Analyzing Peer to Peer Using Information Ethics

Analyzing Peer to Peer Using Information Ethics

Mariarosaria Taddeo University of Hertfordshire, University of Oxford [email protected]

Antonino Vaccaro IESE Business School [email protected]

 

1  

Analyzing Peer to Peer Using Information Ethics

Abstract This article presents an ethical analysis of the implementation of peer to peer (P2P) technology. It contributes both to the debate on the global effects that the dissemination of such technology might have on the contemporary information society and to the debate, developed in a special issue of The Information Society (“The Philosophy of Information, its Nature and Future Developments”, 25(3), 2009), on the use of Information Ethics to address ethical and policy problems in the management of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The analysis concerns the ethical consequences of the implementation of P2P architecture on the informational environment, and focuses in particular on its effects on the processes of information creation, communication and storage. Information Ethics is used in order to assess the ethical value of these effects and to provide guidance for the management of P2P networks. The article concludes with suggestions for policy-makers related to the ethical deployment of P2P technology.

Keywords: Information, Information Ethics, Infosphere, Level of Abstraction, Peer-toPeer Architecture.

1. Introduction Peer to peer (P2P) is a label that describes a variety of phenomena occurring in different contexts. Generally speaking, P2P refers to a distributed network infrastructure in which users, known as peers, directly share resources by making files on their computers available to other peers in that network. Sometimes, P2P refers to a specific class of

 

2  

protocols adopted by P2P networks, or to the algorithm on which they are based (Schollmeier, Gruber et al. 2003). In this paper, we use P2P to refer to a distributed network infrastructure (Fox 2001). P2P has rapidly become one of the most common means of sharing resources over the Internet. The design concepts behind P2P date back to the US Department of Defence’s ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and Usenet, but this particular type of architecture gained worldwide popularity with the creation of Napster in 2004 (Giese 1996). Napster, which was designed specifically to share music codified into mp3 files, was rapidly superseded by decentralized P2P file sharing networks, which allowed the sharing of every type of digital data. Most likely as a consequence of the coverage given to Napster and other similar initiatives in the media (Goth 2006), P2P networks have been largely associated to legal and economic problems created by copyright infringements (Stern 2000). Faced with substantial economic losses and, more importantly, a paradigmatic change in the models of distribution of their products, the multimedia industry has begun to promote legal and political actions (Condry 2004; Bhattacharjee, Gopal et al. 2006). Given current legislation, the illegality of redistributing content protected by copyright without permission is generally undisputed. However, the ethical implications of P2P are wider, much less well defined and more open to debate. P2P networks can be used for many purposes, depending mainly on the type, origin, nature and provenance of the resources shared across them. As is the case with many other technologies that provide efficient and easily accessed opportunities for communication and information creation and distribution, P2P networks are an effective means for the sustainable and commendable development of society, but can also hinder

 

3  

social development and promote or sustain immoral behaviors. For example, P2P is increasingly being used to support scientific research1 and education,2 but it is also exploited to support immoral activities, such as the redistribution of child pornography or the diffusion of violent and abusive documents (Wortley and Smallbone 2006). The wide diffusion of P2P and the variety of its effects and uses has given rise to a debate on the ethical implications of such technology for the dynamics of the contemporary information society. Several criteria have been proposed for the assessment of these implications, ranging from the effects of P2P on the technological progress of a society (Lee 2005), to its influence on the development of virtuous interactions (Lee 2005; Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006). The analysis presented in this paper contributes to this debate with a new approach, which considers the systemic effects of P2P on the environment and combines the informational and the environmental perspective to analyze the ethical implications of the use of this technology. The informational perspective enables one to focus on the role of P2P in the processes of information creation, storage and communication. While the environmental perspective casts a new light on the ethical problems related to the dissemination of ICTs in general and of P2P in particular, as it shows the importance of considering the effects of such technologies with respect to the environment in which they occur. Information Ethics (Floridi 2008a) is the ethical theory endorsed in this paper to assess the ethical implications of P2P. This theory shows to be particularly

                                                                                                                1

Consider, e.g., the deployment of P2P architecture for bioinformatics and medical research, such as the Genome project. 2 The LionShare project is a pertinent example of the use of P2P architecture in education. LionShare was designed to facilitate file sharing of document among education institutions globally. It was developed by the US Pennsylvania State University and MIT, and Simon Fraser University in Canada.

