Ethics and the Internet: The Cyberspace Behaviour of People, Communities and Organisations

The focus of this paper is ethics and the Internet. By the term 'ethics', I intend to refer to moral philosophy, or the body of principles governing right and wrong. Many observers are likely to interpret ethics as being confined to abstract judgements about good and evil. I interpret the position of the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics (AAPAE) to be quite different. It appears to adopt an alternative, instru mentalist approach to ethics, whereby bodies of principles are expected to have volitional or motivational power and, thereby, influence actors' behaviours, e.g. "policy makers... [must] understand the ethical problems of the impact of computer technology on the lives of people. This professional and applied strand must be underpinned by a philosophical examination which builds on the long history of the study of ethics" (Weckert 1999, p.ii). This paper commences with an introductory segment that considers information technology generally. This leads into a discussion of the Internet, which is important both in its own right and also because it is the primary instance of the notion of "information infrastructure. " The concept