CAH0@gte.com (Chuck Hoffman) (08/15/90)
Peter_Urka@ub.cc.umich.edu writes: > It has recently been suggested in this journal that sending > out 'helpful' viruses that would infect machines and destroy harmful > viruses should be thought about. I have and have reached these > conclusions: 1) It is a nice (even ethical) thing to do. 2) It would > not help virus programmer's in a technical sense. If they can write > these things now, new algorithms are but a matter of time. 3) It > should not be done. When I read item #1 of this text, I had to reread it to be sure it wasn't a misprint. In this field of Macintosh programming, ethics is a problem. As a group, we have not defined what our ethics are. There is no standard of ethics for the body of Macintosh programmers. There is no ethics committee, no agreed upon guidelines, no process for the review, upgrade, and growth of our ethical concept. As a group, we're big on knowledge, but, as a group, we may be short on wisdom. Maybe that's because of our relative youth compared with other professions. Without wise and thoughtful mentors or supervisors for large numbers of Macintosh programmers, "ethics" becomes kind of an ad hoc term for whatever values or ethics each individual has developed in some other profession, or life in general. There is a pervading sense that if it seems right (to me) then it's okay (so I'll do it). The recent debate about duplicating copyrighted software was a beautiful example of this. Although personal values and ethics certainly are related, in this field there is a lot of blurring between them, and not a clear understanding by many of how they differ. Would it be ethical to distribute such code? I don't know. Since we have no place within our profession to turn for guidance, I, too, must draw from outside. In our culture, and in our law, there is a well established principle of "informed consent." We do conduct physiological and psychological experiments whose probable outcome may be unknown. But we regard such experimentation as okay only if the person knows what the probable outcomes are, and knows the level of uncertainly, and has the capacity to understand these things, and gives consent. I can imagine cases where a user could give informed consent before installing such code, but I can also imagine other cases where the writer of the code would have no assurance at all that the user understands the implications. Simply displaying text and providing an "OK" button doesn't even meet the crudest standards for determining informed consent. And even if the first user gives informed consent, how does the writer determine the informed consent of someone else who copies the code from the first? Here's where our profession departs from the medical experiment model. There's no control over the process after interviewing the first user. So I don't know. I might say "yes" because of ethics developed in my other profession, but maybe "no" because THIS profession is different and has its own peculariarities. What do you think? P.S. I agree with Peter's point #2, and don't know about #3. - -Chuck - - Chuck Hoffman, GTE Laboratories, Inc. cah0@bunny.gte.com Telephone (U.S.A.) 617-466-2131 GTE VoiceNet: 679-2131 GTE Telemail: C.HOFFMAN