 

4  

suitable for this purpose as it combines the informational and environmental perspectives. The paper is organized into seven sections. Section 2 describes two of the most relevant analyses of ethical implications of P2P provided in the literature. Section 3 focuses on a description of P2P architecture and highlights its informational nature. Section 4 introduces Information Ethics, which is applied to the case of P2P in Section 5. Section 6 describes the contributions of the ethical analysis presented in the paper to the elaboration of a policy for the management of P2P networks. Finally, section 7 summarizes the main contributions of this paper, highlighting their significance to the ongoing ethical debate on P2P.

2. A broad perspective for the ethical analysis of P2P A large part of the ethical debate on P2P focuses on the use of this technology for the unauthorized and illegal sharing of copyrighted materials (Peitz and Waelbroeck 2006). The analysis of this particular use of P2P file-sharing networks has led to a general understanding of P2P as an intrinsically unethical tool (Keen 2008). However, the impact of P2P on society has a much wider significance than the unauthorized circulation of copyrighted material. The relevance and influence of the dissemination of P2P on the development of many sectors of the information society reveals the potential dangers of an unethical deployment of this architecture, and the need for reliable and shareable ethical criteria whereby it would be possible to evaluate the global ethical effects of P2P architecture on our society rather than focusing on the specific implementations of this architecture. Approaches evaluating the global ethical effects of P2P are already extant in the literature. (McGowan 2004) analyses P2P focusing on its role on the dissemination of

 

5  

freedom of expression in our society; while (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006) focuses on the effects that the diffusion of P2P has on the propagation of collaborative behaviors among members of P2P communities. More in detail, McGowan shows that P2P is good for society because, by facilitating the circulation of information, it increases individuals’ opportunities to express themselves. As a speech-facilitating technology, some P2P networks should be supported and protected in their development, as systems that are both legally and morally good. McGowan’s analysis provides an example of a wider approach to the ethical assessment of P2P, according to which the ethical value of P2P is not assessed with respect to a specific usage, for example the sharing of copyrighted files, but is considered in the light of its global effect on society. Benkler and Nissenbaum’s analysis also endorses a global perspective on the consideration of the ethical implications of P2P. The authors hold that the diffusion of P2P offers an opportunity for more users to engage in practices that permit them to exhibit and experience virtuous behaviors. They describe P2P networks as sociotechnical systems, which offer a means of production for various kinds of informational goods, and also serve as a context for ‘positive character formation’ (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006, p. 395). According Benkler and Nissenbaum, this is because P2Pbased production occurs in collaborative contexts, in which large groups of individuals cooperate to produce information, knowledge or cultural goods, without relying on market rules or managerial hierarchies to coordinate their enterprise. They suggest that the diffusion of P2P networks breeds the dissemination of ethical behaviors and, eventually, could lead to the development of a more virtuous society. Following the analyses presented in (McGowan 2004) and (Benkler and

 

6  

Nissenbaum 2006), we distinguish between two types of ethical effects of the use of P2P. Local effects are the first kind: they are related to the informational content transmitted using a P2P network, and may differ depending on the kind of the communicated content. Consider, for example, the effects of the use and diffusion of LionShare (see footnote 2) against the consequences of the use of P2P to breach individual rights such as privacy or anonymity. The second type of effects is systemic: they concern the way in which information is transmitted via a P2P network in the environment, and the effects of such communication on the environment. In the rest of this article we will focus on systemic effects. Before doing so, however, let us describe P2P in more detail and investigate its role in the processes of information creation, storage and communication.

3.

P2P: an architecture for the communication of information

The distinguishing characteristic of the P2P architecture is that it departs from the client-server paradigm.3 In P2P architecture, each peer is directly linked to other peers without the centralized coordination of a server. There is no hierarchy among peers, as every peer can provide and receive resources by communicating with every other peer. A network may be designed in order to implement P2P architecture. There are many different implementations available, both pure and hybrid. The former are composed only of peers, who act as both resource providers and resource receivers, while the latter are constituted by nodes, which may act only as providers (servers) or as receivers (clients). Often, these networks are created on top of other networks – for example, the Internet – and for this reason they are called overlay networks.                                                                                                                 3

The client/server paradigm is implemented using distributed application architecture that assigns the execution of the given tasks among the providers (servers) and service requesters (clients). The server shares parts of its resources with the client, but the client shares none of its resources with the server.

