ETHICAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES IN E- COMMERCE

E-Commerce is a platform where involve exchange of product and services over the
internet. This trading process take the form of ,Online shopping web sites for retail sales
direct to consumers, Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process
third-party business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales , Business-to-
business buying and selling , Gathering and using demographic data through web
contacts and social media, Business-to-business electronic data interchange ,
Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for example, with
newsletters) , Engaging in pre-retail for launching new products and services , Online
financial exchanges for currency exchanges or trading purposes.

For effective complete of E-commerce system process and services , it requires some
third parties communities such online banking platform, electronic data interchange,
Mobile platform and internet connections. The idea of conducting trade over internet has
brought some advantage to both producers and consumers these are time saving as
reduce time to travel for shopping malls, Make shopping flexible as one can make
orders at their comfort. Nevertheless, the good things that came with commercialization
of e-commerce’s, there are some adverse effects of ethical issues that precipitate and
need to be paying attention for its fullness. These issues are Online privacy, web
spoofing, cyber-squatting, phishing and web tracking.

Web tracking

Every time someone visit the web, the website system retains some trails of the users
that can be refer later, this trails are normal call logs. These logs contains all the records
pertains to what the users perform in the site. Logs as records mean, they can be
retrieve or save for later use.

Analysis of log file means turning log data into application service or installing software
that can pluck relevant information from files in-house. Companies track individual’s
movement through tracking software and cookie analysis. Programs such as cookies
raise a batch of privacy concerns. The tracking history is stored on your PC’s hard disk,
and any time you revisit a website, the computer knows it. Many smart end users install
programs such as Cookie cutters, Spam Butcher, etc which can provide users some
control over the cookies. The battle between computer end users and web trackers is
always going on with a range of application programs. For example, software such as
Privacy Guardian, My Privacy, etc can protect user’s online privacy by erasing
browser’s cache, surfing history and cookies. To detect and remove spyware specially
designed programs like Ad-Aware are present. A data miner application, collects and
combines Internet browsing history of users and sends it to servers. The battle goes on!

Online Privacy

Most Electronic Payment Systems knows the identity of the buyer. So it is necessary to
protect the identity of a buyer who uses Electronic Payment System. A privacy issue
related to the employees of company is tracking. Monitoring systems are installed in
many companies to monitor e-mail and other web activities in order to identify
employees who extensively use business hours for non-business activities. The e-
commerce activities performed by a buyer can be tracked by organizations. These
activities of monitoring customers raise ethical issues on how secure and anonymous
information are being handle by the e-commerce providers.

Web Spoofing

Web spoofing is an electronic deception relates to the Internet. It occurs when the
attacker sets up a fake website which almost totally same with the original website in
order to lure consumers to give their credit card number or other personal information.
For example is the attacker setup a site called www.jumiaa.com using addiction of later
‘a’ at the end, which many users sometimes type by mistake. Users might find
themselves in a situation that they do not notice they are using a bogus web-site and
give their credit card details or other information.

Cyber-Squatting

Cybersquatting is an activity which a person or firm register, purchase and uses the
existing domain name belong to the well-known organization for the purpose of
infringing its trademarks. This type of person or firm, called cyber-squatters usually
infringed the trademarks to extort the payment from original trademark’s owner. The
extortion of payment occur when they offers the prices far greater than they had
purchased the organization’s domain name upon. Some cyber-squatters put up
offensive remarks about the person or company which the domain is meant to represent
in an effort to encourage the subject to re-buy their domain from them.

Privacy Invasion

The privacy invasion occur when the personal details belong to consumers are exposed
to the unauthorized party. These can be seen in the following ways.

 The personal information of consumers being transmit may be intercepted by

anyone other than the person whom it is intended. Protecting the privacy of
communication is a great challenge, due to the very nature of the online medium,
an open network of digital telecommunications. It is technically and economically
impossible to patch all the holes through which unauthorized intruders may gain
access.
 Malicious programs delivered quietly via web pages could reveal credit card
numbers, usernames, and passwords that are frequently stored in special files
called cookies. Because the internet is stateless and cannot remember a
response from one web page view to another, cookies help solve the problem of
remembering customer order information or usernames or passwords.

Email Spamming & phishing

E-mail spamming involved unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) sent or broadcast

unwanted advertisement or correspondence over the Internet. The use of e-mail
spammers meant to lure consumers to enter their personal information on fake website
using e-mail, forged to look like it is from authorized organization such as bank. The
content of e-mail often directs the consumers to the fake website in order to lure them to
fill their personal information such as credit card or bank account’s details. This
technique is called phishing. And these illegal process easily compromised the user's
right and expose to danger.

