Tutorial Presentation - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Mark Poster

Internet ethics is obviously a very debatable and controversial topic - and is something which is explored in Mark Poster's essay on 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of the virtual space. Our everyday life is constructed in accordance to rules and boundaries, set out to protect and control what people in society can and cannot do. It is important to note, these laws are set out by the government and mostly enforced through the local police.

However, when we move to the virtual space, boundaries and control is all but set free - enabling the entire world's population to interact and communicate with each other. While this "freedom" is often seen as empowering and Utopian like, it also raises some questions of what is 'ethical' and 'morally right' when taking part in the virtual world. There are no police (the governments can control some webspace (ie. China) but for now the internet is at large unregulated), there are no physical boundaries, and people now have an anonymous identity where everyone can talk as equals disregarding age, gender, race and class. These critical aspects of cyberspace is what makes it so unique - it is basically a world entirely separate from reality.

Poster's first discussion underlines the difference between cyberspace and reality, and the two different boundaries and norms. He asks: "...if new ethical rules are required for mediated culture, perhaps the earlier system of ethics was itself flawed..." I think this is a very interesting question, as it attempts to explore just how much of cyberspace can be compared to reality - and if the laws we have today are suitable and adequate enough. Poster also references Nietzsche's approach, in which Nietzsche defines ethics as a historical construction. He also points out the "standpoint of the group is crucial to the type of morality it will create." The 'group' refers to 'the noble' or people in power -in our case, we have governments which create the laws for society to abide by. This leads to my first question: Do you agree with Nietzche's approach, and why?

Poster next describes the pitfalls of the openness of the internet with things such as spamming and flaming. Censorship is also an important issue - including things such as religion and pornography(discussed in the other articles for this week). Censorship is continually pushed in cyberspace - for example one surgeon in the article decided to broadcast on the internet a live surgery of a sex change operation. There has also been other cases which have raised questions over the morals of broadcasting questionable content online. This is slightly on a tangent but I recently saw the movie 'Untraceable' which also has a strong theme of internet morality in it - in fact the whole plot is based on the immense power of the internet and the ability of the public to control what happens on it. People are naturally curious, and because of the openness of the internet(and the almighty Google), people can look up and research anything they want. Protection of young children and teenagers may also come into context here - Poster raises the question of the ethics of child pornography and the downloading of pornography online. This leads to my next question...

Has the public/private changed alongside the growing rise of new media? In fact, is anything private anymore?? Just thinking of sites like Facebook...once information is stored on a database its hard to get rid of. Furthermore there is the issue of the distribution of personal photos and such...

Anonymity is also a very interesting concept in relation to cyberspace. We talked about the case of ICERED a few weeks ago, and that touched on internet ethics and the abundance of extreme views and opinions online. I posted in the comments for one of the other presentations a while ago, but I think the most widely known anonymous forum today is 4chan.org - mainly because it is the source of a lot of controversy and internet fads (most arising from the /b/ board). They are often associated with hackers, and they call themselves 'Anonymous'. Most recently, there was the case of Sarah Palin's yahoo account being hacked by a forumer from that site. Not only did this question the right of privacy, the anonymity of the forum meant all the users could post whatever they wanted without being prosecuted. It also resulted in masses of users attempting to log in to the account, and screenshots being broadcasted of the inbox etc. Read more about it here (the comments section has an interesting discussion about internet ethics and anonymity too!!).

So from this example, anonymity online clearly changes the way people interact with each other, as well as the actions people take. I still remember a few months ago, there was the Youtube scandal of those 6 girls who beat up this other girl at a house in order to gain 'Youtube fame'. Arising from this, some people were posting phone numbers and myspace pages of the accused alongside Youtube videos - resulting in death threats and mass calls from all over the world. Some say the internet "promotes irresponsibility", while others think freedom of speech - no matter what the opinion - is a human right. Of course some of society's culture can transfer on into cyberspace - "netiquette" is a term used to describe how one should behave when online. Anonymity is clearly an important factor when looking at morals online though - the freedoms the internet gives everyone allows people to express their true feelings and thoughts without much consequence. There are pitfalls from this utopian ideal of free speech though - of course not everyone will agree with everything that is suggested online. So from this, I ask:

Has the anonymity on the internet altered your identity online at all (eg. on forums, in online games, commenting on a blog etc.)? Have you taken advantage of anonymity online, and have you been able to express yourself more through the medium?

Identity is further discussed in Poster's essay, with our real life identity compared to the online one. In conclusion, Poster urges us to think about Nietzsche's approach of the good and the bad of the virtual world. With cultural transformation, ethics may also evolve to suit cyberspace - especially through the aspiration for an enhancement of life. Politics are now very much involved with the ethics online - especially since the internet has cut all bounfaries between people of different cultures and countries. It seems politics will continue to be strongly linked to the ethics of cyberspace - linking not just individuals, but communities together in terms of power. This leads to my final question:

Do you think the internet should be regulated, and why?