Computers have played an instrumental role in various fields over the past few decades. But, along with all the good there have been certain ethical issues that have crept up because of these machines. Some common ethics issues that have come up are the long lasting effect of computers on society, intellectual property rights, and privacy concerns that have become more prominent with internet becoming a household service.
There are various aspects to computer ethics. The most prominent one is piracy. You might be using Microsoft software that might be downloaded illegally from the net. Pirated copies of Operating Systems are also available which lead to loss of billions of dollars to the companies.
Piracy of music and movies, leads to huge losses for artists and distributors. Apart from piracy there are issues regarding computer abuse. If you receive an e-mail with a document that is not meant for you, then you should not read it. Often employees format the hard disk before leaving the company, this also is a form of computer abuse.
Before computers were such a common part of our lives it was very easy to differentiate between right and wrong. However, in the virtual world, that is not the case. Computer ethics now encompass various issues. Apart from the above mentioned, there are issues of e-mail spamming, digital photographs, and access to pornography. People need to understand that if you would not steal a movie DVD rom a store, then the same is true for downloading a copy of that movie from the net. | 
