CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
BUSINESS ETHICS
No
: 1
PUBLIUS
Although many people believe that
the World Wide Web is anonymous and secure from censorship, the reality is very
different. Governments, law courts, and
other officials who want to censor, examine, or trace a file of materials on
the Web need merely go to the server (the online computer) where they think the
file is stored. Using their subpoena
power, they can comb through the server’s drives to find the files they are
looking for and the identify of the person who created the files.
On
Friday June 30, 2000, however, researches at AT & T Labs announced the
creation of Publius, a software program that enables Web users to encrypt
(translate into a secret code) their files – text, pictures, or music – break
them up like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and store the encrypted pieces on
many different servers scattered all over the globe on the World Wide Web. As a result, any one wanting to examine or
censor the files or wanting to trace the original transaction that produced the
file would find it impossible to succeed because they would
have to examine the contents of dozens of different servers all over the
world, and the files in the servers would be encrypted and fragmented in a way
that would make the pieces impossible to identify without the help of the
person who created the file. A person
authorized to retrieve the file, however, would look through a directory of his
files posted on a Publius – affiliated website, and the Publius network would
reassemble the file for him at his request.
Researchers published a description of Publius at www.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius.
Although
many people welcomed the way that the new software would enhance freedom of
speech on the Web, many others were dismayed.
Bruce Taylor, an antipornography activist for the National Law Center
for Children and Families, stated : “It’s nice to be anonymous, but who wants
to be more anonymous than criminals, terrorists, child molesters, child
pornographers, hackers and e-mail virus punks.”
Aviel Rubin and Lorrie Cranor, the creators of Publius, however, hoped
that their program would help people in countries where freedom of speech was
repressed and individuals were punished for speaking out. The ideal user of Publius, they stated, was
“a person in China observing abuses of human rights on a day – to – day basis.”
Questions:
1.
Analyze the ethics of marketing Publius using utilitarianism, rights, justice,
and caring. In your judgement, is it ethical to market Publius ? Explain.
2.
Are the creators of Publius in any way morally responsible for any criminal
acts that criminals are able to carry out and keep secret by relying on Publius?
Is AT & T in any way morally responsible for these ? Explain your answers.
3.
In your judgment, should governments allow the implementation of Publius? Why
or why not ?
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
NO.
2
A
JAPANESE BRIBE
In July 1976, Kukeo Tanaka,
former prime minister of Japan, was arrested on charges of taking bribes ($ 1.8
million) from Locjheed Aircraft Company to secure the purchase of several
Lockheed jets. Tanaka’s secretary and
serial other government officials were arrested with him. The Japanese public reacted with angry
demands for a complete disclosure of Tanaka’s dealings. By the end of the year,
they had ousted Tanaka’s successor, Takeo Miki, who was widely believed to have
been trying to conceal Tanaka’s actions.
In
Holland that same year, Prince Bernhard, husband of Queen Juliana, resigned
from 300 hundred positions he held in government, military, and private organizations. The reason : He was alleged to have accepted
$ 1.1 million in bribes from Lockheed in connection with the sale of 138 F –
104 Starfighter jets.
In
Italy, Giovani Leone, president in 1970, and Aldo Moro and Mariano Rumor, both
prime ministers, were accused of accepting bribes from Lockheed in connection
with the purchase of $ 100 million worth of aircraft in the late 1960s. All were excluded from government.
Scandinavia,
South Africa, Turkey, Greece, and Nigeria were also among the 15 countries in
which Lockheed admitted to having handed out payments and at least $ 202
million in commissions since 1970.
Lockheed
Aircraft’s involvement in the Japanese bribes was revealed to have begun in
1958 when Lockheed and Grumman Aircraft (also an American firm) were competing
for a Japanese Air Force jet aircraft contract.
According to the testimony of Mr. William Findley, a partner in Arthur
Young & Co. (auditors for Lockheed), in 1958 Lockheed engaged the services
of Yoshio Kodama, an ultra right – wing war criminal and reputed underworld
figure with strong political ties to officials in the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party. With Kodama’s help, Lockheed
secured the Government contract.