Intellectual Property Theft and Copyright Trolls

The basic cut-and-paste allows anyone with Internet access to directly copy the original
works of another. Text, photos, music, artwork and ideas routinely move from the
creators to the copiers, with no permission for use granted or sought. The victim of this
theft only has recourse if he's registered a copyright and then wants to spend the time
and trouble to write demand letters and threaten lawsuits. At the other end of the ethical
spectrum, "copyright trolls" buy the rights to movies, books and music, threaten mass
lawsuits against thousands of people found to be downloading the material and demand
a quick settlement from each of them.
ETHICAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL ISSUES IN ECOMMERCE

Ethics, Social and Political issues

Defining the rights of people to express their ideas and the property rights of copyright owners
are just two of many ethical, social, and political issues raised by the rapid evolution of e-
commerce.

The ethical, social, and political issues raised in e-commerce, provide a framework for
organizing the issues, and make recommendations for managers who are given the responsibility
of operating e-commerce companies within commonly accepted standards of appropriateness.
Understanding Ethical, Social, And Political Issues in E-Commerce Internet and its use in e-
commerce have raised pervasive ethical, social and political issues on a scale unprecedented for
computer technology.

We live in an “information society,” where power and wealth increasingly depend on

information and knowledge as central assets. Controversies over information are often in fact
disagreements over power, wealth, influence, and other things thought to be valuable. Like other
technologies such as steam, electricity, telephones, and television, the Internet and ecommerce
can be used to achieve social progress, and for the most part, this has occurred. However, the
same technologies can be used to commit crimes, despoil the environment, and threaten
cherished social values. Before automobiles, there was very little interstate crime and very little
federal jurisdiction over crime. Likewise with the Internet: Before the Internet, there was very
little “cyber crime.”

Many business firms and individuals are benefiting from the commercial development of the
Internet, but this development also exacts a price from individuals, organizations, and societies.
These costs and benefits must be carefully considered by those seeking to make ethical and
socially responsible decisions in this new environment.

Public Policy Issues in E commerce

The major ethical, social, and political issues that have developed around e commerce over the
past seven to eight years can be loosely categorized into four major dimensions: information
rights, property rights, governance, and public safety and welfare . Some of the ethical,
social, and political issues raised in each of these areas include the following:

 Information rights: What rights to their own personal information do individuals have

in a public marketplace, or in their private homes, when Internet technology make
information collection so pervasive and efficient? What rights do individuals have to
access information about business firms and other organizations?
 Property rights: How can traditional intellectual property rights be enforced in an
internet world where perfect copies of protected works can be made and easily
distributed worldwide in seconds?
  Governance: Should the Internet and e-commerce be subject to public laws? And if so,
what law-making bodies have jurisdiction - state, federal, and/or international?
 Public safety and welfare: What efforts should be undertaken to ensure equitable
access to the Internet and ecommerce channels? Should governments be responsible
for ensuring that schools and colleges have access to the Internet? Is certain online
content and activities - such as pornography and gambling - a threat to public safety
and welfare? Should mobile commerce be allowed from moving vehicles?

To illustrate, imagine that at any given moment society and individuals are more or less in an
ethical equilibrium brought about by a delicate balancing of individuals, social organizations,
and political institutions. Individuals know what is expected of them, social organizations such
as business firms know their limits, capabilities, and roles and political institutions provide a
supportive framework of market regulation, banking and commercial law that provides sanctions
against violators. Now, imagine we drop into the middle of this calm setting a powerful new
technology such as the Internet and e-commerce. Suddenly individuals, business firms, and
political institutions are confronted by new possibilities of behavior. For instance, individuals
discover that they can download perfect digital copies of music tracks, something which, under
the old technology of CDs, would have been impossible. This can be done, despite the fact that
these music tracks still “belong” as a legal matter to the owners of the copyright - musicians and
record label companies.

The introduction of the Internet and e-commerce impacts individuals, societies, and political
institutions. These impacts can be classified into four moral dimensions: property rights,
information rights, governance, and public safety and welfare Then business firms discover that
they can make a business out of aggregating these musical tracks - or creating a mechanism for
sharing musical tracks- even though they do not “own” them in the traditional sense. The record
companies, courts, and Congress were not prepared at first to cope with the onslaught of online
digital copying. Courts and legislative bodies will have to make new laws and reach new
judgments about who owns digital copies of copyrighted works and under what conditions such
works can be “shared.” It may take years to develop new understandings, laws, and acceptable
behavior in just this one area of social impact. In the meantime, as an individual and a manager,
you will have to decide what you and your firm should do in legal “grey”- areas, where there is
conflict between ethical principles, but no clear-cutural guidelines. How can you make good
decisions in this type of situation?

Before reviewing the four moral dimensions of e-commerce in greater depth, we will briefly
review some basic concepts of ethical reasoning that you can use as a guide to ethical decision
making, and provide general reasoning principles about social political issues of the Internet that
you will face in the future.
Basic Ethical Concepts: Responsibility Accountability, and Liability

Ethics is at the heart of social and political debates about the Internet. Ethics is the
study of principles that individuals and organizations can use to determine right and
wrong courses of action. It is assumed in ethics that individuals are free moral agents
who are in a position to make choices.

