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Practice Scenarios

Topics in Information Technology Ethics (Charles Sturt University)

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Question: Identify and discuss the following ethical, legal, and

social issues raised in the following three scenarios:
Anonymity, Legal Liability, Censorship, Defamation, Property and Ownership, Civil Liberties,
Access, Confidentiality, Privacy, Security, Free speech, Moral Responsibility, Equity,
Surveillance

SCENARIO: A Fatal Cyberbullying Incident on MySpace

Megan Meier, a 13 year-old resident of Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, had an account on

MySpace where she received a “friend” request from a user named Josh Evans, Evans, who
claimed to be a 16-year-old boy, told Meier that he lived near her and was being home-
schooled by his parents. At first, Evans sent flattering emails to Meier, which also suggested
that he might be romantically interested in her. Soon, however, Evans’s remarks turned
from compliments to insults, and Evans informed Meier that he was no longer sure that he
wanted to be friends with her because he heard that she “wasn’t very nice to her friends.”
Next, Meier noticed that some highly derogatory posts about her—e.g., “Megan Meier is a
slut” and “Megan Meier is fat” –began to appear on MySpace. Meier, who was reported to
have suffered from low self-esteem and depression, become increasingly distressed by the
online harassment (cyberbulling) being directed at her—i.e., from both the insulting
MySpace postings and hurtful email message she’ continued to receive from Evans. On
October 17, 2006, Meier decided to end her life by hanging herself in her bedroom. An
investigation of this incident, following Meier’s death, revealed that Josh Evans was not a
teenage boy; she was Lori Drew, the 49-year-old mother of a former friend of Meier’s.

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

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SCENARIO: Contesting the Ownership of a Twitter Account

Noah Kravitz was employed by PhoneDog Media, a mobile phone company, for nearly four
years. PhoneDog had two divisions: an e-commerce site (phonedog.com) that sold mobile
phones, and a blog that enabled customers to interact with the company. Kravitz created a
blog on Twitter (called Phonedog, Noah) while employed at PhoneDog, and his blog
attracted 17,000 followers by the time he left the company in October 2010. However,
Kravitz informed PhoneDog that he wanted to keep his Twitter blog, with all of his followers;
in return, Kravtiz agreed that he would still “tweet” occasionally on behalf of his former
company, under a new (Twitter) “handle”, or account name, Noah Kravitz. Initially,
PhoneDog seemed to have no problem with this arrangement. In July 2011, however,
PhoneDog sued Kravitz, arguing that his list of Twitter followers was, in fact, a company list.
PhoneDog also argued that it had invested a substantial amount of money in growing its
customer list, which it considered to be the property of PhoneDog Media. The company (as
of early 2012) is seeking $340,000 in damages—the amount that PhoneDog estimated it had
lost based on 17,000 customers at $2.50 per customer over an eight-month period
(following Kravitz departure from the company).

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

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SCENARIO 1–3: ‘‘The Washingtonienne’’ Blogger (on page 3)

Jessica Cutler, a former staff assistant to U.S. Senator Michael DeWine (R-Ohio), authored an
online diary (on blogger.com) under the pseudonym ‘‘The Washingtonienne.’’ In May 2004
she was fired when the contents of her diary appeared in Wonkette: The DC Gossip, a
popular blog in the Washington D.C. area. Until her diary was discovered and published in
Wonkette, Cutler assumed that it had been viewed by only a few of her fellow ‘‘staffers’’
(Washington D.C. staff assistants) who were interested in reading about the details of her
romantic relationships and sexual encounters. In her diary, Cutler disclosed that she earned
an annual salary of only $25,000 as a staffer and that most of her living expenses were
‘‘thankfully subsidized by a few generous older gentlemen.’’ She also described some details
of her sexual relationships with these men, one of whom was married and an official in the
Bush administration. (Cutler did not use the real names of these men but instead referred to
them via initials that could easily be linked to their actual identities.) Following her
termination as a staffer, in response to the political fallout and the media attention resulting
from the publication of her diary, Cutler was offered a book contract with a major publisher.
She was also subsequently sued by one of the men implicated in her blog.

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

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