Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
Chapter 4 Social, Ethical, and Legal Issues in the Digital Firm
1) Even in today’s legal climate, there is little incentive for firms to cooperate with prosecutors
investigating financial crimes at their firm.
2) Advances in data storage have made routine violation of individual privacy more difficult.
3) The last step in analyzing an ethical issue should be to identify the stakeholders—people
who have a vested interest in the outcome of the decision.
4) Professionals take on special rights and obligations because of their special claims to
knowledge, wisdom, and respect.
5) Privacy is the right to be left alone when you want to be, without surveillance or
interference from other individuals or organizations.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
6) Most American and European privacy law is based on a set of five principles called COPPA.
7) Spyware is software that comes hidden in downloaded applications and can track your
online movements.
8) Most Internet businesses do very little to protect the privacy of their customers.
9) Data gathered by online behavioral tracking firms is limited to the user’s behavior on a
single Web site.
10) Copyright is the legal protection afforded intellectual property, such as a song, book, or
video game.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
11) In white-collar fraud, information systems are most typically used as a means to hide
financial evidence of crimes.
12) The Copyright Office began registering software programs in the 1990s.
13) The drawback to copyright protection is that the underlying ideas behind the work are not
protected, only their reproduction in a product.
14) According to the courts, in the creation of software, unique concepts, general functional
features, and even colors are protectable by copyright law.
15) The key concepts in patent law are originality, novelty, and value.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
16) Despite the passage of several laws defining and addressing computer crime, accessing a
computer system without authorization is not yet a federal crime.
17) Any unsolicited e-mail is legally considered spam.
18) The European Parliament has passed a ban on unsolicited commercial messaging.
19) The most common type of computer-related RSI is CTS.
20) Technostress is a computer-related malady whose symptoms include fatigue.
21) Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral
agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviours.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
22) Internet and digital firm technologies make it more difficult than ever to assemble,
integrate, and distribute information, unleashing new concerns about the appropriate use of
customer information, the protection of personal privacy, and the protection of intellectual
property.
23) Responsibility means that you accept the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the
decisions you make.
24) In addition, in 2000, Parliament passed the Personal Technology Protection and Electronic
Documents Act (PTPEDA), Canada’s modern privacy law.
25) In Europe, privacy protection is much weaker than in North America.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
26) Informed consent can be defined as consent given without knowledge of all the facts needed
to make a rational decision.
27) Canada’s privacy legislation meets the standards of the European Directive on Data
Protection.
28) Cookies are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits Web
sites.
29) Web sites using cookie technology can directly obtain visitors’ names and addresses.
30) Which of the following best describes how new information systems result in legal gray
areas?
A) They work with networked, electronic data, which are more difficult to control than
information stored manually.
B) They result in new situations that are not covered by old laws.
C) They are implemented by technicians rather than managers.
D) They are created from sets of logical and technological rules rather than social or
organizational mores.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
31) The introduction of new information technology has a
A) dampening effect on the discourse of business ethics.
B) ripple effect raising new ethical, social, and political issues.
C) beneficial effect for society as a whole, while raising dilemmas for consumers.
D) waterfall effect in raising ever more complex ethical issues.
32) In the information age, the obligations that individuals and organizations have concerning
rights to intellectual property fall within the moral dimension of
A) property rights and obligations.
B) system quality.
C) accountability and control.
D) information rights and obligations.
33) In the information age, the obligations that individuals and organizations have regarding the
preservation of existing values and institutions fall within the moral dimension of
A) family and home.
B) property rights and obligations.
C) system quality.
D) quality of life.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
34) All of the following are current key technology trends raising ethical issues except
A) data storage improvements.
B) data analysis advancements.
C) increase in multimedia quality.
D) increase in use of mobile devices.
35) The use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers
of detailed information on individuals is called
A) profiling.
B) phishing.
C) spamming.
D) targeting.
36) Which of the five moral dimensions of the information age do the central business activities
of ChoicePoint raise?
A) property rights and obligations
B) system quality
C) accountability and control
D) information rights and obligations
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
37) NORA is a
A) profiling technology used by the EU.
B) federal privacy law protecting networked data.
C) data analysis technology that finds hidden connections between data in disparate sources.
D) sentencing guideline adopted in 1987 mandating stiff sentences on business executives.
38) Accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations for the decisions you make is referred
to as
A) responsibility.
B) accountability.
C) liability.
D) due process.
39) The process in law-governed societies in which laws are known and understood and there is
an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly is
called
A) liability.