Seventeen years later, it was revealed that the CIA had been informed at
the time (by an American embassy employee) that Lockheed had made several
bribes while negotiating the contract.
In
1972, Lockheed again hired Kodama as a consultant to help secure the sale of
its aircraft in Japan. Lockheed was
desperate to sell planes to any major Japanese airline because it was
scrambling to recover from a series of financial disasters. Cost overruns on a government contract had
pushed Lockheed to the brink of bankruptcy in 1970. Only through a controversial emergency
government loan guarantee of $ 250
million in 1971 did the company narrowly avert disaster. Mr. A. Carl Kotchian, president of Lockheed
from 1967 to 1975, was especially anxious to make the sales because the company
had been unable to get as many contracts in other parts of the world as it had
wanted.
This
bleak situation all but dictated a strong push for sales in the biggest untapped market left-Japan. This push, if successful, might well bring in
revenues upward of $ 400 million. Such a cash inflow would go a long way towards helping to restore Lockheed’s
fiscal health, and it would, of course,
save the jobs of thousands of firm’s employees. (Statement of Carl Kotchian)
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
Kodama
eventually succeeded in engineering a contract for Lockhed with All – Nippon
Airways, even beating out McDonnell Douglas, which was actively competing with
Lockheed for the same sales. To ensure
the sale, Kodama asked for and received from Lockheed about $9 million during
the period from 1972 to 1975. Much of
money allegedly went to then – prime minister Kukeo Tanaka and other government
officials, who were supposed to intercede with All – Nippon Airlines on behalf
of Lockheed.
According
to Mr. Carl Kotchian, “ I knew from the beginning that this money was going to
the office of the Prime Minister.” He
was, however, persuaded that, by paying the money, he was sure to get the
contract from All-Nippon Airways. The
negotiations eventually netted over $1.3 billion in contracts for Lockheed.
In
addition to Kodama, Lockheed had also been advised by Toshiharu Okubo, an
official of the private trading company, Marubeni, which acted as Lockheed’s official representative. Mr. A. Carl Kotchian later defended the
payments, which he saw as one of many “Japanese business practices” that he had
accepted on the advice of his local consultants. The payments, the company was convinced, were
in keeping with local “ business practices.”
Further,
as I’ve noted, such disbursements did not violate American laws. I
should also like to stress that my decision to make such payments stemmed from my judgment that the
(contracts) …… would provided Lockheed
workers with jobs and thus redound to the benefit of their dependents, their communities, and
stockholders of the corporation. I should like to emphasize that the payments to
the so-called “ high Japanese
government officials” were all requested y Okubo and were not brought up from my side. When he told me “ five hundred million yen is
necessary for such sales,” from a purely ethical and moral standpoint I would have declined such a
request. However, in that case, I would
most certainly have sacrificed
commercial success….. (If) Lockheed had not remained competitive by the rules
of the game as then played, we would not
have sold (our planes) ……… I knew that if we wanted our product to have a
chance to win on its own merits, we had to follow the functioning system.
(Statement of A. Carl Kotchian)
In
August, 1975, investigations by the U.S. government led Lockheed to admit it
had made $ 22 million in secret
payoffs. Subsequent senate
investigations in February 1976 made Lockheed’s involvement with Japanese
government officials public. Japan
subsequently canceled their billion dollar contract with Lockheed.
In
June 1979, Lockheed pleaded guilty to concealing the Japanese bribes from the
government by falsely writing them off as “marketing costs”. The Internal Revenue Code states, in
part. “ No deduction shall be allowed…..
for any payment made, directly or indirectly, to an official or employee of any
government …. If the payment constitutes an illegal bribe or kickback.’ Lockheed was not charged specifically with
bribery because the U.S. law forbidding bribery was not enacted until
1978. Lockheed pleaded guilty to four
counts of fraud and four counts of making false statements to the government. Mr. Kotchian was not indicated, but under
pressure from the board of directors, he was forced to resign from
Lockheed. In Japan, Kodama was arrested
along with Tanaka.
Questions:
1.
