Let me first say that legal accountability in some form has always existed for one's actions on the internet. It has been pursued as a crime by wire, because much as crime over the phone is a crime unto itself, commission of any crime over another means does not 'sanitize' those actions. The act of trying to conceal or detach oneself from a crime via such means is made a crime in itself merely to connect and compound accountability, not establish it.

Whether or not you've violated a standard of ethics is fairly conditional, one being what your expectations are of the other party you are dealing with. This is where cyberspace becomes difficult to navigate. As I have touched upon in a video I posted, the internet is full of fabircations based on the truth and fictions so well fabricated that they bear the weight of facts. Becuase of this, it's difficult to validate what is said and done on the internet, and thus whether ethical standards have been transgressed. Can you prove that who you are and what you say about yourself is true? Can you prove that someone did what you claim, or even what they claim? Can you prove that harm resulted, or even if that was what was intended?

Our expectations of truth and reality are the basis of our actions. If something is perceived as unreal, we don't expect our actions toward that thing to be of any real consequence. As an example, I play video games. I've kiled thousands of people in those games. Because my expectations are that the people in the game are not real, I do not feel I've done any damage to anyone and thus not committed any violation of ethics. This seems simple and acceptable because society in general has a consensus that I should expect those people in the game to be unreal. If I took those same actions in the tangible world, would i be a criminal? It seems clear enough to say yes, because the consensus of society is that we should expect our actions to have negative results because those results are tangible. Now, let's take this idea to the internet.

On the internet, verification of what exists there is often difficult. Fabrication, misrepresentation, and obfuscation are as easy to perpetrate on the internet as presenting anything real. Because of this, our expectations are different. The problem is we base our actions on it, and thus the chance of negative results we did not intend or expect are commonplace. Our expectation of consequence is also changed by this, because we feel that when what we see is not considered real, our own actions and intentions should not be real either.

An example of this in my own experience is a person that was sending me instant messages in rapid succession. It led to my computer freezing, and that in turn caused a read/write cycle loop that effectively damaged my hard drive. Did that person commit a violation of ethics against me?
My answer to you is no. Why? Because their expectation was not to cause harm, and my expectation is that they didn't mean to. My hard drive was going through it's 8th year of virtually 24/7 usage, and was thus weakened. It had experienced much more minor glitches before. The person's pattern of behavior was to send such stream of consciousness, fragmented messages. If I had been able to tell them to let up because of the potential of damage, I could feel they should be fully accountable - but such was not the case. Did they do harm? Yes. I spent 2 days recovering data and setting up my system again. So if they had done this intentionally, would it be a crime? Yes. Interesting how the same actions and results can be a violation of ethics or not, based on the expectations of the person carrying out those actions, isn't it?

The real problem becomes apparent now. Unlike other parts of our world, separating fact from fiction becomes the greatest challenge of cyberspace. To try to base judgements on a sequence of events where none have been established as fact is as much a breach of ethics as what is being judged as such. You have to ask yourself if you are really fixing a problem, or creating another.

Category: News and Politics

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