Question

Case Study 1

Mike has chosen improvement of commercial systems and security threat as a research subject for his Informatics Ethics course. He develops an algorithm for the purpose of implementing his project in a practical process. He can fix the security vulnerabilities of some companies with this algorithm and he adds these vulnerabilities to his project as project grade. When one of the companies that Mike has entered searches the source of the attack, they find university laboratory as a source of this attack and informs the chancellery of his university.

Roles:

Company: They are in the opinion of giving punishment to the student because of creating security threat to their systems.

2. Mike: He advocated that he has done a good project and he just found the security vulnerabilities of the company, he did not damage their system.

3. Professor: He stated that Mike has done a great job and he did not damage network systems of the company

4. Chancellery: They are in the opinion of awakening student for executing project process in university laboratory

Which argument(s) do you think are justifiable? What will be your decision in perspective of copyright laws. Make sure to provide through explanation.

Answer 1

According to me, the argument 2 and 3 are justifiable i.e. a statement of mike explaining about his project which finds security vulnerabilities of the company, and proclaiming that he did no damage their (company's systems) systems, and the acknowledgement of Professor stating that mike has done a great job and he did not damage network systems of the company.

Where as on the other hand, Chancellery keeps their opinion of awakening student for executing project process in university laboratory, but here is a thing that we need to understand, chancellery is not sure if it were students who created a security threat for the company or was it someone else, so one cannot simply blame students who were working on laboratory, detail investigation is needed to identify who is the culprit.

The authoritatives of the company simply cannot declare punishment for the students just by proceeding with the opinion given by a chancellery, where there might be possibility that students might not have even used the systems of university laboratory.

My decision on this would be to proceed the investigation further so as to find the real culprit behind it. and to make a decision in favor of students (if they are found innocent) and to praise mike for his excellent work done.

Hence, the arguments 2 and 3 are strong when compared to the arguments 1 and 4.