Fully explain the effects that payment like those which Lockheed made to the
Japanese have on the structure of a market.
2.
In your view, were Lockheed’s payments to the various Japanese parties “bribes”
or “extortions” ? Explain your response fully.
3.
In your judgment, did Mr. A. Carl Kotchian act rightly from a moral point of
view ? (Your answer should take into account the effects of the payments on the
welfare of the societies affected, on the right and duties of the various
parties involved, and on the distribution of benefits and burdens among the
groups involved.) In your judgment, was Mr. Kotchian morally responsible for
his actions ? Was he, in the end, treated fairly ?
4.
In its October 27, 1980, issue, Business Week argued that every corporation has
a corporate culture – that is, values that set a pattern for its
employee’sactivities, opinions and actions and that are instilled in succeeding
generations of employees (pp.148-60) Describe, if you can, the corporate
culture of Lockheed and relate that culture to Mr. Kotchian’s actions. Describe
some strategies for changingthat culture in ways that might make foreign
payments less likely.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
NO.
3
THE
NEW MARKET OPPORTUNITY
In 1994, anxious to show off the
benefits of a communist regime, the government of China invited leading auto
manufacturers from around the world to submit plans for a car designed to meet
the needs of its massive population. A
wave of rising affluence had suddenly created a large middle class of Chinese
families with enough money to buy and maintain a private automobile. China was now eager to enter joint ventures
with foreign companies to construct and operate automobile manufacturing plants
inside China. The plants would not only manufacture
cars to supply China’s new internal market, but could also make cars that could
be exported for sale abroad and would be sure to generate thousands of new
jobs. The Chinese government specified
that the new car had to be priced at less than $5000, be small enough to suit
families with a single child (couples in
China are prohibited from having more than one child), rugged enough to endure
the poorly maintained roads that criss-crossed the nation, generate a minimum of pollution, be composed of parts that were
predominantly made within China, and be manufactured through joint – venture
agreements between Chinese and foreign companies. Experts anticipated that the plants
manufacturing the new cars would use a minimum of automation and wuld instead
rely on labor – intensive technologies that could capitalize on China’s cheap
labor. China saw the development of a
new auto industry as a key step in its drive to industrialize its economy.
The
Chinese market was an irresistible opportunity for General Motors, Ford and
Chrysler, as well as for the leading Japanese, European and Korean automobile
companies. With a population of 1.2
billion people and almost double digit annual economic growth rates, China
estimated that in the next 40 years between 200 and 300 million of the new
vehicles would be purchased by Chinese citizens. Already cars had become a symbol of affluence
for China’s new rising middle class, and a craze for cars had led more than 30
million Chinese to take driving lessons despite that the nation had only 10
million vehicles, most of them government – owned trucks.
Environmentalists,
however, were opposed to the auto manufactures’
eager rush to respond to the call of the Chinese government. The world market for energy, particularly
oil, they pointed out, was based in part on the fact that China, with its large
population, was using relatively low levels of energy. In 1994, the per-person consumption of oil in
China was only one sixth of Japan’s and only a quarter of Taiwan’s. If China were to reach even the modes per
person consumption level of South Korea, China would be consuming twice the
amount of oil the United States currently uses.
At the present time, the United States consumes one forth of the world’s
total annual oil supplies, about half of which it must import from foreign
countries.
Critics
pointed out that if China were to eventually have as many cars on the road per
person as Germany does, the world would contain twice as many cars as it
currently does. No matter how “
pollution – free” the new car design was, the cumulative environmental effects
of that many more automobiles in the world would be formidable. Even clean cars would have to generate large
amounts of carbon dioxide as they burned fuel, thus significantly worsening the
greenhouse effect. Engineers pointed out
that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to build a clean car for under
$5000. Catalytic converters, which
diminished pollution, alone cost over $200 per car to manufacture. In addition, China’s oil refineries were
designed to produce only gasoline with high levels of lead. Upgrading all its refineries so they could
make low-lead gasoline would require an investment China seemed unwilling to
make.
