| Topic area | Intellectual Property and/or Whistle-Blowing |
| Target audience | Undergraduate Students in IS/CS/CE/EE (probably later in the course after an introduction to Whistle-Blowing) |
| Activity type | Discussion, Writing as a Homework Exercise |
| Time required | One hour background reading; one class period plus an optional homework exercise |
| Attachments | Worksheet |
| Additional materials | In-class scenario and activity (all included here) |
| Background needed to complete the assignment |
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| References |
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| Last modified | 8/21/99 |
A student on a summer internship with an international company is asked to do a software audit. While performing this software audit the student discovers the company has only purchased one legal copy of the US software product but the company is using approximately one hundred copies in this overseas location. What alternative courses of action should the internship student consider taking in this situation and how should s/he proceed?
Goals for the activity:
What a software audit is.
Intellectual property laws in the US; impact of US law on companies
operating internationally.
Intellectual property law is not necessarily global.
Recognition that the whole world does not see intellectual property
as we do in the U.S..
That conflicting legal constraints impact issues to be wrestled with
in the workplace.
The pressure brought to bear even on student interns as they become
involved in the workplace.
What looks "right" in the U.S. may not be so clear in a global setting.
Procedure:
OVERVIEW:
Ask questions about the situation; determine the facts; determine a
set of alternate strategies; evaluate
the impact of each of these alternate strategies; and reach a conclusion
on the action(s) the student should take.
Please read the following SCENARIO: [Responses can be developed
on an individual or group basis using the accompanying worksheet.]
A student has landed a summer internship (junior year) with a company for whom s/he would ultimately like to be employed. When asked to do a software audit of what copies of which application software packages exist on the company's desktops and laptops in the international setting, s/he begins to discover something which may be a potential problem. Although the student intern must reconcile the number of copies of the software on the machines with the invoices for their purchase, s/he discovers by the middle of the summer that only a few copies appear to have been actually paid for. What should the student employee do about this, if anything?
After discussing the facts of the case with your instructor or peers, determine if there seems to be an ethical issue here. If the consensus is not, continue reading or move on to another scenario. If the group conclusion is that an ethical issue exists, write a statement down in your own words of what you believe to be the ethical issue(s) confronted here. Then, continue reading:
After much reflection and remembering s/he is being paid a substantial wage and wishes to be employed after the coming school year, the student decides to write out for reflection as many options as s/he believes are available and viable. Write down a set of such options. (You should easily be able to come up with four or five.) After completing this list of five options (or more), write out at least one positive AND/OR negative result of each and every action.
After completing this process, determine which of the actions appears to be the "best" ethical action to take. Write out the reason(s) why you believe this to be the best strategy.
[Some instructors may request this be turned in at another time or in
another way.]
Assessing outcomes:
The instructor may choose to have each student (or group) submit the answers to each of the questions in the exercise. These responses can be graded if the instructor chooses to do so on the basis of completeness, the thoughtfulness of the responses, and the logical arguments presented. The following series of "what if" questions may be illustrative for further discussion and should get the students to think about the broader implications in this situation:
Additional remarks:
The SIIA contends on their Web site $11,000,000,000 [that's $11 billion] was lost globally in 1998. The report can be downloaded from the SIIA Web site. In the U.S. losses correlate closely to city size among large U.S. cities as noted in the same source.
The worksheet can be printed on one page double sided, if desirable.
The last "what if" question was actually the context in which this case occurred. Additional details and the "resolution" are available from the developer.
You might wish to bring up and discuss "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) status for China and the links to privacy, forced labor, piracy, and many current commercial developments. However, this might take your discussions too far afield from the current project focus.
Author contact information:
R.
Waldo (Wally) Roth
Computing and System Sciences Department
Taylor University, Upland, IN 46989-1001
Phone: (765) 998-5269
FAX: (765) 998-4940
E-mail: wlroth@tayloru.edu