CS290/390, Homework 1
Ethics Case Studies and Professional Codes of Ethics and Practice

Due: Thursday, March 16 (after spring break), 3:30 pm
How to submit: Use the ITC Toolkit. Submit a Word, text, or RTF file.

Choose any of the three ethics cases given in the class handout (also on the web).
Then, read one of these two professional codes of ethics and practice for computing professionals.
• The ACM Code of Ethics: http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html
• The ACM/IEEE Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice:
http://www.acm.org/serving/se/code.htm

Find clauses or statements in the code(s) that you think directly relate to issues in the case you have chosen to discuss, and list these with their number and the text/description that goes with the number. For example, your list might include items like these two:

   SE Code, 1.05. Cooperate in efforts to address matters of grave
   public concern caused by software, its installation, maintenance,
   support or documentation.

   ACM Code, 1.5 Honor property rights including copyrights and patent.

(Cut and paste, please!) For each of these, explain briefly why this particular item applies to the case, whether the item indicates that a problem has occurred or something should be done (or should have not been done).

The goal of this exercise is to make sure you have read through at least one of the professional codes of ethics accepted in the computing community, and that you can recognize which items apply to a given situation and why. We'll judge you on whether you have recognized all the items that we think match each case.

NOTE: You only have to use one of the two codes for this. However, if you were absent on February 9 when we discusses these cases, you can do use both codes and make up for your absence on that day. Clearly indicate you want this in your submitted document, please!