Some
of the car companies were considering submitting plans for an electric car
because China had immense coal reserves which it could burn to produce
electricity. This would diminish the
need for China to rely on oil, which it would have to import. However, China did not have sufficient coal
burning electric plants nor an electrical power distribution system that could
provide adequate electrical power to a large number of vehicles. Building such an electrical power system also
would require a huge investment that the Chinese government did not seem
particularly interested in making.
Moreover, because coal is a fossil fuel, switching from an oil – based
auto to a coal – based electric auto would still result in adding substantial quantities
of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
Many
government officials were also worried by the political implications of having
China become a major consumer of oil. If
China were to increase its oil consumption, would have to import all its oil
from the same countries that other nations relied on, which would create large
political, economic and military risks.
Although the United States imported some of its oil from Venezuela and
Mexico, most of its imports came from the Middle East – an oil source that
China would have to turn to also. Rising
demand for Middle East oil would push oil prices sharply upward, which would
send major shocks reverberating through the economics of the United States and
those of other nations that relied heavily on oil. State Department officials worried that China
would begin to trade weapons for oil with Iran or Iraq, heightening the risks
of major military confrontations in the region.
If China were to become a major trading partner with Iran or Iraq, this
would also create closer ties between these two major power centres of the
non-Western world – a possibility that was also laden with risk. Of course, China might also turn to tapping
the large reserves of oil that were thought to be lying under Taiwan and other
areas neighboring its coast. However,
this would bring it into competition with Japan, South Korea, Thailand,
Singapore, Taiwan, the Phillippines, and other nations that were already
drawing on these sources to supply their own booming economies. Many of these nations, anticipating
heightened tensions, were already puring money into their military forces,
particularly their navies. In short,
because world supplies of oil were limited, increasing demand seemed likely to
increase the potential for conflict.
Questions:
1.
In your judgment, is it wrong, from an ethical point of view, for the auto
companies to submit plans for an automobile to China? Explain your answer?
2.
Of the various approaches to environmental ethics outlined in this chapter,
which approach sheds most light on the ethical issues raised by this case ?
Explain your answer.
3.
Should the U.S. government intervene in any way in the negotiations between
U.S. auto companies and the Chinese government? Explain.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
NO.
4
WAGE
DIFFERENCES AT ROBERT HALL
Robert Hall Clothes, Inc., owned
a chain of retail stores that specialized in clothing for the family. One of the Chain’s stores was located in
Wilmington, Delaware. The Robert Hall
store in Wilmington had a department for men’s and boy’s clothing and another
department for women’s and girl’s clothing.
The departments were physically separated and were staffed by different
personnel : Only men were allowed to work in the men’s department and only
women in the women’s department. The
personnel of the store were sexually segregated because years of experience had
taught the store’s managers that, unless clerks and customers were of the same
sex, the frequent physical contact between clerks and customers would embarrass
both and would inhibit sales.
The
clothing in the men’s department was generally of a higher and more expensive
quality than the clothing in the women’s department. Competitive factors accounted for this :
There were few other men’s stores in Wilmington so the store could stock
expensive men’s clothes and still do a thriving business, whereas women’s
clothing had to be lower priced to compete with the many other women’s stores
in Wilmington. Because of these
differences in merchandise, the store’s profit margins on the men’s clothing
was higher than its margins on the women’s clothing. As a result, the men’s department
consistently showed a larger dollar volume in gross sales and a greater gross
profit, as is indicated in Table 7.11.