 

7  

P2P networks provide a base for different types of services dedicated to the management of the network connections and to the indexing and discovery of the resources made available by the networked peers. Depending on the type of shared resources, a P2P network can be dedicated to sharing processing power, disk storage, network bandwidth or stored data. The distributed nature of the P2P network resources, the possibility to add or remove nodes without compromising the overall stability of the network, and the lack of single points of potential failure make the services offered via P2P highly scalable and robust. Two aspects of the P2P are noteworthy for the development of ethical analysis: the reduction of informational friction; and the twofold role of information in the sharing processes occurring in a P2P network. Informational friction refers ‘[…] to the forces that oppose the flow of information within (a region of) the Infosphere, and hence […] to the amount of work and effort required to generate, obtain, process and transmit information in a given environment’, (Floridi 2007a). One of the main implications of P2P networks is that they facilitate the sharing of information by reducing the amount of effort required to obtain and transmit it. In this way, P2P networks allow for a reduction in informational friction (Floridi 2007a) in the processes of information communication and elaboration. In section 5 we will argue that this aspect of P2P has important ethical implications. Information in P2P networks is both the product of some peer’s elaboration (e.g. someone making available some information), and the resource to share and pass on, through the network. In section 5 we argue that this aspect also leads to important ethical consequences. Having provided the reader with more detail about the P2P architecture and its effects on information processes we now introduce Information Ethics.

 

8  

4. Information Ethics and the Methodology of the Level of Abstraction Information Ethics is concerned with the ethical issues in which information is involved as a resource, as a product, and as a target (Floridi 2008a). It proposes a twofold approach:

(i)

considering

the

whole

information-cycle,

from

creation,

to

communication, and finally storage, and (ii) analyzing informationally all entities involved in a moral scenario. The moral agents and their actions are considered as part of the informational environment to which they belong as informational systems themselves (Figure 1).

Figure 1 “In IE [Information Ethics], the ethical discourse concerns any entity,

understood informationally, that is, not only all persons, their cultivation, well-being and social interactions, not only animals, plants and their proper natural life, but also anything that exists, from paintings and books to stars and stones; anything that may or will exist, like future generations; and anything that was but is no more, like our ancestors or old civilizations. Indeed, according to IE, even ideal, intangible or intellectual objects can have a minimal degree of moral value, no matter how humble, and so be entitled to some respect.” (Floridi 2008, p. 51). Figure from (Floridi 2008, p. 48)

In this framework, two concepts are of prime relevance: Infosphere and informational ontology. The Infosphere is the totality of what exists - what philosophers would describe as ‘Being’ - when considered from an informational perspective. The

 

9  

Infosphere includes agents and objects, services, relations and processes, as well as the space within which they interact. It is not to be confused with cyberspace, as it includes online as well as offline and analogue domains. Infosphere comprises books and trees, online websites and rocks, movies in digital format and the paintings on the Sistine Chapel. The Infosphere is the environment in which animate and inanimate, digital and analogue informational objects may be morally evaluated. Thus, Information Ethics achieves a universal ecological approach, according to which not only human beings and other living things, but also artifacts may have moral rights, which need to be considered at least in a minimal and overridable sense. This universal perspective is grounded in the ontocentric principle, according to which all entities, understood as informational objects, have the fundamental ethical right to exist and flourish. In Floridi’s words: ‘[…], any form of reality (any instance of information/being), simply by the fact of being what it is, enjoys a minimal, initial, overridable, equal right to exist (be left alone) and develop (not to be interfered) in a way which benefits its nature’ (Floridi 2007b). In such a universal context, the morality of a given action is assessed with respect to the effects that it will have on the recipient of the action.4 The recipients are called patients and, hence, this is referred to as the patient-oriented perspective of Information Ethics. According to this perspective, we can decide whether an action is evil only on the basis of a clear understanding of its effects on interacting patients.

                                                                                                                4

 

 With  this  respect,  Information  Ethics  is  a  consequentialist  ethical  theory.  

