Digital Law

According to Heartland (2011), digital law is “the legal rights and restrictions governing technology use”. It means that navigating on internet has a price; not any action is allowed on internet, if we do some illegal thing, we have to pay consequences. Another person defines digital law as “electronic responsibility for actions and deeds” (Miller, w.d.). To understand what is digital law, first, we need to be clear about what ethical and unethical means. Talk about ethics on the internet involves do and accept all the activities that respect and enforce the laws of society, and unethical involves all the actions and decisions that do not respect the laws of society. Sometimes, people do not take seriously the importance of the application of digital law to improve the relationships, the moral and the honesty of the people. Some examples of some digital laws are: not acquire download movies, it is necessary to have a license for some programs, to have a membership to have access to different music (Miller, w.d.).

Nowadays, it is too common to find out that a lot of people around the world do not abide digital laws; it is very easy to acquire pirate movies or to make use of the famous copy-paste (plagiarism). As an example of some of these laws is the law against plagiarism: the copyright. A lot of students, to have less work, decide to search information on the internet, copy and paste the same information without add the name of the author of this text: they steal the information and this is forbidden. This is only one example of many. For this reason, it is very important that, from a small age, children could learn these laws to be good digital citizens

First of all, I want us to have a clear concept of ethical behavior, ethic is the moral attitudes and conducts we have to had when we are on a society, for that ethical behavior implicates have a good attitude and conduct when using technology (Threeton, w.d.), for that there are some things legal and illegal when we use internet, sometimes for most of people is easy to know what is good and what is wrong, but for some people is a little

difficult. Some professional information says that the information on the internet gives more opportunity to make unethical behavior. So, let us talk about some illegal and unethical behaviors; cyber-crime, cyber fraud, identity theft, and intellectual property are on the rise. This is considered fraud, and is obviously why, also they have a penalty fee, let us see other unethical behavior that maybe, are not that clear as this are, for example; sharing contest that have violence or pornography, copyrights or trade secrets, also sharing personal conversations, have an unrespectful conversation with a minor, fake sales online, make phishing emails, and a lot of more attitudes that make internet unsafe for people, ethical behavior implicates that you use in a responsible way the tools the internet give you and do not prejudice the others with your actions; if some actions prejudices someone else, is unethical.

Many times, we have spent time on the internet and we search a lot of web sites with information or web sites to download music for some homework, or only to past the time in the browser. So, we do not realize that a lot of information on the internet has an author or a main website and because of this we must comply with certain rules to not make some mistakes. It is important to know that make copyright, file sharing or something like this is not a good option. For example, if we copy and paste some information without citing the author you are plagiarizing. This is because you are taking this information and you pass it off as your idea and it is not correct. Some consequences to breaking rules from the internet are that you can be expelled from your college or university, in minor cases just cancel the job, also you could have fines or penalties. In the case of the copyright your video can be erased. There are many more cases about digital law, but for the moment we will only talk about those. Therefore, we must be careful with our jobs or investigations and always put the author, links, even APA standards. This for a better presented work and to have no problems at the moment to present the work at school or at job.

To what extent can companies sell users information, where should we draw the borders for artificial intelligence, which security minimums should we ask for in a website or app? No matter how well educated you might be, when coming across great power it often also provides a great temptation. For this reason, it is important to apply legal regulations on the new technological features that appear more and more every day. However, there is a problem, regulations take time to become accepted and technology is nowhere near to slowing down its pace. The truth is that our way of creating regulations is getting old, and as years pass, we are clearly reaffirming this. For example, e-cigarettes, or vapes as some call them, faced a critical time some years ago. They were more and more used by teenagers and there was no way of legally regulating the sale. Just as other areas of society are changing their ways to adapt into this new technological era, so do law and regulations may follow the same path (Malan, 2018).

If the way we create regulations cannot be changed then it is a time to reinforce our values and ethical principles. e-cigarettes are just an example, but as time goes by, problems with a higher degree of threat will appear and terrifically remain unregulated. One such problem is the scope that artificial intelligence will have. We have found that AI is capable of incredible things, some of which could be used against human rights. So, if we will wait for the change in the way we make regulations we might face some problems. The easiest line of action we should start taking is the reinforcement of our ethical behavior and moral values. Indeed, this reinforcement should be done with the focus on technology and as soon as possible, by doing this we might have a better future, at least until we are able to regulate the technological society we live in (Malan, 2018).