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Ethical and legal aspects of computing: a professional perspective from software engineering
O’Regan G., Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland, 2024. 257 pp. Type: Book (9783031526633)
Date Reviewed: Oct 17 2024

With this book, O’Regan efficiently addresses a wide range of ethical and legal issues in computing. It is well crafted, organized, and reader friendly, featuring many recent, relevant examples like tweets, fake news, disinformation, and artificial intelligence (AI), which are especially pertinent for undergraduate students.

The first chapter introduces ethical and legal issues in computing, setting the tone for the rest of the book. It explores what it means to be an ethical software engineer, software tester, and project manager. The chapter discusses intellectual property, software licenses, contract law, and torts in relation to computing, before touching on computer crime.

The second chapter delves into the history of ethics, starting with ancient civilizations and Ancient Greece. It then explores ethics from various religious perspectives, followed by a study of traditional Chinese ethics. Finally, it examines the conventional ethical theories often taught in philosophy courses, including utilitarianism, deontological ethics, libertarianism, and virtue ethics.

This sets the stage for the third chapter, which looks into the professional duties of a computing practitioner. It includes various professional codes of ethics from bodies such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the British Computer Society (BCS), and features a case study to illustrate these concepts.

Chapters 4 to 6 delve into ethical issues in software engineering, data science, and social media. Each chapter discusses the role of ethics, using examples from historical cases like Therac-25 and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, to modern concerns such as algorithmic bias, data privacy, Cambridge Analytica, the Arab Spring, fake news, social media ethics, and AI in facial recognition. Legal differences in privacy between the US and Europe are also covered.

Chapter 7 concentrates on AI and ethics, exploring not only the potential risks and benefits of AI but also delving into ethical issues surrounding self-driving cars, robotics, and expert systems. The chapter contextualizes AI by examining its implications for unemployment, surveillance, discrimination, and misinformation. Additionally, it uses the example of AI in autonomous weapons systems to encourage deep reflection among readers.

Chapter 8 transitions to a focus on the legal aspects of computing. To do this the chapter is dedicated to providing a history of law, covering English common law, civil law, Sharia law, European law, human rights, and freedom of speech and the responsibilities associated with it.

Chapters 9 through 11 delve into the legal and ethical concerns associated with outsourcing, property law, and electronic commerce. Each chapter scrutinizes pertinent legal issues, including patent filing, handling patent infringement, software licensing, and breach of contract, while also considering the ethical implications of these areas. Case studies, such as the patent filing for the first computer, copyright conflicts between Apple and Microsoft, and trademark disputes between Apple Corps and Apple Computer, exemplify and enrich the discussions featured in these chapters.

The final chapter focuses on computer crime, covering scams, malware, credit card fraud, cyber extortion and ransomware, and hacking. These crimes are contemporary concerns familiar to most readers. This chapter serves as a fitting conclusion, highlighting the relevance of the material and the importance of considering ethical and legal aspects of computing.

Reviewer:  Michael Oudshoorn Review #: CR147828
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