Personal Reflection 3: Legal, Ethical & Social Impacts

An underpinning topic for e-Commerce is that all activities that we commit when using online resources are subject to legal, ethical and social parameters.

There are very tight laws and compliance issues when it comes to not only the payment methods for online transactions. Security and legally of information, trading and the protection of intellectual property are all concepts dealt with by this chapter.

I will be specifically reflecting on what I think today’s top ethical, legal and social online topic. One that I am sure most people can relate to at home and that most people would be guilty of, the downloading and sharing of electronic format media. e-Commerce becomes affected by this issue as it bleeds real online transactions and profit creation from artists etc. Sharing programs such as Limewire and old style Napster allows/ed people to search, locate and download electronic media of all kinds. iTunes I think is the most prominent example of how music and videos specifically can be sold legally.

Copyrighting of music and illegal downloading of electronic media is rampant in today’s society. There have been substantial efforts by producers and governments to control the downloading of copywrite material, but with the explosion of online sharing servers and online blogs, stopping people from illegally acquiring such files is nearly impossible I think.

Music, movies, programs, videos, files etc are all prone to being traded online without people paying for them. It not only hurts the creator of the material as they don’t receive any commission, royalties or payment for their work, but users are becoming increasingly burnt by viruses and agencies setup to stop illegal trading.

I think that somehow, to stop people illegally downloading files is that one-day their favourite artist or producer will suddenly resist to make or release their material in electronic format (ie. CD’s etc) to reduce file sharing essentially. It seems so easy to simply click on a link and acquire what’s not free, most people don’t think twice about it. But as the saying goes, “There is not such thing as a free lunch!”

(Hardy, C. Dyki, M. 2006.) brings up specific reasons for the online legal issues of such illegal downloading:

1. The Internet is global and who therefore has the responsibility of controlling it?
2. The Internet is electronic and not in physically writing as per say.
3. The Internet is digital and perfect copies of material is a click away.

Thus the Internet and the manner in which e-Commerce is conducted online presents situations and issues that are very hard to control and rectify when it comes to file sharing, as part of its major advantages is that is completely conducts these actions perfectly.

Reference:

• Charles Sturt University MGT220 Study Guide: Hardy, C. Dyki, M. 2006. Charles Sturt University MGT220 e-Commerce Study Guide.