Ethics question: Suppose you wrote a non-malicious virus, just to see if you cou

Question

Ethics question: Suppose you wrote a non-malicious virus, just to see if you could do it; it only displays a box on the screen saying it has been installed successfully, and then deletes itself. Is that ethical behavior? Justify your answer with principles of ethics, not just your own opinions. Now suppose that to try out your virus, you inform a friend, attempt to pass the virus to her, and succeed. Is that ethical behavior? Justify your answer, again based on principles of ethics. Now suppose you release the virus without warning to a larger set of people. Is that ethical behavior? Justify your answer, again based on principles of ethics. At what point does your behavior change from ethical to unethical? Is the point based on size? Number of affected systems? Effect of virus? Something else?

Explanation / Answer

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Suppose you wrote a non-malicious virus, just to see if you could do it; it only displays a box on the screen saying it has been installed successfully, and then deletes itself. Is that ethical behavior?

Answer:

Yes, it is ethical to have a non-malicious installed on your own computer. If we have a look at principal of ethics, none of the term breaches in this way, Since intention during this process is to learn not even involving other. All moral values during this process will remain intact and in good limits.

Now suppose that to try out your virus, you inform a friend, attempt to pass the virus to her, and succeed. Is that ethical behavior?

Answer:

In this case, it all depends on honesty and integrity associated with the friend. Although by informing a friend, you are commiting to keep your behaviour or virus program within limits, which would bind yourself only to certain extent. If you try or something bad haapens within your friends PC, for which he/she was not informed, it could affect your reputation along with diversion of behaviour from ethical or non ethical. It could either be accidental of intentional, but it would place question mark on moral values if something got wrong.

Now suppose you release the virus without warning to a larger set of people. Is that ethical behavior? Justify your answer, again based on principles of ethics. At what point does your behavior change from ethical to unethical? Is the point based on size? Number of affected systems? Effect of virus? Something else?

Answer:

No, it is not an ethical behaviour to release virus to larger set of people with or without their acknowledgement. It is simply law abiding and totally against loyality to their people and society. It is neary breach of each and every ethical prinicipal to release virus to huge population without taking into account its effect on their life. At this point, one can say that behaviour has transformation from ethical to unethical because of uninformed action which could harm or disturb someone's life. This point is based on all the factors which defines extent of damage which could result from unethical behaviour.

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