The Ethics of Intellectual Property

The Ethics of Intellectual Property
Discuss the ethical implications of your personal views of intellectual property. How must your perspective inform your behavior as an IT manager? What do you do when an organization’s practices conflict with your ethics?

According to Hull (2019), intellectual property has always been linked to the entertainment industry as movie studios and record companies enforced copyrights on any of their products. However, intellectual property rights are now becoming a serious concern in other industries such as the computing world as computer software developers and distributers insist on the need to prevent their creations from unauthorized reproduction if their business is to remain operational (Tavani, 2017). As such, respecting the intellectual property of others is very important because the creator spends a lot of time, effort, and other resources to come up with their products.
As such, as an IT manager, my ethical perspective on intellectual property informs my behavior and overall decision making, especially when it comes to the handling of computer software and applications. The fact that these products are somebody else creation and their business and livelihood could be dependent on them means that there is a need to show respect by purchasing such products from the authorized vendors. Also, observing these ethical behaviors would help the organization save on money and credibility as it would avoid legal suits arising from violations of property rights.
Unfortunately, the organization’s management practices may conflict with my ethical beliefs about intellectual property. Under such circumstances, I would try to change the organization’s practices to be in line with my property right ethical beliefs failure to which resignation would be the best option. While some organizations may violate some intellectual property rights to cut down on costs or to generate more revenue, I would have issues with this approach because it is against my morals. Secondly, the organization would suffer huge losses regarding reputational damage and legal fines, while my position as an IT manager would also be questioned. As such, the best option would be to advise the organization management to change practices failure to which resignation would be the other option.

References
Hull, G. (2019). Intellectual Property. International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 1–8. DOI: 10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee614.pub2
Tavani, H. T. (2017). Balancing intellectual property rights and the intellectual commons: A Lockean analysis. Computer Ethics, 85–94. DOI: 10.4324/9781315259697-13