Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Lazar Bošković, Creative Director, AgitPROP
Politeness in online communication is not the only, but is the most obvious aspect of ethics on the internet, and politeness urges us to keep to the topic, respect other people’s time, and try to be clear and concise. If you are interested in online ethics, it’s best that you Google out the term Netiquette, a coinage of English words network and etiquette. And to save time and energy, you can also read here a summary of the whole story from the local angle.
Traditional norms of ethics and the untraditional internet
Ethics, as a scientific discipline, is the philosophy of morals and deals with issues of motives, objectives and norms of human action and moral reasoning. Traditional norms of ethics originated from customs, as the word ethics itself, and concern the concepts of moral good and virtues.
However, the internet itself is a very non-traditional thing, in all its aspects – from infrastructure and technical standards, through legal and economic aspects, to the social and cultural consequences and changes it has caused. Even the people who designed and created the internet are anything but traditionalists. Those who today mostly deal with the internet – be it for pleasure or business – are far from traditional customs and values. This in itself is neither a virtue nor a flaw, but it’s clear that the internet has some rules of its own, which, however, must be respected same as some general social norms constructed over the centuries.
In the book of Dr. Jovan Kurbalija, Internet Governance, in the context of the so-called basket of socio-cultural questions, a number of areas on the internet are mentioned that must be respected in particular: human rights, content policies, privacy, data protection, multilingualism, multiculturalism, the ability to use different letters, disability rights, education, safety of children… All these issues are very relevant, but hardly any of them could be considered as not grounded in some traditional ethical norms. Unfortunately, even these totally contemporary themes, as well as some other somewhat forgotten ones, are not always and everywhere respected on the internet.
Ethical norms on the internet and digital literacy
Internet, or rather the virtual world, is neither better nor worse than the real world. In fact, digital avatars of modern man are often more obvious representations than their physical appearance. Those rude and dishonest are the same on the internet – even more “courageous”, so they show their shortcomings even more generously, lulled in a false safety of cyber anonymity and feeling untouchable. Of course it has to do a lot with digital illiteracy and information ignorance.
For example, many of these internet hooligans have no idea that their every activity online is very easy to track, because they leave behind kilometers of digital traces with each visited site, sent e-mail or a chat message on a social network. So hackers, spammers and haters can’t quite sleep peacefully.
Some of these digital traces are either legally allowed to be stored by ISPs or mobile operators, or become a legal part of a database of some large online company with a simple click on the “I agree” button within the registration process on social networks and similar sites. Unfortunately, there are those digital traces that some individuals, departments or companies record absolutely illegally, for reasons known only to them, which also constitute a violation of ethical norms.
Online code of conduct and regulations
Since the early days of the modern day internet, the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created some general rules of behavior on the internet. Thus, in October 1995, the IETF published a document titled Netiquette Guidelines, which specifically regulated the One-to-One Communication and One-to-Many Communication.
Since ethics, even online, falls more into the scope of what we would call “common law”, and is not a binding legal document, it turns out that ethics is not entirely a matter of legislation, but is more in the field of general social norms or specific rules which apply only in certain organizations or companies.
The main actors of internet governance in the world are countries, primarily the United States, which hold in their hands the control of the global structure of the internet. Then there are private companies, civil society, intergovernmental organizations, internet organizations and academic organizations. How complicated Internet Governance is can be seen in the example of the one essential ingredient that is circulating through the network – CONTENT. Talking about the rules of publishing content on the internet, we have to consider at least three perspectives: human rights related to freedom of expression, the right of the state to control illegal content and technology as a means to control content.
Now imagine a completely plausible scenario: a personal and indecent video of a US citizen, which was stolen and is located on the site of some antiglobalization organization from Venezuela, and the site is hosted on a server in China. Who is responsible here? Whose law applies? The ethical answer would be simple, but the legal response would have to respect international law, international agreements and local legislation. Each country has its own legislation, which to a lesser or greater extent adheres to international norms.
The Serbian Netiquette?
Ethics in the Serbian part of the internet is in serious trouble. For years we have nurtured the (non)culture of uncivilized online loudmouths, whose only expertise is reflected in the swift hands on the keyboard, rapid acceptance of distorted views of the world and fast online money, regardless of the legality of work. Fortunately, such people have long since been seen through by many, so their influence is subsiding.
Among these unethical phenomena on the local internet scene are also domainers (scalpers who deal with domains of other people’s brands), trolls (mongers of pointless debates aimed at distraction) and bots (convinced and/or paid writers of praises / accusations in comments of media portals). There are also their illegal peers called hackers (violators of the Criminal Code), spammers (violators of trade and communication law) and haters (violators of anti-discrimination laws). We should not forget the spin doctors, who violate the dignity and even the personal safety of individuals, usually by publishing horrifying and unverified details of other people’s lives online, just because it contributes to their profits, influence or political goals.