# Professional Responsibilities

You are generally expected to **uphold the profession**

Unethical conduct includes:

- Exaggerating skills and competences
- Withholding or misrepresenting technical information
- Conflicts of interest
- Divulging confidential information
- Dishonest conduct

### Due Diligence

It is imperative that you **take reasonable care** in conducting your professional work

This means:

- You are competent to do the work required of you and your team
- Appropriate steps are taken to avoid harm
- Systems are robust, secure and respect privacy
- Rules are followed
- Special care is taken when modifying or retiring systems or systems are integrated in societal infrastructure

### Public Good

> "Computing professionals actions change the world. To act responsibly, they should reflect upon the wider impacts of their work, consistently supporting the public good" - ACM Code of Ethics

### Unconscious Bias

- Subtle and built into all of us
- Entirely natural
- Can be mitigated
- Draws our attention to micro-issues
  - for example discriminate against people of tattoos, or people with piercings
- Can have an squally detrimental effect as the big issues
  - Design to minimise unconscious bias

### Respect the Work of Others

- Do no harm
- Do not hack
  - Unless public good requires it or you are authorised to do so
- Respect intellectual property rights (IPR)
  - Relevant types of IPR: trade marks, industrial designs, patents, trade secrets, databases & domain names

#### IPR

###### Trademarks

A distinctive sign, symbol or logo

- Owner holds exclusive rights of use
- Registered nationally, regionally or globally
- Protection lasts 10 years, with the option to renew indefinitely

###### Industrial Designs

Distinctive elements of a product

Used where products have a short design life e.g. fashion

- Two types of protection
  - Registered Community designs (RCD)
    - Protection lasts **5** years, renewed up to **25** years
  - Unregistered Community designs (UCD)
    - Protection lasts for **3** years

###### Patent

- An exclusive right granted to protect an invention
  - Prevents others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing invention without owner's permission
- Lasts for **20** years from date of filed
- Costs between $3,000 and \$6,000
- Can't patent a computer program only a "computer-implemented invention"

###### Utility Models

- Prevents others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing invention without owner's permission
- Cheaper than a patent (not available in UK)
- Lasts 7-10 years
- Registered nationally

###### Trade Secrets

- Confidential business information that provides a competitive advantage
- Must put reasonable measures in place to keep it a secret
  - Store safely, implement NDAs
- Do not confer proprietary rights
- Protected by law for an unlimited time period

###### Copyright

- Author's or creator's right to protection over uses of their work
  - Ideas cannot be copyrighted, only the concrete implementation of the idea
- Obtained automatically
- Includes economic rights (renumeration for use by others)]
- Fair use allowed
- Covers life-time of owners plus **50-70** years

###### Databases

- A systematic arrangement of data, works or materials
- Two forms:
  - Original
    - Protection lasts lifetime + 50-70 years
  - Non-original (like a phone directory)
    - Protected by *sui generis* database right which lasts for **15** years

###### Domain Names

- Registered by ICANN registars
- Not protected by copyright
- May be protected by a registered trade mark
- Last up to **10** years, renewed indefinitely

### Ethical Limits of IPR

Don't go too far in protecting your own works

###### Sony Rookit

They produced CDs that when entered into a computer downloaded a rootkit which gained administrator control on the victims computer. 

Rookit modified the victims OS, limiting the users ability to use the CD.

**Profoundly unethical and illegal**

### Whistleblowing

**Negligence by inaction is not ethical**

Whistleblowing is the final recourse, is the last resort.