10  

To summarize, Information Ethics is an environmental ethics, which endorses an ontocentric and patient-oriented approach, and in which the morality of a course of action is evaluated on the base of its effects on informational entities (Floridi 2008a). Within this framework, Information Ethics offers four moral laws that ought to be respected by any course of action in order to preserve the wellbeing and continued flourishing of the Infosphere and its inhabitants. 0. Entropy ought not to be caused in the Infosphere (null law); 1. Entropy ought to be prevented in the Infosphere; 2. Entropy ought to be removed from the Infosphere; 3. The flourishing of informational entities as well as the whole Infosphere ought to be promoted by preserving, cultivating, enhancing and enriching their properties. The concept of entropy adopted in the four laws is referred by Floridi as informational entropy and indicates the result of any form of ‘destruction, corruption, pollution, depletion (marked reduction in quantity, content, quality, or value) or unjustified closure of the Infosphere’ (Floridi 2001). Informational entropy is the evil, which should be avoided in the Infosphere and should be understood as a metaphysical concept, which does not necessarily correlate to the concept of physical entropy. The level of abstractions (LoAs) is the methodology used by Floridi in formulating his theory of Information Ethics (Floridi 2008b). A LoA is a finite but nonempty set of observables accompanied by a statement of what feature of the system under consideration, such a LoA stands for. A collection of LoAs constitutes an interface. An interface is used when analyzing a system from various points of view, that is, at varying LoAs. For example, a human being observed at a chemical LoA

 

11  

consists of the observables of the chemical processes ongoing in the human organism, while a human being observed at the LoA of an ethicist might be identified by the observables that represent her moral duties and rights. A single LoA does not reduce a human being to merely her ongoing chemical processes, or to her rights and duties. A LoA is a tool that helps to make explicit the observation perspective and constrain it to only those elements that are relevant in a particular situation. LoAs are hierarchically organized; a high LoA enables a general perspective and allows for a general analysis of the observed system. A low LoA provides a less general perspective and allows for a more detailed analysis. Shifting from higher to lower LoAs is like looking at a map of a city first with the naked eye, and then with a magnifying glass. In the first case, one sees a general model of a city, which could potentially fit any city. If one looks at the map with the magnifying glass, then the map becomes a model of just one city. In the same way, at a low LoA, the observed P2P network identifies a specific implementation of the architecture, while at a high LoA, the observed P2P network represents potentially any implementation of the architecture. Now that the reader is acquainted with Information Ethics and the methodology of LoAs we can proceed to analyze the ethical consequences of the implementation of P2P architecture.

5. An informational and environmentally oriented analysis of P2P According to the four moral laws of Information Ethics, any increase of the informational entropy in the Infosphere that P2P might cause is ethically evil, while the flourishing and prospering of informational entities in the Infosphere due to the presence of P2P are ethically good.

 

12  

The description of P2P architecture provided in Section 3 highlighted two main effects of the implementation of this architecture: reduction of informational friction, and the twofold role of information as a product and a resource in the processes of information sharing. These aspects have important consequences and deeply affect the environment in which P2P is used, as they may lead to both ethical and unethical consequences. The task of this section is to identify the criteria to endorse when implementing P2P architecture in order to promote the ethical uses and avoid unethical ones. The twofold nature of information, as a product and as a resource, follows from the way information is transmitted across the network. Consider for example the case of a lecturer, Leonard, who uses LionShare with the intent of downloading the video of seminar that he could not attend but in which he was very interested. By joining LionShare, Leonard will be connected through the P2P network to a number of peers. Every peer may hold the file with the entire video or just parts of it. Philip establishes a communication channel with any of these peers (see Figure 2) and uses the entire bandwidth of any given channel. It is noteworthy, that in downloading the video Leonard downloads different parts – called packets - of the video from different peers. This is possible because, as noted in section 3, in a P2P network the information is both the resource and the product; that is the communicated information is reproduced in the peer infrastructure. Thanks to the distribution of the sources and to the redundancy of the communicated content, P2P networks succeed in facilitating the information flow and in reducing enormously the informational friction. With this respect, a P2P network has ethically sound effects as it contributes to the well being of the Infosphere and therefore respects the fourth laws of Information Ethics.

