E-Culture: Ethical Issiues

Topic: E-Culture:Ethical Issiues Electronic technology is changing our life-style to a great extent. Advancement in the fields of information and communication technology (ICT) and electronics has resulted in the emergence e-commerce, e-business, e-banking, e-mails, e-organizations, e-governance, e-journals, e-books, e-medicine, internet, web-shopping, etc, which have set in a trend for e-culture. Electronic culture is enveloping the entire world, it is a global phenomenon.

It is the ICT-availability and Internet access that provides opportunities for production of e-culture. e-Culutre: involves preserving and presenting cultural heritage in line with the challenges of the future; exhibiting valuable cultural assets clearly and informatively using state-of-the-art technology . However, the rapid development of ICT globally also has led to the growth of different ethical issues and made life enormously complex.

These issues have virtually no boundaries and may affect any country across the globe. “Ethics are moral standards that help guide behaviour, actions, and choices. Ethics are grounded in the notion of responsibility (as free moral agents, individuals, organizations, and societies are responsible for the actions that they take) and accountability (individuals, organizations, and society should be held accountable to others for the consequences of their actions)”.

ICT ethics are not exceptional from the above-mentioned view of ethics. According to some estimates, three quarter of the present generation of people in the countries saturated with computers will be spending 80 per cent of their free time in the cyberspace, therefore it is important to review the ethical issues because it threatens social environment of societies.

Globalization and digital convergence in the emerging knowledge society has raised complex ethical issues in relation to the freedom of expression, access to information, right to privacy, intellectual and property rights. The concept is electronic commerce is the use of internet and the web to do businesses. ‘Commercial transactions involve the exchange of value across organizational or individual boundaries in return for products and services’.

The internet and it use of e-com have raised several ethical issues about protection of customer and companies. One of the main issues for e-com is intellectual property which includes copyrights and software piracy. The explosion of interest in the internet, with growing numbers of people obtaining access to it has also increased the potential in ethical issue like breeching privacy and security. Purpose of this report is to address the several ethical issue faced by eCulture in terms of e-commerce and its impact on e-commerce .