The readings for this week focused on ethics in technical settings. At this point in my college career, most of the ethical dilemmas that I have faced have dealt with plagiarism and cheating. These problems have mostly dealt with personal ethics. In the instructions project, I also had to deal with a dilemma of social as well as personal ethics. In chapter 5 of TCT, there was an example used of children choking on the small parts of action figures. I faced a similar problem in my instructions project. Some of the steps in my instructions had the potential to cause harm if performed improperly. I had to decide whether the benefits of being able to complete the instructions outweighed the costs of a few people possibly becoming injured. Considering that people would still install shelves with or without my instructions, I don't think that it would not be unethical to write the instructions. I actually think that people are less likely to hurt themselves when using instructions, than if they attempted to install a shelf without them.
I think the biggest ethical dilemma that our group will face in the white paper project will have to do with plagiarism. TCT explained that most of the information that we use as students will fall under the "Fair Use Clause" of the Copyright Act. However, since the description of this clause is so vague (allows use for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research), it is hard to determine when our work will fall under the clause and when it won't. To be on the safe side, the best thing for our group is to cite every source that we use. We also will need to ask the permission of publishers when necessary, such as when we use a lot of information or figures from one source. Luckily, there won't be many other ethical concerns involved in comparing and contrasting web browsers as long as we make sure to avoid being biased in our presentation.
Social and Personal Ethics
You made a good point that many people might not have thought of when talking about your instructions on how to install a shelf. Most people probably wouldn't assume that someone could possibly injure themselves, but it shows initiative that you thought of the social and personal ethics of it. It is also interesting how you theorized the fact that people would still install shelves even if you hadn't produced the instructions. If anything, the instructions make the task safer.
Ethics of Copyrights
As you covered here, plagiarism, cheating, and the like are probably the most common ethical dilemmas for our age group, if not for all. With all the projects and papers that we do, just for school alone, there are many opportunities for us to slip and use another’s work, claiming it as our own. But, as you and the readings this week say, and as we should already know, this is completely unethical. Or is it? Well, yes it is but I was not aware that “most of the information that we use as students will fall under the ‘Fair Use Clause’ of the Copyright Act,” as you’ve stated here. This is new to me, but as you continue, “since the description of this clause is so vague, it is hard to determine when our work will fall under the clause and when it won’t.” So it is important to be ethical and err on the safe side when producing new work, validate what you create, and cite what you do not.
Claiming work
While writing a paper and having a deadline of a couple of days a person may forget to take some of the steps for copyrighting. Plagiarism often occurs when a person lacks crediting the proper person of their work. In many causes this can be due to a slip up or just skipping past that step. Anyway, there is a high penalty for being caught for plagiarism, sometimes students fail courses or are expelled from school, in other cases penalties and lawsuits are awarded to falsely claims of work. The thing to remember is to always credit those who have created or published work.
Zebulon Rouse
Logic
It is true that some people will still install shelved without your instructions, but that does not mean that the same number of people will attempt to do it. Your good and seemingly safe instructions could encourage someone to install a shelf and get hurt, whereas they would not have try to install it if they had trouble finding good instructions. On the other hand, you bring up a good point that some people would have tried to do it without the instructions and if your instructions actually provide safe instructions, those people would be more safe following your instructions.