DUE DATE: March 5, 2004 (the Friday immediately before Spring break), by *hardcopy* in instructor's mailbox.
The purpose of this assignment is to analyze a situation of computer ethics using both law and two different theories of philosophical ethics. Your paper will analyze the scenario according to three different perspectives:
Consider the following scenario:
Scenario: Sally Snapshot is an amateur photographer and a young college student. She is very interested in computer science as well as photography, and is looking for a way to combine the fields as a career. Recently, she has become very involved in digital photography, and she enjoys creating special effects with her digital camera equipment and her sophisticated computer editing software. Although Sally would never dream of posing for others in the nude, she wants to try out a new soft focus fadeout effect that she's read about in some of the latest photography magazines. She also wants to learn more about "glamour" shots, because she thinks it's fun to make people look sexy without being overly revealing, and she thinks she might actually start making some money from her hobby if she can learns some good glamour photography techniques. So, she creates a miniature glamour studio in her own home, and sets up a timed shot of herself stretched out suggestively on a faux fur rug. She knows that clothes will ruin the end result she is looking for, so she pushes aside her qualms and takes the shot nude. She then spends many hours fuzzing out the picture, so that only her face, hair and shoulders are really in clear focus ... the rest of her is only visible as a suggestive outline on the fur. The result is actually quite romantic.
When Sally shows the picture to some of her close friends, they are quite impressed with her photography skills, and they all beg her to take similar shots of themselves for their boyfriends. This makes her wonder: could she actually go into business for herself now, even though she is still developing her skills? She decides that a good way to find out will be to create her own photography-oriented website and see what kind of reaction she gets. So, she spends the next few months developing a snazzy-looking website with a short biosketch of herself, and a few of her best photos. She doesn't want to have to worry about any legal issues, so she includes only pictures of public places and a few self photos. When her friends see her Web page, they are amazed that she didn't include her own "glamour pose." "You've got to add it to your page," they tell her. "It's your best work ever, and you'll have tons of potential customers emailing you once they see what you can do!" Reluctantly, she decides they are right, and adds a half-page version of her own suggestive shot as the center stage of a new linked page, entitled "glamour girls." Her friends are ecstatic. "Everyone will love it!" they assure her.
Apparently, Sally's friends are right. Her new "glamour girls" page begins getting hits almost immediately, and they increase rapidly as the days go by. Sally begins getting email requesting special "glamour girl" appointments, and she even hears from actor and actress hopefuls who are interested in developing portfolios. She takes a few jobs, and begins to think she really make a go of a serious business. Then, one day, a few weeks after she had posted her "glamour girls" page, she receives an anonymous pornographic note, lewdly discussing her "sexual attributes." Sally is furious, but she doesn't know what to do. Soon afterwards, she notices some web postings discussing her web page, and starts reviewing them. At first, she wonders how people can be so crude as to denigrate what was obviously intended as a romantic picture into a porn-type shot ... until she sees a posting of her original, undisguised full-nude photograph! Sally is stunned and shaken. She doesn't understand how someone had obtained the original pose, which she had never shown *anyone*, not even her closest friends.
Both livid and humiliated, Sally asks some of her friends who are particularly good at internet research to try to find out what happened. Eventually, they determine that the likely source of the crystal-clear nude image was -- Sally herself! Unbeknownst to her, the photo editing software that Sally used never removed the original image during Sally's many edits and soft-focus cover-ups, thus allowing several enterprising software types to uncover it after some work using the image actually posted. When she learned this, Sally was embarrassed as well as angry: not only could the world see her sprawled nude on a fur like some playboy centerfold, but any objection she made would prove that she was ignorant of the finer details of the editing software she used in creating the posted photo.
In despair, Sally decides to speak to an attorney to see if she has any legal rights against those posting her photograph and sending her lewd mail (which has been steadily growing in volume).
Assignment: Your paper should analyze the following legal and ethical questions according to each of the perspectives noted above:
** Feel free to include any additional research, questions or discussion that you feel is relevant based on any of the above perspectives. **
Hints on organizing your paper and clarification of requirements: