Management and the Technology Professional – B302

Case study answer 1

In my opinion the biggest reason not to develop the software is that it is unethical. Developing the program is immoral as it is not in the best interests of society, as it does not benefit consumers, but only to benefit First4Internet and Sony. First4Internet has also disregarded codes of conduct and possibly legislation.

Sony had tried to achieve their goals by restricting the users own abilities on their computer. Yet doing so had its legal implications. As a result within the United States several lawsuits had started, stating violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Also here in the United Kingdom the rootkit breaches the Computer Misuse Act under section 1.1.a “secure access to any program or data held in any computer”. The rootkit secures access of the music, this would be a big reason for not developing the software. However since First4Internet were not the distributors of the application, they should not be liable.

Yet I feel that even greater reason not to would be that violate the code of conduct of an organisation such as the British Computer Society where it conflicts with the statement:


In this case the developers at First4Internet took advantage of the fact that the average windows computer user lacked the knowledge to identify the rootkit installed. Where as Sony had broke the first part of the quote in which full details of the application were not disclosed within the EULA.

The objectives of Sony at the time. Was to limit or prevent duplication of its intellectual property. When the user inserted the disc in to their computer it would prompt then to accept the license
where by agreeing to their terms and then allows them to play the disc.

However it would then prevent them from duplicating the music. It resulted in the users computers being open to virus attacks, it lacked compatibility between the popular ipod and also caused 'missing drive' syndrome when users attempted to remove the software. All this caused upset from the users and so, the sales of Sony's albums fell.

In summary I would not develop the software mainly because it is unethical but because it is illegal. However developing the rootkit involved the team ignoring codes of conduct and legislation.
Developing the software would not be in the public's interest and had resulted in First4Intenet and Sony getting bad publicity and trust to the point where First4Internet changed its name to Fortium Technologies due to the negativity associated with it.