Legal & Ethical

Legal problems such as the ones below need to be protected.

·         Web addiction - this is when public members get addicted to internet browsing, and can’t leave the computer. Internet can be interesting but being addicted to it is another level. It can also affect the healthiness of the user.

·         Copyright & Plagiarism - is a problem mainly of school children copying and pasting things off the internet such as information for work. Most teachers don’t recognize that the child has copied, but some can get caught and get punished for it, especially if it happens on coursework. Copyright and plagiarism can be most important thing not to do when you need work. The Copyright symbol (©) means that the work is owned by someone else. If you want the work you need to ask for permission before you can use it. If you do have the work without permission then this turns into Plagiarism. Also with the amount of ICT these days it makes it easier for people to copy, this is where the Data Protection Act comes in.

·         Snooping - is a problem when public people view information off the internet without permission. This is not allowed because it can lead to plagiarism this can be an effect of copying work.

Law Acts on the community.

•  Unequal access happens on the internet, particularly on every site you visit, for example, if you visit a site and you sign up and it says you have to be a certain age. That’s not getting information. It’s making the site more suitable for you and also making the site for a younger audience. Let’s say EBay for example. This asks for your age so that it can stop you viewing unsuitable things to your age. This is a useful tool because parents can also sign up there children for it, this is known as what is called “Parental Control”. This is a useful tool.
  
  
  Also other countries have unequal access to some websites in different countries, because they don’t want people stealing their information.

·     Data Protection Act – This is an act in law which can keep us safe on the internet to a certain degree. This is a useful act because some people misuse the internet.

·     Privacy of information – This means that information of a company is kept safe, and should have privacy reasons for why people should access the files. They also need to know who touches the information as it can be very important to a company.

·     Computer Misuse Act – This act stops people playing around on computer doing things they really shouldn’t be, for example in schools and businesses they block the control panel to the students and only let administrator’s access it, this is good because students can get information and plant viruses into the computer

Sustainability

Sustainability is where people want to keep a good effort up on the community when dealing with ICT to get younger people into the knowledge of ICT and make the community a better place. Also changing the ways we do to keep the community going. This is an example of a website which is in the sustainability act http://www.btplc.com/responsiblebusiness/supportingourcommunities/learningandskills/ BT are trying to make the world a better place with their responsibilities on their website. They are also trying to save energy to the community.

Teleworking

Teleworking is a good way to work at home, people that live far away from work places can be at home and work. However there can be a load of disadvantages such as if you work at home you could get distracted, it would be hard to separate personal life from work. Also if people get distracted less work that’s been done at home people need to be trusted to do teleworking, otherwise employees can be doing very little work at home. Also if there is bad weather then they can still work, and being a teleworking the company doesn’t have to spend so much money on offices, and money on lighting and heating. However the teleworker has to spend that money on his home with the lights and heating. On the good side, it may tempt more workers to be a teleworker when it involves working at home, because it is then more suitable for those people that struggle to get to work and it could be of loads of different reasons why people cant get to work, such as, disability, live far away, or even because they cant drive. So because of teleworking more people are interested in doing this sort of job. But for this job it involves trust and responsibility.