Because
of the differences shown in Table 7.11 women personnel brought in lower sales
and profits per hour. In fact male
salespersons brought in substantially more than the females did (see Tables
7.12 and 7.13)
|
Men’s
Department
|
Women’s
Department
|
|||||
|
Year
|
Sales
($)
|
Gross
Profit
($)
|
Percent
Profit
($)
|
Sales
($)
|
Gross
Profit
($)
|
Percent
Profit
($)
|
|
1963
|
210,639
|
85,328
|
40.5
|
177,742
|
58,547
|
32.9
|
|
1964
|
178,867
|
73,608
|
41.2
|
142,788
|
44,612
|
31.2
|
|
1965
|
206,472
|
89,930
|
43.6
|
148,252
|
49,608
|
33.5
|
|
1966
|
217,765
|
97,447
|
44.7
|
166,479
|
55,463
|
33.5
|
|
1967
|
244,922
|
111,498
|
45.5
|
206,680
|
69,190
|
33.5
|
|
1968
|
263,663
|
123,681
|
46.9
|
230,156
|
79,846
|
34.7
|
|
1969
|
316,242
|
248,001
|
46.8
|
254,379
|
91,687
|
36.4
|
TABLE
7. 12
|
Year
|
Male
Sales per Hour
($)
|
Female
Sales Per Hour
($)
|
Excess
M Over F (%)
|
|
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
|
38.31
40.22
54.77
59.58
63.18
62.27
73.00
|
27.31
30.36
33.30
34.31
36.92
37.20
41.26
|
40
32
64
73
71
70
77
|
As a result of these differences in the income
produced by the two departments, the management of Robert Hall paid their male
salespersons more than their female personnel.
Management learned after a Supreme Court ruiling in their favor in 1973
that it was entirely legal for them to do this if they wanted. Wages in the store were set on the basis of
profits per hour per department, with some slight adjustments upward to ensure
wages were comparable and competitive to what other stores in the area were
paying. Over the years, Robert Hall set
the wages given in Table 7.14. Although
the wage differences between males and females were substantial, they were not
as large as the percentage differences between male and female sales and
profits. The management of Robert Hall
argued that their female clerks were paid less because the commodities they
sold could not bear the same selling costs that the commodities sold in the
men’s department could bear. However,
the female clerks argued, the skills, sales efforts, and responsibilities
required of male and female clerks were “substantially” the same.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
TABLE
7. 13
|
Year
|
Male
Gross Profits per Hour
($)
|
Female
Gross Profits Per Hour
($)
|
Excess
M Over F (%)
|
|
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
|
15.52
16.55
23.85
26.66
28.74
29.21
34.16
|
9.00
9.49
11.14
1143
12.36
12.91
15.03
|
72
74
114
134
133
127
127
|
TABLE
7. 14
|
Year
|
Male
Earnings per Hour
($)
|
Female
Earnings Per Hour
($)
|
Excess
M Over F (%)
|
|
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
|
2.18
2.46
2.67
2.92
2.88
2.97
3.13
|
1.75
1.86
1.80
1.95
1.98
2.02
2.16
|
25
32
48
50
45
47
45
|
Questions:
1.
In your judgment, do the managers of the Robert Hall store have any ethical
obligations to change their salary policies? If you do not think they should
change, then explain why they have an obligation to change and describe the
kinds of changes they should make. Would it make any difference to your
analysis if, instead of two departments in the same store, it involved two
different Robert Hall Stores, one for men and one for women? Would it make a
difference if two stores (one for men and one for women) owned by different
companies were involved? Explain each of your answers in terms of the relevant
ethical principles upon which you are relying.
2.
Suppose that there were very few males applying for clerks’ jobs in Wilmington
while females were flooding the clerking job market. Would this competitive
factor justify paying males more than females? Why? Suppose that 95 percent of
the women in Wilmington who were applying for clerks’ jobs were single women
with children who were on welfare while 95 percent of the men were single with
no families to support. Would this need factor justify paying females more than
males? Why? Suppose for the sake of argument that men were better at selling
than women; would this justify different salaries?
3.
If you think the managers of the Robert Hall store should pay their male and
female clerks equal wages because they do “substantially the same work” then do
you also think that ideally each worker’s salary should be pegged to the work
he or she individually performs (such as by having each worker sell on
commission)? Why? Would a commission system be preferable from a utilitarian
point of view considering the substantial book keeping expenses it would
involve? From the point of view of justice? What does the phrase substantially
the same mean to you?
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
NO.
