1.6 Ethical, Legal, Cultural & Environmental Issues

• Ensuring public safety • Security of data

• allowing someone to illegally share personal data • helping to steal financial information • helping to illegally copy and distribute media • extorting information or blackmailing someone

• The Data Protection Act • The Computer Misuse Act • The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act • Creative Commons Licensing

• the digital divide • changing nature of employment

division that exists between those people who can use technology and can’t.

the manufacturing and use of computers has had a negative impact on the environment.

Legislation passed by parliament that governs the protection of personal data in the UK.

Defines and criminalises a number of offences involving the use of a computer

• Illegal to access data unless without permission • Illegal to access data to use for further crime -Illegal to change any data without permission

gives the creator of published material the control over the way it is used.

A set of rights that prevents people copying and distributing a piece of work without the copyright holder’s permission.

A model for creating technology that promotes free access to its design and makes it free to share.

Software owned by a company

Pros: - Costs nothing - Source code available - Can have many authors - Derivative can be made freely available Cons: - No guarantee to be bug - free - Support might not be readily available

Pros: - Should be free of bugs - Patches and Feature Updates - Organisation support - Widespread support Cons: - Cost - Software can’t be adapted - Limited to a single computer or network