 

13  

Figure  2  A  P2P  network,  in  which  a  peer  (the  back  circle)  downloads  packets  of  a  given  file   in  parallel  from  several  other  peers  (the  grey  circles).  

A P2P network has to comply with all the four moral laws in order to be considered an ethical implementation of the architecture. A more in-depth analysis shows that, in order to contribute to the flourishing of the Infosphere, a P2P network must not cause informational entropy, and remove and prevent its occurrence, as stated by the first three laws of Information Ethics. If considered with respect to these laws, the way information is transmitted across a P2P network might also lead to unethical consequences. This is because P2P networks affect regions of the Infosphere with finite communication recourses shared by all the entities occupying it. More specifically, P2P networks exist and work in the Internet through communication channels with finite bandwidth. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which, due to the reduction of informational friction, the processes of information elaboration, communication and storages ongoing among the peers of a P2P network may erode the communicational resources of that region, breaching the right of other users to utilize the same channels

 

14  

for their communications.5 Consider for example the case in which several peers of LionShare based in the same area, e.g. a campus, connect to the P2P network and start to download simultaneously some information. In this way they impede other users accessing the Internet in the same campus or slow down their communications. In a region in which communication recourses are completely exploited, information entities have no possibility of growing, developing and flourishing, because all the resources in the region are run-down. Therefore such a use of the resources of a region of the Infosphere should be regarded as a way of degrading it, and hence of increasing informational entropy. We can then deduce a criterion for the ethical assessment of the implementation of P2P: P2P should be considered ethically sound if and only if its implementation enhances the flourishing of informational entities without leading, under any circumstances, to the erosion of the communicational resources of the region of the Infosphere in which it is used. It is noteworthy that this criterion allows for an ethical assessment of P2P network independently from the informational content that it transmits. The absence of informational friction does not depend on the type of information transmitted but solely on the way in which the information is produced, transmitted and stored. It should not be concluded, from the analysis presented so far, that all implementations of P2P architecture are ethically sound provided that they do not cause the erosion of the resources of a given region of the Infosphere. It should rather be concluded that only those implementations of P2P architecture that respect this general                                                                                                                 5

These cases are well known and thoroughly discussed in the literature on network neutrality, see for example Wu, T. 2005. "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination." Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law 2: 141-78.

 

15  

criterion stand a chance of being ethically sound when the content of information that they transmit is taken into consideration. The respect of the environmental criteria established by Information Ethics should be considered only a necessary, but still insufficient, condition to be satisfied by any implementation of P2P in order for it to be considered ethically sound. The approach described so far can be better explained by considering the methodology of LoAs. In our analysis, we first deploy a high LoA, such as the one defined on the basis of the informational and environmental perspectives. Through this high LoA, we select all implementations of P2P, which could potentially be ethically sound, because the way in which they transmit information does not generate information entropy. Once this first selection is made, we need to verify the ethical nature of the content of the information transmitted. Using the terminology of the LoAs, in order to assess the ethical nature of a specific implementation of P2P we need to adopt a different LoA, whose observables will concern the semantic content of the communicated information rather than the way in which such information is transmitted. In considering specific implementations of P2P architecture, it should be remembered that, according to Information Ethics, all the informational entities in the Infosphere share a minimal right to exist and flourish. This right can be overridden in circumstances in which the existence of the considered entity might be the cause of impairment of the flourishing of other entities. For this reason, spam, viruses and other impairing ‘inhabitants’ of the Infosphere do not have the right to flourish in it. The criteria for deciding which informational entities’ rights can be overridden depends on which ethical perspective is endorsed. For example, from a biological

 

16  

perspective the right of biological entities to exist will override the rights of nonbiological entities, or, if one endorses an anthropocentric perspective, then the existential right of the human being will be preserved against the existential right of a non-human. Analogously, the right of P2P networks to contribute to the flourishing of the Infosphere has to be balanced against all other rights that pertain to the Infosphere and its inhabitants. It is important to restate that these rights depend on the LoA adopted for the ethical analysis, so that, while at some LoA a file-sharing network can promote the flourishing of information in the Infosphere, at another it may be immoral because it breaches some other entities’ rights. The correlation of different levels of ethical analysis, of the considered set of effects, and of the choice of which property of the informational environment P2P networks should maximize or minimize is ultimately a task for the policy makers. In the next section we consider the contributions that the analysis presented so far provides for the elaboration of policies for the management of P2P networks.

