MIS-Digital Society

Digital Society

VU Current Topics of Information Systems, Especially the Digital Society

Dr. Alexander Novotny

Edition 1

Digital Technology, Ethics and the Law

Overview

» Digitalisation and Ethics

» Digitalisation and the Law

Ethics

place I name I date

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

(The better is the enemy of the good.)

Voltaire, “La Bégueule” (1772)

Ethics (moral philosophy)

» Study of right and wrong behavior

» Three disciplines within ethics:

� Meta-ethics (fundamental ethics) � General study of the nature of moral and the meaning of ethical reasoning � “By which means can we determine what is good?”

� Normative ethics � Study of the principles and criteria of moral and ethical values � “What is good in general?”

� Applied ethics � Study of moral acting in a particular field � “What is good in a particular situation?”

Questions of applied ethics

» May I…

» … enable/support/promote/hinder killing by means of digital technology? Æ technology ethics

» … enable/support/promote/hinder miscommunication by means of digital media? Æmedia ethics

» … enable/support/promote/hinder fraud by means of digital transaction systems? Æ business ethics

Hubig (2011)

Ethics is a discipline of Philosophy

» Philosophy (Greek: φιλοσοφία, philosophia, “love of wisdom”)

Ethics is a sub-discipline of Axiology

» Philosophical study of value

» from Greek ἀξία, axia: "value, worth"; and -λογία, -logia: "study of“

» Intrinsic value

» good in itself (for its own sake)

» Examples: human flourishing, enlightenment, pleasure

» Extrinsic value (instrumental value)

» Good for the sake of something else

» Examples: freedom, justice, safety, utility, etc.

Ethical values

» Maslow’s hierarchy of human motivation and flourishing

» Combined with Frankena’s and Rokeach’s list of values

Spiekermann (2015, p. 47)

Laws

Laws and digitalisation

» Legality is the minimum standard of agency in digitalisation � "allowed is not necessarily good"

» Necessary time lag between technological development and legislation

» Lex lata threshold (Roman law) � Technology de lege lata:

� based upon current law � Technology de lege ferenda:

� based upon law still to be created (e.g., AI laws, self-driving cars, etc.) � Problem: ethically desirable but currently not law � e.g., webshops not legally obliged to take certain level of security measures

» European values govern EU digital law

European values in the Treaty of Lisbon 2007 (= primary EU law) » „Article 2

» 1. The Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.

» 2. The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.

» 3. The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance.

» It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child.

» It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.

» It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.

» 4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro.

» 5. In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter.

» 6. The Union shall pursue its objectives by appropriate means commensurate with the competences which are conferred upon it in the Treaties.’.”

Many legal domains are relevant for the digital society.

Telecommunication law

Data Protection law

Information Security law

E-Business and E- Commerce lawE-Signature law

Intellectual Property Rights

Law (IPR)

Competition law

etc.

Telecommunication law

» EU - Framework Directive 2002/21/EC

» EU - Better Regulation Directive 2009/140/EC

» EU - Access Directive 2002/19/EC

» EU - Universal Service Directive 2002/22/EC

» EU - E-Privacy Directive 2002/58/EC

» AT – Telekommunikationsgesetz (TKG)

Information Security Law

» EU - Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive

» AT – Netzwerk- und Informationssystemsicherheitsgesetz (NISG)

» AT – NIS Verordnung (NISV)

» DE – IT-Sicherheitsgesetz (ITSiG)

» DE – BSI Gesetz (BSIG)

Data protection law

» EU – General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679

» AT – Datenschutzgesetz (DSG)

E-Business and E-Commerce law

» EU - E-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC

» AT - E-Commerce-Gesetz (ECG)

» EU - Distance contracts Directive 97/7/EC

» AT - Fernabsatzgesetz (FernAbsG)

E-Signature law

» EU – electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services (eIDAS) Regulation 910/2014

» AT - Signatur- und Vertrauensdienstegesetz (SVG)

» AT - Signatur- und Vertrauensdiensteverordnung (SVV)

Intellectual Property Rights law

» Copyrights law EU - Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC AT - Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG)

» Patent law EU - IPR Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC AT - Patentgesetz (PatG) AT - Musterschutzgesetz (MuSchG)

» Trademark law International - Madrid system for the international registration of marks (MMA) EU - Trademarks Directive 2008/95/EC AT - Markenschutzgesetz (MarkenSchG)

References

» Friedman, B. & Hendry, D. G. (2012). The Envisioning Cards: A Toolkit for Catalyzing Humanistic and Technical Imaginations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York: ACM.

» Hubig, C. (2011). Technikethik als „Praktische Ethik“. 2. Vorlesung, 01.11.2011, Technische Universität Darmstadt.

» Spiekermann, S. (2015). Ethical IT innovation: A value-based system design approach. CRC Press.

Image sources

» https://leverageedu.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Branches-of-Philosophy-01-760x475.png

» https://einstein.digitalhumans.com/