UNIT 2
ETHICS AND TORTS AND CRIMES
ANSWERS TO DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Privacy rights are protected under constitutional law, tort law, and various federal and
state statutes. Protecting privacy rights in the online world is complicated by individual users’ lack of
awareness about how and why their personal information is collected, used, and sold by Internet
companies and others who collect it. Among other methods, cookies are planted in computers to track
2. The position on one side of the line between justifiable and unjustifiable governmental
interference is that the government should not be allowed to monitor the Internet activities and e-mail
exchanges of its citizens without obtaining a warrant. Civil liberties should be safeguarded to the
greatest possible extent. The position on the other side is that in some situations, particularly when time
3. Doing business on a global scale can involve serious ethical challenges. For example,
different governments prohibit different information, censoring and shutting down Web sites that
violate the ban. It is acceptable for a private company such as Google, Inc., to censor the information
that it provides in other nations at the request of a foreign government. The United States prohibits the
4. Yes, gun manufacturers have a duty to warn gun users of the dangers of using guns
because a warning would be effective in preventing gun-related accidents. Gun makers whose marketing
5. The law has struck a fair balance between the rights of intellectual property owners and
the rights of the public. As discussed in the text, a company’s ownership rights in a trademark used as a
domain name has been held not to outweigh the free speech rights of others who use a similar domain
name to criticize or parody the company. This is an appropriate application of the law because the
UNIT TWO: TORTS AND CRIMES 85
domain name has been held not to outweigh the free speech rights of others who use a similar domain
name to criticize or parody the company. This is not an appropriate application of the law because the
paramount principle should be the protection of private property rights. Predating the founding of our
republic, the U.S. Constitution, and the courts’ protection of the freedom of speech, the protection of