ICTICT418 Contribute To Copyright, Ethics And Privacy In An ICT Environment

Any profession demands maintaining of proper working conduct from both the perspectives of an individual employee as well as the organization. It depends on the legislative and ethical measures adopted by the country the organization is established in. The organizations are obligated to follow these laws otherwise they might be considered as unlawful and any kind of legislative steps can be taken against them (Bennett and Raab 2017). Thus, the following report would be based on the personal perspective of an individual on how an organization established in Australia and working under Information and Communication Technology environment maintains all the professional and ethical conducts.

This would be justified in the report in four parts. The first part would relate an organization’s intellectual property and copyright properties with that of the standard codes of conducts. The next part would include the understanding of the Privacy Laws in an organization according to the ACS privacy and integrity protection laws. The third part would have the ethical codes of conducts and finally the fourth and last part would present an understanding of the entire research with the help of a meeting held between two people that summarize the understanding of the entire research done so far.

Part A: Intellectual property and copyright 

An introduction to the Copyright Laws in Australia

According to the Intellectual Property Rights as mentioned in the Australian Laws, it can be stated that all the Divisions according to the Copyright Act 1968 clearly points out the fact that all in an ICT environment, the creators are subjected to produce original works in their scope of specialization. In addition to this, any work that does not acknowledge the original creator while referring to their creations can be penalized in every possible way according to the legal proceedings of Australia (Bennett and Raab 2017). Thus, it is understandable that every work must be original, and when it refers to the original works of a creator, he or she should be given proper acknowledgement for the task. This includes artistic works presented offline or online, subject matters and creations like poems, paintings and others.

How to implement Copyright Law for Australia should be enrolled in the organization

Since, the company in discussion is an ICT based organization; all the laws presented in the Australian Copyright Law should be applicable in the organization. This is to specify that the integrity of the original creators should be maintained. Thus, within the organization, it should be specified that the use of any original idea to create any work should be properly acknowledged and it should be applicable to all the hierarchy levels of the organization (Suominen et al. 2016).

These should be included in the business policy and that should be spread within the entire organization (Warren and Lucas 2016). Any person who does not follow the same should be penalized harshly and if the continuation of the same occurs again, the employee would be terminated. The entire workforce in the organization should be specifically made aware of the company policies prepared on the basis of the Australian Copyright Law.

Areas covered by copyright legislation

i. The organizational policy that applies to each

Ownership and Infringement of copyright works: Every original work must be properly referred to acknowledge the original creator and any the copyrighted works should be given special attention for this matter. Any infringement in the copyright laws may lead to serious consequences for every employee in the workplace.

Subject-Matter, other than Works, in which Copyright Subsists: As an ICT organization, it is necessary that the broadcasting of any product created on the pretext of the organization should be original or should be given proper credit to the original content and creator when referred as. It can be exempted on account of non-copyrighted materials but shall be maintained for any copyrighted creation.

Miscellaneous: The subsistence of copyright under any provision of this Part does not affect the operation of any other provision of this Part under which copyright can subsist.

ii. Application the policy in day to day work

Ownership and Infringement of copyright works: The employees in the organization should enable implementing their own ideas and taking reference from the copyrighted works only when required (Leicester 2016). A database can be maintained in accordance to this to maintain proper acknowledgement ideas.

Subject-Matter, other than Works, in which Copyright Subsists: It must be paid attention to that the employees use copyrighted work for their day to day references.

Miscellaneous: It should be kept in mind by every employee that they must report every work to their seniors for proper monitoring regarding this matter (Chatfield and Reddick 2018).

Change recommendation to align the policy

The organization is advised to use copyrighted material when needed and focus more on creating original document while production for abiding with the copyright policy.

Procedure to maintain one copyright law

The workforce is advised to produce original document as much as possible and take little help from the copyrighted or non-copyrighted materials.

Distribution of revised policy

i. Existing staff

The existing staff would be handed over a document covering all the new business policies applied and would be informed by personal mails as well.

ii. New staff

The new staff would be made aware of the new business policies via the orientation program, and would be handled over with the printed copy of the business policies as well.

iii. Management

The management would be informed through individual mails and by conducting a meeting that would make them aware of the changes in the company’s policy and should be told to pass them over to the subordinates as much verbally as possible.

iv. External stakeholders

The external stakeholders shall be shared a mail consisting of all the information regarding the changes with detailed report and instructions about the conditions before and after the change management application.

Part B: Privacy 

Overview of the Privacy Policy for Yahoo

Privacy Policy in Yahoo describes that protected and secured information are always kept intricate within the organization and all the user data is also kept safe from any kind of breaches capable of occurring (Dženopoljac, Janoševic and Bontis 2016).

