Abstract
Ethical questions regarding access to and use of electronically generated data are (if asked) commonly resolved by distinguishing in Lockean fashion between raw (unworked) and refined (worked) data. The former is thought to belong to no one, the latter to the collector and those to whom the collector grants access. Comparative power separates free riders from rightful owners. The resulting two-tiered ethics of access is here challenged on the grounds that it inequitably establishes a rule of law for the strong while leaving the weak in a Hobbesian state of nature. Efforts at legislative constraints are reviewed; but such constraints are found to afford inadequate protections of privacy if a data subject may not prohibit others under ordinary circumstances from using recognizably name-linked data.
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Edmund F. Byrne is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University in Indianapolis. His research interests center on policy and practices regarding technology, community, and social welfare. His most recent book isWork, Inc. (Temple University Press, 1990); and he is now writing another tentatively subtitledDemocracy, Civil Society, and Benevolence.
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Byrne, E.F. The two-tiered ethics of EDP. J Bus Ethics 14, 53–61 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00873736
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00873736