Cyberethics: Morality and Law in Cyberspace

Rating:
Summary: An intriguing exploration into cutting-edge ethical issues
Review: After starting this book, I found it difficult to put down or avoid engaging others with the questions the book raised both explicitly and implicitly. The murky waters of online ethics are aptly navigated by Spinello in this brief work. The presentational format of providing background and then analyzing each side of an issue enhances the understanding of the material while provoking further thought for the reader. Case studies are also interlaced into the material, providing ample ground for discussion. This would serve well as a college supplemental reading for any truly in-depth analysis of morality and cyberspace. It also remains enjoyable and understandable for the pleasure reader who has little background in this field. A must-read for anyone hoping to understand where government and society stands on difficult ethical and legal dilemmas created by cyberspace.

Rating:
Summary: An intriguing exploration into cutting-edge ethical issues
Review: After starting this book, I found it difficult to put down or avoid engaging others with the questions the book raised both explicitly and implicitly. The murky waters of online ethics are aptly navigated by Spinello in this brief work. The presentational format of providing background and then analyzing each side of an issue enhances the understanding of the material while provoking further thought for the reader. Case studies are also interlaced into the material, providing ample ground for discussion. This would serve well as a college supplemental reading for any truly in-depth analysis of morality and cyberspace. It also remains enjoyable and understandable for the pleasure reader who has little background in this field. A must-read for anyone hoping to understand where government and society stands on difficult ethical and legal dilemmas created by cyberspace.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't select this book for my course
Review: I teach a computing ethics course at an area University. I did not select this book as my text when I reviewed texts for use in the Fall 2004 semester. I did choose Spinello and Tavani's new reader; but this book--like most of the predecessors Spinello has written--would drive my students nuts -- and they wouldn't know why. Bottom line: poorly written and not easy to read -- lots of tough sentence choices made. However, as with Spinello's other books, there are some points he makes that no other computing ethics texts' authors do make! So, I'll glean those points out of his text and present them to my students rather than force them to work their way through and around his prose.

Rating:
Summary: CyberEthics = Mumbo Jumbo, not worth it
Review: The content of this book is nothing short of a diaster! I had to read this book for my Ethics in the Information Age class here at the Rochester Institute of Technology and I must say that this is the worst textbook I ever had to read. It felt more like a highschool essay thats 155 pages long. The book is plagued with wordy sentences that can confused and bemuddle anyone who isn't an english major. Practically every sentence is littered with words that a bare few of us remember from the SATs (perhaps to lengthen the book?). The book's content doesn't provide a sense of contraversy about ethics in cyberspace. I beleive that he tried to stay neutral in the arguments but it only seemed to confuse me. The auther included a lot of references to other sources suggesting that he too doesn't even know a thing about Cyber Ethics, resorting to other people's works. The writng is too abstract and at most times I ended up rereading the book several times just to make sense of it. If I didn't need this for class, I recommend not buying this book. I am sure there are plenty of other well written Cyber Ethics books than this.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of time
Review: This book was an incredible waste of time. I felt that the essays were a) far too dated (a rambling discourse on the dangers of cookies) or b) too out of touch (Rape in cyberspace was NOT a real rape in cyberspace, folks) The authors seem to be mainly scholars without a tech background than technical folks and I have to agree that the thesaurus was in heavy use during the writing of most of the these essays. Finally the book contains very little practical information on cyberethics. Not even a single case study.