5
NAPSTER’S
REVOLUTION
Eighteen – year old Shawn
“NAPSTER” Fanning, then a freshman at Northeastern University, dropped out of
school and founded Napster Inc. (website was at w.w.w.napster.com) in San Mateo,
California in May 1999. Two months
earlier, working in his college dorm room, he had developed both a website that
let users locate other users who were willing to share whatever music files
they had in MP3 format on the hard drives of their computers and a software
program (called “Napster) that let users copy these music files from each other
over the Internet. When an early free
version of the program he posted on Download.com received more than 300,000
hits and was named “Download of the week,” he decided to devote himself full
time to developing his program and website.
The final version of his version of his program was officially released
August 1999, and in May 2000, with more than 10 million people – most of them
students on college campuses where Napster was especially popular – signed up
at its website, Shawn’s company received $ 15 million of start – up funds from
venture capital firms in California’s “Silicon Valley.”
Fanning
grew up in Brockton, Massauchettes, the son of a nurse’s aid and the stepson of
a truck driver, in a family of four half-brothers and half-sisters. He got the
nickname “Napster” during a basketball game when a player commented on his
closely cropped sweaty head of hair.
Fanning had taught himself programming and had held several summer
programming jobs.
The
company Shawn helped establish gave the Napster program away for free and
charged users nothing to use its website to post the URL addresses where
personal copies of music could be downloaded.
Nevertheless, a month later, Shawn found himself embroiled in a legal
and ethical controversy when two record tables, two musicians (Metallica and
Dr. Dre), and two industry trade groups of music companies (the National Music
Publishers Association and the Recording Industry Association of America) filed
suits against his young company claiming that Napster’s software was enabling
other to make and distribute copies of copyrighted music that the musicians and
companies owned.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
On
June 12, the two industry trade groups filed preliminary injunctions against
the company demanding that it remove all the songs owned by their member
companies from Napster’s song directories.
According to the two groups, a survey of 2555 college students showed a
correlation between Napster use and decreased CD purchases. College students were outraged, especially
fans of Metallica and Dr. Dre. Supporters of Napster argued that Napster allowed
people to hear music that they then went out and purchased, so Napster actually
helped the music companies. Music sales
had increased by over $500 million a year since Napster had started to operate,
but the music companies claimed that this was a result of a booming
economy. Supporters of Napster also
argued that individuals had a moral and legal right to lend other individuals a
copy of the music on the CDs that they had purchased. After all, they argued, the law explicitly
stated that an individual could make a copy of copyrighted music he or she had
purchased to hear the music on another player.
Moreover, according to Fanning, Napster was not doing anything illegal,
and the company was not responsible if other people used its software and website
to copy music in violation of copyright law any more than a car company was
responsible when its autos were used by thieves to rob banks. Much of the music that was downloaded using
Napster, they claimed, was in the public domain (i.e.not legally owned by
anyone) and was being legally copied.
The music companies countered that an individual had no right to give
multiple copies of their music to others even if the individual had paid for
the original CD. If everyone was allowed
to copy music without paying for it, they charged, eventually the music
companies would stop producing music and musicians would stop creating it. Other musicians claimed, however, that
Napster and the Web gave them a way to put their music before millions of
potential fans without having to beg the music companies to sponser them.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
In
March 2000, the band Metallica hired consultant PDNet to electronically “evesdrop”
on users who assumed they were anonymously accessing Napster’s website. The following week the band’s lawyers handed
Napster a list with the names of 300, 000 people that Metallica claimed had
violated its copyrights using Napster’s service and that Metallica now wanted
removed from Napster’s services. Fanning
complied with the demand of Metallica, whose drummer, Lars Ulrich, was one of
his musical heros. “If they want to
steal our music,” said Ulrich, “ why don’t they just go down to Tower Records
and grab them off the shelves ?” Many
young people protested that the bands should not be alienating their own fans
in this way. One fan posted a note on an
MP3 chat room : “Give me a break ! I
have been dropping 16 bucks an album for Metallica’s music since I was a
teenager. They made a fortune off us and
now they accuse us of stealing from them.
What nerve !” Howard King, a Los
Angeles lawyer for Metallica and Dr. Dre, stated that “I don’t know Shawn
Fanning but he seems to be a pretty good kid who came up with a sensational
program. But this sensational program
has allowed people to take music without paying ………. Shawn probably had no idea
of the legal ramifications of what he created.
