Somewhere a college professor is trying to gather information from another to teach his students a breakthrough medical technique. Why can't he access it?
Across the country, a grandmother inputs sensitive information into a large commercial Internet database to buy her grandson a new crib. How safe is her information?
These topics and many others will be addressed during The University of Memphis' eighth annual Ethics of Electronic Information in the 21st Century Symposium.
Scholars from around the world will be presenting papers during the symposium at the Ned R. McWherter Library and the FedEx Institute of Technology Thursday and Friday.
"(The symposium) is concerned with normative issues, ethical issues and even moral issues surrounding the proliferation of information in this era that we normally call the 'information age'," said Tom Mendina, chairman of the symposium.
"This year EEI21 is focusing on intellectual property ownership, so we will have several papers given that deal with intellectual property and ownership," he said.
One of those papers, "The Double Edged Sword of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act," will be presented by Kanneese Woods, Web services librarian from the McWherter Library.
"I'll be pointing out the negative impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on education, on security itself and as far as fair use in the first amendment," Woods said. "(The act) violated a lot of people's free speech. It has violated the research institutions like Princeton are trying to perform, simply because it doesn't allow for any type of speech against security problems.
"It can prevent all kinds of people - scientists, educators and journalists - to see the type of information people present," she said. Shana Ponelis, presenting an essay Friday morning, comes from the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
Her essay will point out "the impact of privacy of individuals of large databases that contain integrated information and personal information," she said.
Although this is not her first speech at a collegial gathering, she said it's a privilege to present in this environment.
"I'd like to get their ideas and some feedback," she said. "You do research and sometimes there are things you don't think about because you get so entrenched in it. It's nice to have interaction."
In addition to a focus on the ethical treatment of information, the handling of intellectual property will also be emphasized at the symposium, Mendina said.
"The possession of information and the use of information are at the forefront in terms of economics and public policy," he said. "We hope we make a contribution to the rational examination of the issues and to the way information is handled in real life on a daily basis."
