International Review of Information Ethics, No 15: Ethics of Sharing (2011)

“In information ethics though ‘sharing’ has been discussed so far only implicitly in terms of privacy, intellectual property, secrecy, security and freedom of speech. But not only that libraries have been at least challenged by search engines but also recent developments of a second order like the encyclopedia project Wikipedia, the emergence of social networks like facebook or disclosure platforms like WikiLeaks have shown that there is a need to go beyond the scientific habits and legal standards of sharing knowledge and distributing information to understand and govern the communicative space and exchange of information made possible by the internet and its respective platforms.

So, has sharing of information a special virtue in the information society? How are choices of sharing or withholding of information justified? Is sharing subversive of the new global information regime, or an integral aspect of it?

This issue brings together contributions towards an ethics of sharing that embed the new technological potentialities linking them to their actual social impact. In our understanding, information ethics “deals with ethical questions in the field of digital production and reproduction of phenomena and processes such as the exchange, combination and use of information.” So, the task of developing an ethics of sharing is both descriptive – helping us to understand the contemporary complexities of the ethics of exchanging information as it emerges from using digital technologies across a global range of social and cultural contexts – as well as normative – helping us to address blind-spots and clarifying possible ethical frameworks to address unresolved issues regarding these practices.” (from Editorial)

Contributions by Andreas Wittel, Mayo Fuster Morell, Marie-Luisa Frick and Andreas Oberprantacher, Vito Campanelli, Clemens Apprich, Michel Bauwens, Alessandro Delfanti

Edited by Felix Stalder and Wolfgang Sützl
Published by International Center for Information Ethics, September 2011
ISSN: 1614-1687

authors

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