6. Policy Implications Following the tradition of applied Information Ethics studies (Turilli 2007; Turilli and Floridi 2009; Vaccaro and Madsen 2009), we propose three policy indications that can be undertaken by users, information technology managers and policy makers to address specific technological and ethical problems. First, P2P developers should take in consideration new forms of P2P protocols, which could be referred to as ‘intelligent’ or ‘adaptive’ P2P protocols. These are P2P systems that adopt intelligent autonomous agents (Grizard, Vercouter et al. 2007) as controllers of information transactions. For example, an intelligent autonomous agent

 

17  

can limit the activities of P2P users localized in areas in which the bandwidth has been almost completely occupied; by the same token, an autonomous P2P agent can warn a user, who is trying to access and store some specific information, that this is already available in her informational environment. These solutions could resolve the problem of the overload of organizational servers with redundant information, a serious issue that has affected multinational companies and large organizations since the beginning of the Internet era (Vaccaro, Veloso et al. 2009). Second, the avoidance of the erosion of the informational resources in a region of the Infosphere provides a useful parameter for the choice of the most suitable design for P2P networks. During the last years, P2P designers have used two kinds of architectures, i.e. standard P2P architecture and unstructured centralized architecture. We suggest that the unstructured centralized architecture6 could be more effective than the standard one in controlling the overall levels of usage of bandwidth among the peers of a network. The standard P2P architecture is characterized by direct communication between peers and, consequently, the lack of a central hub can create problems in dealing with the issue or the erosion of informational resources. This issue can be solved by implementing the unstructured centralized architecture, because in this case a central server manages all transactions and keeps track of information flows among the members of a P2P community. Finally, the analysis presented in this paper points out the need to raise the awareness of internet users and policy makers of the potential exploitation of environmental resources due to the irresponsible implementation of P2P architecture, in                                                                                                                 6

Centralized P2P architectures are characterized by a central server that coordinates information flows and imposes the rules of communication (e.g. indexing functions). Pure P2P systems are composed of networks of equipotent peers in which preferred nodes characterized by special infrastructure functions do not figure (Taylor, I. J. and A. Harrison 2008. From P2P and Grids to Services on the Web: Evolving Distributed Communities. London, Springer-Verlag.

 

18  

order to encourage more responsible and conscientious behaviors. Indeed, these issues remain serious for individuals and social organizations such as firms and NGOs (Vaccaro and Madsen 2009), as the improper use made by unaware individuals generates unexpected levels of exploitation of informational resources (Vaccaro, Veloso et al. 2009). In this sense, we support the perspective of recent studies (Boyd and Horta Forthcoming), which stress the need for governments and higher education institutions to invest more resources to raise awareness about the consequences of the improper and irresponsible use of ICTs on the information environment. Information ecology remains a challenging and pressing issue that needs to be understood not only by specialists but also by the general public (Floridi 2007a).

7. Conclusion The analysis presented in this paper offers two contributions to the debate on the ethical analysis of P2P. The first one concerns the understanding of the ethical implications of P2P and the kind of policy that should be elaborated in order to foster ethical uses of this technology and discourage unethical ones. The paper provides an ethical analysis of P2P, which complements existing studies concerning copyright issues. While the previous research focuses on categorization of the information typologies to be exchanged (i.e. copyrighted vs. not copyrighted), this analysis concentrates on the processes for information elaboration, transmission and storage ongoing in P2P networks, and on the consequences of these processes on the Infosphere. This approach sheds light on a potential downside and unethical effect of the use of P2P: the erosion of the informational resources of a given region of the Infosphere. The avoidance of the erosion of informational resources and the promotion of the well-being and flourishing

 