Extending ethics from individuals to business firms and even entire societies can be
difficult, but it is not impossible. As long as there is a decision-making body or
individual (such as a Board of Directors or CEO in a business firm or a governmental
body in a society), their decisions can be judged against a variety of ethical principles.
If you understand some basic ethical principles, your ability to reason about larger
social and political debates will be improved. In western culture, there are ability and
liability principles that all ethical schools of thought share: responsibility, account-
liability.

Responsibility means that as free moral agents, individuals, organizations and

societies are responsible for the actions they take. Accountability means that
individuals, organizations, and societies should be held accountable to others for the
consequences of their actions. The third principle -liability - extends the concepts of
responsibility and accountability to the area of law. Liability is a feature of political
systems in which a body of law is in place that permits individuals to recover the
damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organizations. Due process is a
feature of law-governed societies and refers to a process in which laws are known and
understood and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the
laws have been applied correctly.

Analyzing Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical, social, and political controversies usually present themselves as dilemmas. A dilemma is
a situation in which there are at least two diametrically opposed actions, each of which supports
a desirable outcome. When confronted with a situation that seems to present ethical dilemmas,
how can you analyze and reason about the situation? The following is a five step process that
should help.

 Identify and describe clearly the facts. Find out who did what to whom, and where,
when, and how. In many instances, you will be surprised at the errors in the initially
reported facts, and often you will find that simply getting the facts straight helps
define the solution. It also helps to get the opposing parties involved in an ethical
dilemma to agree on the facts.
 Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher order value involved.
Ethical, social, and political issues always reference higher values. Otherwise, there
 would be no debate. The parties to a dispute all claim to be pursuing higher values
(e.g., freedom, privacy, protection of property, and the -enterprise system). For
example, Double Click and its supporters argue that their tracking of consumer
movements on the Web increases market efficiency and the wealth of the entire
society. Opponents argue this claimed efficiency comes at the expense of individual
privacy, and Double Click should cease its or offer Web users the option of not
participating in such tracking.
 Identify the stakeholders. Every ethical, social, and political issue has stakeholders:
players in the game who have an interest in the outcome, who have its vested in the
situation, and usually who have vocal opinions. Find out the identity of these groups
and what they want. This will be useful later when designing a solution.
 Identity the options that you can reasonably take. You may find that none of the
options satisfies all the interests involved, but that some options do a better job than
others. Sometimes, arriving at a “good” or ethical solution may not, always be a
balancing of consequences to stakeholders.
 Identify the potential consequences of your options. Some options may be ethically
correct, but disastrous from other points of view. Other options may work in this one
instance, but not in other similar instances. Always ask yourself, “what if I choose this
option consistently over time?” Once your analysis is complete, you can refer to the
following well established ethical principle to help decide the matter.

Privacy and Information Rights

The Internet and the Web provide an ideal environment for invading the personal privacy of
millions of users on a scale unprecedented in history. Perhaps no other recent issue has raised as
much widespread social and political concern as protecting the privacy of over 160 million Web
users in the United States alone.

The major ethical issues related to ecommerce and privacy includes the following:Under what
conditions should we invade the privacy of others?

What legitimates intruding into others lives through unobtrusive surveillance, market research, or
other means?

The major social issues related to e-commerce and privacy concern the development of
“exception of privacy” or privacy norms, as well as public attitudes. In what areas of should we
as a society encourage people to think they are in “private territory” as opposed to public view?
The major political issues related to ecommerce and privacy concern the development of statutes
that govern the relations between record keepers and individuals.

The Concept of Privacy

Privacy is the moral right of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference
from other individuals or organizations, including the state. Privacy is a girder supporting
freedom: Without the privacy required to think, write, plan, and associate independently and
without fear, social and political freedom is weakened, and perhaps destroyed. Information
privacy is a subset of privacy. The right to information privacy includes both the claim that
certain information should not be collected at all by governments or business firms, and the
claim of individuals to control over personal of whatever information that is collected about
them. Individual control over personal information is at the core of the privacy concept. Due
process also plays an important role in defining privacy. The best statement of due process in
record keeping is given by the Fair Information Practices doctrine developed in the early 1970s
and extended to the online privacy debate in the late 1990s (described below).

Legal Protections

In the United States, Canada, and Germany, rights to privacy are explicitly granted in or can be
derived from, founding documents such as constitutions, as well as in specific statutes. In
England and the United States, there is also protection of privacy in the common law, a body of
court decisions involving torts or personal injuries. For instance, in the United States, four
privacy-related torts have been defined in court decisions involving claims of injury to
individuals caused by other private parties intrusion on solitude, public disclosure of private
facts, publicity placing a person in a false light, and appropriation of a person’s name or likeness
(mostly concerning celebrities) for a commercial purpose. In the United States, the claim to
privacy against government intrusion is protected primarily by the First Amendment guarantees
of freedom of speech and association and the Fourth: Amendment protections against
unreasonable search and seizure of one’s personal documents or home, and the Fourteenth
Amendment’s guarantee of due process. In addition to common law and the Constitution, there
are both federal laws and state laws that protect individuals against government intrusion and in
some cases define privacy rights vis-à-vis private organizations such as financial, education, and
media institutions.