Gift Of Fire

In the fourth chapter of the book, A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computing Technology, the ethics, laws and important court cases regarding the internet, copyright, plagiarism, patents and software are discussed. The chapter puts great emphasis on the concept of intellectual property and how it relates to copyright within the legal confines of the United States. It discusses the United States copyright law as it was and how it currently is, as well as the exceptions to the law. In addition, the chapter relates the challenges that come with determining ones intellectual property. One interesting point it makes is how, in the past, businesses and professionals were the only ones who had copyrights due to the fact that …show more content…
It goes into great depth about the concept of “hacking” and what a “hacker” is. The book discusses how the term has changed meaning over the years, for the term “hacker” once meant that someone was a creative programmer, to a certain extent the term is still used today. However, the connotation of the word has also changed to reflect a change in attitudes. Now, the term hacker is often interchangeable with “criminal,” for many criminals have seen what you can do with hacking and thus have stolen thousand, even millions of dollars by hacking into people’s accounts and stealing their money. In addition, the book discusses how hacking can also be used in foreign policy, by governments in order to spy and undermine their enemies. The chapter then goes on to examine the punishments that the United States can hand out to hackers, as well as posing the question of whether or not the United States should be able to enforce their laws when it involves foreign countries, foreign companies and foreign individuals. This topic of hacking is very timely, due to the fact that every day, people are constantly being taken advantage of by hackers, and every day, news stories are breaking of business and government espionage as well as hackers hacking individuals. For example, just recently, a scandal broke when it was discovered that thousands of Target customers had their credit card information stolen by …show more content…
It goes into detail about how the introduction of computers created many fears, and many problems within society. Of those fears, was the destruction of jobs. Many feared that computers would someday outpace individuals, and thus lead to a huge amount of unemployment. Although this has yet to happen, there is still much concern, as anyone who wishes to work in a field that requires this new technology often must have extensive background with working with the technology, or have the ability to go through extensive training. However, the book points out that the change has also led to a change in the types of jobs available. Instead of a mass amount of unemployment, new jobs have been created by computing technology. Computer engineering and system analyst jobs have been in abundance, although it has been pointed out that in order to have these jobs, one must have extensive training beforehand. One interesting point made was the concept of offshoring, the ethics behind it, and how the creation of these new technologies has led to an increase in off shoring of jobs, due to the fact that many of these jobs can now be done for much less or be done by programs or a fewer amount of

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