In the article “The Ethical Problems in E-Business” by Tom Streissguth posted on Chron in 2016, the author describes the legal and ethical challenges faced by people involved in ebusiness. He notes that commercial transactions supported by the internet or e-commerce have gained a rapid popularity since the 1990s, and the majority of retailers of all sizes sell their goods using their own websites.
However, due to the privacy issues of the internet, identifying real sellers and trusting them becomes a challenge for the buyers.Therefore, to use e-business one eeds to be aware of the basic business ethics. The author acknowledges that important personal information is easily accessed by hackers online. This causes infringement of an individual’s privacy by people with bad intentions.
Customers, therefore, become vulnerable to theft due to the fact that they use credit cards online because cash cannot be used and also sending a check is impractical. To avoid unauthorized access to customers’ bank accounts, e-business sites need to install and update security software to ensure maximum personal information security.
The other issue is unreliable services, where sellers deliver fake or spoiled goods or no goods at all to customers. In addition, the author also discusses the issue of intellectual property theft and copyrights trolls, whereby he notes that the internet allows anyone to directly copy other people’s works illegally.
Only the registered copyright might benefit from possible compensations. Finally, the author discusses the issue of baits and switches, whereby sellers use mass e-mail to send spam and scams to advertise to customers to buy useless e-book courses or job offers.This author discusses legal issues, but gives little recommendation on legal protection against the issues. According to Baldwin and Henkel (2014), to hide personal information and therefore intellectual property, modulation can be used. This is by means of partitioning technical knowledge about a process or a product.
Brown (2009) notes that the trademark is a very important intellectual property that a company can own and if used well, it can provide an indefinite protection to a company. There should also be an effective patent protection to ensure the success of any business.