19  

of the Infosphere are presented as guidelines for the ethical implementations of P2P architecture. The second contribution concerns the debate on the use of Information Ethics as a suitable theory to address the ethical issues followed by the emergence of ICTs, and in particular Internet-based tools (Ess 2009; Fallis and Whitcomb 2009; Willcocks and Whitley 2009). With this respect, the paper shows that Information Ethics provides a new and useful descriptive and normative approach for the ethical analysis and management of P2P technologies. References Benkler, Y. and H. Nissenbaum. 2006. "Commons-based peer production and virtue." Journal of Political Philosophy 14(4): 394-419. Bhattacharjee, S., R. Gopal, et al. 2006. "mpact of Legal Threats on Online Music Sharing Activity: An Analysis of Music Industry Legal Actions." The Journal of Law and Economics (2006) 49(1): 91-114. Boyd, W. and H. Horta. Forthcoming. " Network Ethics in the Growing Global, MultiDimensional and Technological Academy." Human Technology. Condry, I. 2004. "Cultures of Music Piracy." International Journal of Cultural Studies 7(3): 343-363. Ess, C. 2009. "Floridi’s Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspectives, Future Directions." The Information Society 25(3): 159-168. Fallis, D. and D. Whitcomb. 2009. "Epistemic Values and Information Management,." The Information Society 25(3): 175-189. Floridi, L. 2001. "Ethics in the Infosphere." The Philosophers’ Magazine(6): 18-19. Floridi, L. 2007a. "A look into the Future Impact of ICT on Our Lives." The Information Society 23(1): 59-64. Floridi, L. 2007b. "Understanding Information Ethics." APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 7(1): 3-12. Floridi, L. 2008a. Information Ethics, its Nature and Scope, in Moral Philosophy and Information Technology, eds. Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008: 40-65. Floridi, L. 2008b. "The Method of Levels of Abstraction." Minds and Machines 18(3): 303-329. Fox, G. 2001. "Peer-to-peer networks." Computing in Science & Engineering 3(3): 7577. Giese, M. 1996. From ARPAnet to the internet: a cultural clash and its implications in framing the debate on the information superhighway. Communication and Cyberspace. L. Strate, R. Jacobson and S. Gibson. New York, NY, Hampton Press: 123-141.

 

20  

Goth, G. 2006. "From the Editors: Peer-to-Peer Community--Looking beyond the Legacy of Napster and Gnutella." IEEE Distributed Systems Online 7(3): 5. Grizard, A., L. Vercouter, et al. 2007. Peer-to-Peer Normative System to Achieve Social Order. Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems II. P. Noriega, J. Vázquez-Salceda, G.Boellaet al. Berlin / Heidelberg, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg: 274-289. Keen, A. 2008. The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User Generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values. New York, Doubleday Business. Lee, E. 2005. "The Ethics of Innovation: p2p Software Developers and Designing Substantial Noninfringing Uses Under the Sony Doctrine." Journal of Business Ethics 62(2): 147-162. McGowan, D. 2004. "Copyright Nonconsequentialism." Missouri Law Review 69(1): 1– 72. Peitz, M. and A. Waelbroeck. 2006. "Piracy of digital products: A critical review of the theoretical literature " The Journal of Political Economy 83(5): 951-968. Schollmeier, R., I. Gruber, et al. 2003. Protocol for peer-to-peer networking in mobile environments. 12th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, Dallas, TX, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press. Stern, R. 2000. ""Napster: A Walking Copyright Infringement?" IEEE MICRO 20(6): 45, 95. Taylor, I. J. and A. Harrison 2008. From P2P and Grids to Services on the Web: Evolving Distributed Communities. London, Springer-Verlag. Turilli, M. 2007. "Ethical Protocol Design." Ethics and Information Technology 9(1): 49-62. Turilli, M. and L. Floridi. 2009. "The ethics of Information Transparency." Ethics and Information Technology 11(2): 105-112. Vaccaro, A. and P. Madsen. 2009. "ICT and an NGO: Difficulties in Attempting to Be Extremely Transparent." Ethics and Information Technology 11(3): 221-231. Vaccaro, A., F. Veloso, et al. 2009. "The Impact of Virtual Technologies on Knowledge-Based Processes: An Empirical Study." Research Policy 38(8): 1278-1287. Willcocks, L. and L. Whitley. 2009. "Developing The Information and Knowledge Agenda in Information Systems: Insights from Philosophy." The Information Society 25(3): 190-197. Wortley, R. and S. Smallbone 2006. Child pornography on the internet., Retrieved November 11, 2006, from U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Wu, T. 2005. "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination." Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law 2: 141-78.

 

21