I’m sure the though never crossed his mind.”
In
August 2000, a federal judge in San Francisco, Marilyn Patel, responded to the
suit against Napster. Judge Patel called
Shawn’s company a “monster” and charged that the only purpose of Napster was to
copy pirated music without paying for it.
The judge ordered Napster to remove all URLS from its website that
referenced material that was copyrighted.
Judge
Patel’s ruling would have shut down the company’s website immediately. But a few days later, an appeals court
reversed Judge Patel and allowed the company to continue operating. The reprieve was only temporary. On Monday February 12, 2001, the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirmed Judge Patel’s ruling. The company attempted to circumvent the
ruling by negotiating agreements with the music companies that would pay them
certain annual fees in return for withdrawing the suit.
Napster
was not the only software that allowed individuals to swap files from
One personal computer to another
over the Internet. The software program
named “Gnutella” let individuals swap
any kind of files – music, text, or visuals – over the Internet, but Gnutella
did not operate a centralized index like the website that Napster had
established. Observers predicated that
if Napster was put out of business, numerous underground websites would be
created providing the kind of listing service that the company had earlier
provided on its website. Already a
website named zeropaid.com provided free copies of Gnutella and many other Napster
clones that users could download and use to share digital music files with each
other. Unlike Napster, these software
products did not require a central website to connect users to each other,
making it impossible for music companies to find and target single entity whom
they could sue. Many observers
predicated that Napster was only the beginning of an upheaval that would
revolutionize the music industry, forcing music companies to lower their
prices, make their music easily available on the Internet, and completely
change their business models.
Questions:
1. What are the
legal issues involved in this case, and what are the moral issues? How are the
two different kinds of issues different from each other, and how are they
related to each other? Identify and distinguish the “systemic, corporate and
individual issues” involved in this case.
2. In your
judgment, was it morally wrong for Shawn Fanning to develop and release his
technology to the world given its possible consequences? Was it morally wrong
for an individual to use Napster’s website and software to copy for free the
copy righted music on another person’s hard drive? If you believe it was wrong,
then explain exactly why it was wrong. If you believe it was not morally wrong,
then how would you defend your views against t he claim that such copying is
stealing? Assume that it was not I illegal for an individual to copy music
using Napster. Would there be anything immoral with doing so? Explain?
3. Assume that it
is morally wrong for a person to use Napster’s website and software to make a
copy of copyrighted music. Who, then, would be morally responsible for this
person’s wrong doing? Would only the person himself be morally responsible? Was
Napster, the company, morally responsible? Wash shawn Fanning morally
responsible? Was any employee of Napster, the company, morally responsible? Was
the operator of the server or that portion of the Internet that the person used
morally responsible? What if the person did not know that the music was
copyrighted or did not think that it was illegal to copy copyrighted music?
4. Do the music
companies share any of the moral responsibility for what has happened? How do
you think technology like Napster is likely to change the music industry? In
your judgment, are these changes ethically good or ethically bad?
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
NO.
6
WORKING
FOR ELI LILLY & COMPANY
Eli Lilly, the discoverer of
Erythromycin, Darvon, Ceclor, and Prozac, is a major pharmaceutical company
that sold $6.8 billion of drugs all over the world in 1995, giving it profits
of $2.3 billion. Headquartered in
Indianpolis, Minnesota, the company also provides food, housing, and
compensation to numerous homeless alcoholics who perform short-term work for
the company. The work these street
people perform, however, is a bit unusual.
Before
approving the sale of a newly discovered drug, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration requires that the drug be put through three phases of tests after
being tested on animals. In phase I, the
drug is taken by healthy human individuals to determine whether it has any
dangerous side effects. In Phase II, the
drug is given to a small number of sick patients to determine dosage
levels. In Phase III, the drug is given
to large numbers of sick patients by doctors and hospitals to determine its
efficacy.
