Information protocol /services besides HTTP
· E-mail (SMTP) - for sending electronic mail messages.
· Usenet News (NNTP) - for having electronic group discussions.
· File Transfer Protocol (FTP) - for transferring files between computers.
· Telnet - for running programs on remote computers.
· WAIS - for searching remote collections of indexed information.
· Gopher - for browsing remote text information through a menu interface.
· Various Others . . .
Each of these works in a client/server manner by having a "language" defined that allows the client and server to communicate with each other in order to give users the information they request. These different languages have different purposes, capabilities, and advantages.
One of the nicest things about the World Wide Web is that it provides "one-stop shopping" for getting information over the Internet. In the past, you would have needed to learn how to use many different software applications in order to use all these services. Now you can use E-mail, News, FTP, Telnet, WAIS, Gopher, and HTTP services all through your favorite Web browser.
As we have know that Internet have large number of benefits for the whole world people, So despite of all these benefits, the internet have some disadvantages and some ethical issues which arise due to the using of internet. All these issues and ethical problem are explained below.
Ethical Issues
We note that this new technology offers new opportunities for misbehaving. While the nature of humankind may not have changed in thousands of years, the opportunities that one has to show the darker sides of one's nature change frequently. Here are some of the new variations made possible or made easier by ubiquitous online communication.
- Posing and masquerading
It is easier to use online communication to pretend to be someone that you are not. Society has for centuries needed to deal with the problem of people pretending to be physicians, priests, policemen, or unmarried men. But it has required considerable skill as an actor to succeed at such deception. It seems to be more common for people on the internet to pose as something that they are not. Even law enforcement authorities do it. Newspapers carry stories of policemen pretending to be teenage girls, hoping to apprehend for prosecution people pretending to be virtuous teenage boys; the search of any large news archive will yield stories of arrests of adults propositioning someone they thought to be a minor. There is room for moral authorities to take an educated stand on these complex and largely undocumented issues.
A less-harmful version of masquerading is presenting an idealized version of you in online communication. Is there an ethical issue in representing yourself as younger, older, more attractive, wealthier, or somehow more desirable? There is clearly a line, but where is it? If you are a convicted murderer, you will probably conceal that in online communication. What about minor crimes? Other traits that society cares about? People do this frequently in everyday life. One would not disclose parking offences at a job interview, unless perhaps the job involved driving.
- Stalking and snooping:
Stalking is the obsession with the whereabouts and activities of another. The internet enables new forms of stalking, which might or might not be dangerous to the object of this interest. It is probably not a violation of any law of any country for an ex-husband to masquerade as a lonely middle-aged woman and try to befriend his ex-wife online, but many people consider such behavior unethical.
There is an increasing number of public sources of data about individuals that might better be kept private. It is against the law to amass such data in some countries, but not in others. Should there be international discussion of the ethics of such databases? Is it ethical for a citizen of a country in which the law protects privacy to use a paid service in another country to find out information about his neighbors?
- Hatemongering:
Because of the ease of posing, the ease of forming communities, and the difficulty in determining authenticity, it's easy to use the internet to monger hate and to spread lies. There is no point giving free publicity to any hatemonger's web site by mentioning it specifically, but the ease of making such a site and its global reach is problematic. If a country has laws about such sites, but the physical facilities providing the information are in another country, it is not at all obvious what to do. Some totalitarian countries have built a firewall around their country's access to global information, allowing nothing in or out without the permission of the government. That approach, while it might solve the hatemongering problem, certainly creates others.
- Secrecy:
For many years, some governments have held that it is important that they be able to intercept and read any correspondence by or to their citizens. One large European country bans encryption technology entirely. The United States
Because the mechanisms of the internet are decentralized, and because encryption can be done entirely in software, it is difficult to regulate the ability of the public to use military-grade encryption technology. The mathematics of encryption are widely known. The ethical issues in the use of encryption in everyday life are not well understood.
- Plagiarism:
It is easy to find academic papers on the internet. Students from preteens to doctoral candidates place their written work online, for a wide variety of reasons. Does this form an attractive nuisance? Almost every educational institution has rules against plagiarism, but these days it is almost impossible for a teacher to track down the source of plagiarized material. Is it unethical to place such material online? To index it?
- Search and index:
There are hundreds of search engines, topic indexes, and directory services whose purpose is to help people find online whatever they are looking for. Should the operator of a search engine be held responsible for that engine's discovery of unethical material? Is the operator of an index computer that indexes 300 million pages responsible for searching them to remove child pornography, hatemongering, mail order weapons companies, or vendors of illegal drugs? If they are, then who pays for it? If they are not, then who is responsible if a child in Peru uses a search engine in Aruba to locate a gun for sale in Texas
- Integrity In Online Degree Programs
Those involved in online education often hear the question, “but, how do you know the person taking the course on the other side of the computer is really who they say they are?”
This question, although not unique to online education, strikes at a very important issue to online education, both for educators and for students. That issue is integrity.
Integrity is the key that holds the world of virtual education together. For the distance learning system to work—for the online degree to have value—it is necessary that everyone operate with integrity.
Student Integrity Issues:
We hear most commonly of issues related to student integrity. It seems that the online environment does lend itself to temptation in the area of academics.
Cheating & Academic Dishonesty:
Probably the most common concern among critics of the online degree is the one voiced above. How does a school ensure that its students are operating honorably?
In the Internet age, the opportunities to defraud are almost limitless. It is possible for students to fake their term papers. It is possible for students to cheat on distance-administered tests. It is even possible for students to have others take their courses for them.
But, if you think about it, all of these things are possible—and they all happen—in campus-based systems, also. They are not unique to the online environment.
However, good schools put mechanisms in place to ensure academic integrity. They require students to take proctored exams, at least occasionally. Their instructors match student writing samples from a variety of sources (emails, discussion posts, submitted papers) and they rely on peer monitoring.
After all, just like on campus, nobody wants to be the person working hard, while another is getting by cheating.
There are several great systems for monitoring academic integrity on a course by course basis. Good schools use them aggressively.
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