Aim of the privacy policy

The privacy policy is aimed particularly at the users who are being provided with the web services offered by the organization (Dutfield 2017). It has a broad scope of maintaining user data and providing the users with confidentiality with the web services they use to send or receive data.

Privacy Legislation

The privacy policy for the security maintenance of user data that has been maintained, stored and managed within the organization of Yahoo, abides by the Privacy Policy Laws as mentioned in the country’s legislations (Burmeister 2017).

Table for Identification

Recommendations for changes required

The changes those are required in this aspect is the changes regarding the security of the user data which is found to be a little tricky in terms of storage, since it is found to be extremely prone to data compromise (Baldwin and Henkel 2015).

Part C: Ethics 

Review of one of the company’s ethical code

The organization focuses on the providing of their services in accordance to the enhancement of the Primacy of the Public Interest. This means that the business organization strictly follows the ethical conduct all the services provided for the company should be working in favor of the customer primarily (Pila and Torremans 2016).

Comparison with ACS codes of Ethics

The first and foremost policy of the ACS codes of conduct mentions that the services provided by any ICT based company should work in favor of the customer’s requirements, which is ardently followed as per the organization’s ethical policy. This policy should be maintained in an organization as the first and foremost obligation of a company is to abide by the requirements of the clients and customers.

Creating own code of ethics

It should be specified that use of any unfair means to finish a work with the use of illegal applications over the web is absolutely prohibited within the organization. Any person found to be using the same should be highly penalized (Birkbeck 2016). This should be reviewed and monitored with the use of applications to map the online activities of each employee in the organization.

Review and Grievance Process

The documents for the review and grievance policy should be prepared in accordance to the applied ethical code as below:

• Grievance in relation with the code of ethics would be made by informing the employee verbally first and then make him or her sign a petition that these unfair an illegal online help should not be used hereof.
• The confidential reporting of the unfair means would first only be reported to the managerial authorities, thus maintain privacy about the matter (Ferguson, Thornley and Gibb 2016).
• The ethical codes implied newly in the business process should be circulated via emails and meetings held to make all the stakeholders aware of it, as well as the penalization policies if these codes are breached.
• The regular monitoring of the online activities of the employees would be done and reported to the authorities in managerial posts.

Conclusion

Thus it can be stated from the above report that the Australian codes of Conducts and Copyright laws are essentially helpful to maintain the integrity of original creation and this should be implemented in every organization to acknowledge the works of original creators. The workforce should be encouraged to create original works for the organization and should also be recommended to use proper acknowledgements of the copyrighted works used as a reference. This has been concluded with the help of the following report based on the personal perspective of an individual on how an organization established in Australia and working under Information and Communication Technology environment maintains all the professional and ethical conducts.

This had been justified in the report in four parts. The first part relates an organization’s intellectual property and copyright properties with that of the standard codes of conducts. The next part includes the understanding of the Privacy Laws in an organization according to the ACS privacy and integrity protection laws. The third part has the ethical codes of conducts and finally the fourth and last part presents an understanding of the entire research with the help of a meeting held between two people that summarize the understanding of the entire research done so far.

References

Baldwin, C.Y. and Henkel, J., 2015. Modularity and intellectual property protection. Strategic Management Journal, 36(11), pp.1637-1655.

Bennett, C.J. and Raab, C.D., 2017. The governance of privacy: Policy instruments in global perspective. Routledge.

Birkbeck, C.D., 2016. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO): A Reference Guide. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Burmeister, O.K., 2017. Professional ethics in the information age. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 15(4), pp.348-356.

Chatfield, A.T. and Reddick, C.G., 2018. The role of policy entrepreneurs in open government data policy innovation diffusion: An analysis of Australian Federal and State Governments. Government Information Quarterly, 35(1), pp.123-134.

Dutfield, G., 2017. Intellectual property rights and the life science industries: a twentieth century history. Routledge.

Dženopoljac, V., Janoševic, S. and Bontis, N., 2016. Intellectual capital and financial performance in the Serbian ICT industry. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 17(2), pp.373-396.

Ferguson, S., Thornley, C. and Gibb, F., 2016. Beyond codes of ethics: how library and information professionals navigate ethical dilemmas in a complex and dynamic information environment. International Journal of Information Management, 36(4), pp.543-556.

Leicester, N., 2016. Ethics in the IT Profession: Does a Code of Ethics have an Effect on Professional Behaviour?.

Pila, J. and Torremans, P., 2016. European intellectual property law. Oxford University Press.

Suominen, H., Müller, H., Ohno-Machado, L., Salanterä, S., Schreier, G. and Hanlen, L., 2016. Prerequisites for international exchanges of health information: Comparison of Australian, Austrian, Finnish, Swiss, and US privacy policies. arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.04902.

Warren, M. and Lucas, R., 2016. Ethics and ICT: Why all the fuss?. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 14(2), pp.167-169.