B) due process.
C) the courts of appeal.
D) accountability.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
40) The feature of social institutions that means mechanisms are in place to determine
responsibility for an action is called
A) due process.
B) accountability.
C) the courts of appeal.
D) the judicial system.
41) Which of the following is not one of the five steps discussed in the chapter as a process for
analyzing an ethical issue?
A) Assign responsibility.
B) Identify the stakeholders.
C) Identify the options you can reasonably take.
D) Identify and clearly describe the facts.
42) A colleague of yours frequently takes for his own personal use small amounts of office
supplies, noting that the loss to the company is minimal. You counter that if everyone were
to take the office supplies, the loss would no longer be minimal. Your rationale expresses
which historical ethical principle?
A) Kant’s Categorical Imperative
B) the Golden Rule
C) the Risk Aversion Principle
D) the “No free lunch” rule
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
43) Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative states that
A) if an action cannot be taken repeatedly, then it is not right to be taken at any time.
B) one should take the action that produces the least harm or incurs the least cost.
C) one can put values in rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of
action.
D) if an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone to take.
44) A classic ethical dilemma is the hypothetical case of a man stealing from a grocery store in
order to feed his starving family. If you used the Utilitarian Principle to evaluate this
situation, you might argue that stealing the food is
A) acceptable, because the grocer suffers the least harm.
B) acceptable, because the higher value is the survival of the family.
C) wrong, because the man would not want the grocer to steal from him.
D) wrong, because if everyone were to do this, the concept of personal property is defeated.
45) The ethical “no free lunch” rule states that
A) if an action cannot be taken repeatedly, then it is not right to be taken at any time.
B) one should take the action that produces the least harm or incurs the least cost.
C) one can put values in rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of
action.
D) everything is owned by someone else, and that the creator wants compensation for this
work.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
46) According to the ________, you should take the action that produces the least harm.
A) Categorical Imperative
B) Risk Aversion Principle
C) Utilitarian Principle
D) Golden Rule
47) European privacy protection is ________ than in the United States.
A) less far-reaching
B) less liable to laws
C) much less stringent
D) much more strict
48) U.S. businesses are allowed to use personal data from EU countries if they
A) have informed consent.
B) create a safe harbor.
C) develop equivalent privacy protection policies.
D) make their privacy protection policies publicly available.
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
49) When a cookie is created during a Web site visit, it is stored
A) on the Web site computer.
B) on the visitor’s computer.
C) on the ISP’s computer.
D) in a Web directory.
50) Flash cookies are different from ordinary cookies in that they
A) are installed only at the user’s request.
B) are not stored on the user’s computer.
C) cannot be easily detected or deleted.
D) monitor the user’s behavior at a Web site.
51) The Online Privacy Alliance
A) encourages self-regulation to develop a set of privacy guidelines for its members.
B) protects user privacy during interactions with Web sites.
C) has established technical guidelines for ensuring privacy.
D) is a government agency regulating the use of customer information.
52) A(n) ________ model of informed consent permits the collection of personal information
until the consumer specifically requests that the data not be collected.
A) opt-in
B) opt-out
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
C) P3P
D) PGP
53) Which of the following statements about trade secrets is not true?
A) Trade secret protections vary from state to state.
B) Any intellectual product, regardless of its purpose, can be classified as a trade secret.
C) Software that contains unique elements can be claimed as a trade secret.
D) Trade secret law protects the actual ideas in a product.
54) Intellectual property can best be described as
A) intangible property created by individuals or corporations.
B) unique creative work or ideas.
C) tangible or intangible property created from a unique idea.
D) the expression of an intangible idea.
55) What legal mechanism protects the owners of intellectual property from having their work
copied by others?
A) patent protection
B) intellectual property law
C) copyright law
D) Fair Use Doctrine
Laudon/Laudon/Brabston, Management Information Systems, Seventh Canadian Edition
56) “Look and feel” copyright infringement lawsuits are concerned with
A) the distinction between tangible and intangible ideas.
B) the distinction between an idea and its expression.
C) using the graphical elements of another product.
D) using the creative elements of another product.
57) The strength of patent protection is that it
A) puts the strength of law behind copyright.
B) allows protection from Internet theft of ideas put forth publicly.
C) is easy to define.
D) grants a monopoly on underlying concepts and ideas.
58) One of the difficulties of patent protection is
A) that only the underlying ideas are protected.
B) digital media cannot be patented.
C) preventing the ideas from falling into public domain.
D) the years of waiting to receive it.