Phase
I testing is often the most difficult to carry out because most healthy
individuals are reluctant to take a new and untested medication that is not
intended to cure them of anything and that may have potentially crippling or
deadly side effects. To secure test
subjects, companies must advertise widely and offer to pay them as such as $250
a day. Eli Lilly, however, does not
advertise as widely and pays its volunteers only $85 a day plus free from and
board, the lowest in the industry. One
of the reasons that Lily’s rates are so low is because, as a long time nurse at
the Lily Clinic is reported to have indicated, “ the majority of its subjects are homeless alcoholics”
recruited through word of mouth that is spread in soup kitchens, shelters, and
prisons all over the United States.
Because they are alcoholics, they are fairly desperate for money. Because they alcoholics, they are fairly
desperate for money. Because phase I
testes can run several months, test subjects can make as $4500 – an enormous
sum to people who are otherwise unemployable and surviving on handouts. Interviews with several homeless men who have
participated in Lily’s drug tests and who describe themselves as alcoholics who
drink daily suggest that they are, by and large, quite happy to participate in
an arrangement that provides them with “easy money”. When asked, one homeless drinker hired to
participate in a Phase I trail said he had no idea what kind of drug was being
tested on him even though he had signed an informed – consent form. An advantage for Lilly is that this kind of
test subject is less likely to sue if severely injured by the drug. The tests run on the homeless men, moreover,
provide enormous benefits for society.
It has been suggested, in fact, that in light of the difficulty of
securing test subjects, some tests might be delayed or not performed at all if
it were not for the large pool of homeless men willing and eager to participate
in the tests.
The
Federal Drug Administration requires that people who agree to participate in
Phase I tests must give their “ informed consent” and must take a “ truly
voluntary and a uncoerced decision.”
Some have questioned whether the desperate circumstances of alcoholic
and homeless men allow them to make a truly voluntary and uncoerced decision
when they agree to take an untested potentially dangerous drug for $ 85 a
day. Some doctors claim that alcoholics
run a higher risk because they may carry diseases that are undetectable by
standard blood screening and that make them vulnerable to being severely named
by certain drugs. One former test
subject indicated in an interview that the drug he had been given in a test
several years before had arrested his heart and “ they had to put things on my chest to start my heart up
again.” The same thing happened to
another subject in the same test.
Another man indicated that the drug he was given had made him
unconscious for 2 days while others told of excruciating headaches.
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
In earlier years, drug companies
used prisoners to test drugs in Phase I tests.
During the 1970s, drug companies stopped using prisoners when critics
complained that their poverty and the promise of early parole in effect were
coercing the prisoners into
“Volunteering”. When Lilly first
turned to using homeless people during the 1980s, a doctor at the company is
quoted as saying, “ We were constantly talking about whether we were exploiting
the homeless. But there were a lot of
them who were willing to stay in the hospital for four weeks.” Moreover, he adds. “Providing them with a nice warm bed and good medical care and sending them out
drug – and alcohol – free was a positive thing to do.”
A
homeless alcoholic indicated in an interview that when the test he was
participating in was completed, he would rent a cheap motel room where I’ll get
a case of Miller and an escort girl have sex.
The girl will cost me $ 200 an hour.”
He estimated that it would take him about two weeks to spend the $ 4650
Lily would pay him for his services. The
manager at another cheap motel said that when test subjects completed their
stints at Lily, they generally arrived at his motel with about $ 2500 in cash :
“ The guinea pigs go to the lounge next
door, get drunk and buy the house a round.
The idea is, they can party for a couple of weeks and go back to Lily
and do the next one.”
Questions:
1.
Discuss this case from the perspective of utilitarianism, rights, justice and
caring. What insight does virtue theory shed on the ethics of the events
described in this case?
2.
“In a free enterprise society all adults should be allowed to make their own
decisions about how they choose to earn their living.” Discuss the statement in
light of the Lily case.
3.
In your judgment, is the policy of using homeless alcoholics for test subjects
morally appropriate? Explain the reasons for your judgment. What does your
judgment imply about the moral legitimacy of a free market in labor?
4.
How should the managers of Lily handle this issue?
CONTACT: PRAKASH
Mob:
+919741410271
No comments:
Post a Comment