The campaign for an ethical Internet

• Authors: Jenny Shearer
• Venue: Proceedings of the ethics and social impact component on Shaping policy in the information age
• Year: 1998

The fostering of an Internet societal infrastucture which is consciously ethical, is needed to curtail the new era of global irresponsibility that is at hand. The positive view advanced is contrasted with a scenario of the silencing of a moral Internet community using regulatory constraints, an extension of broadcast techniques, "brain-free" hardware, and control by multi-national corporations. This positive scenario is dependent on the evolution of a moral and responsible Internet global citizenry. The global citizen will recognise that in creating an era of peace and negotiation, the traditional boundaries of nation or of cultural difference may be radically redefined, but not destroyed. Two central problems, that of establishing an acceptable moral basis for global citizenship, and that of enabling the integrity of cultural and ethnic groups to be maintained in a global electronic environment, are discussed. A primary task for the Internet community is to establish a Code of Ethics. This could be based on the following principles: a strong and coherent Internet infrastructure; maintenance of interconnectivity; open Internet commerce; privacy of communications; freedom of speech within the Internet (with the proviso that the best interests of children are protected in information delivery); universal Internet access; freely accessible "public good" information; mediation between national and global organizations in the interests of the Internet; authentication of information (or establishment of levels of verification of information sources); and maintenance of adequate bandwidth. These principles encompass some of the fiercest debates of the Internet regulatory environment, including those on issues of cryptography, copyright, software patents, first-level domain names, and pornography.