Question

Describe the major social, ethical, and political issues associated with e-commerce. Which one you think is the most critical and difficult to control? plus What are the critical issues related to net neutrality, and describe its impact on e-commerce?

Answer 1

The major social, ethical, and political issues associated with e-commerce can be classified into four main areas, namely-

1. Rights of Information- The personal information of the individuals is at stake in a public platform. Rights to companies and/or individuals to access personal information of others.

2. Intellectual Property Rights- In today’s digital era, internet plays a dominant role. It is a question of implementing Intellectual property rights when the protected work of the people is distributed to others quickly.

3. Governance- The governance factors relate to the jurisdiction to which they belong- state or federal. Should they be subject to the public laws?

4. Safety- This dimension includes welfare of the people as well. For example, some online content might be a threat to the society. Should the people be provided access to such information?

I strongly feel that the rights to information is a critical and that is difficult to control because though there are laws and policies to protect the personal information of the people, the companies use their rights to share information to third parties. A classic example is Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Scandal wherein Facebook has provided rights to Cambridge Analytica to access the personal information of the Facebook users.

Net neutrality refers to the basic code of conduct that Internet Service Providers (ISP) treats all the communications on internet equally without any form of discrimination including charging them differently based on user, content, source of address/destination or communication methods.

The issues with net neutrality is that the ISPs and manufacturers of telecom equipment state that net neutrality would reduce their motivation to improvise on internet operations and reduced competition would eventually increase the competition in the marketplace. This increased operational cost would be an added cost burden for the users. It has a direct impact on e-commerce business because the increase cost of using internet might reduce the volume of growth in the e-commerce industry.

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