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This issue represents a unique perspective in information ethics at this moment in time. There is a change occurring; indeed, a transition has been under way for some time, from those who set the path, those who defined this field, to a newly minted body of scholars who see the context for the parameters of information ethics in a vastly different way. We, this field of information ethics, still grapple with the same fundamental definitions of information ethics as were presented in the 1980s, the "inception" of this discipline. We still think about issues of creation, access, control, and dissemination of information. Yet, what constitutes the definition of "information" and what constitutes those activities around information is dramatically different. James Moor was one of the first to call attention to the different nature of "computer" data, describing it as greased and malleable; he called attention to the "policy vacuums" and "conceptual muddles" created by digital data. Those characteristics articulated in the 1980s have indeed proven true, and even Moor may be surprised at the extent to which those very characteristics have transformed not only research and scholarship but individuals and societies themselves. We have seen such arguments for "everything is miscellaneous," and "the world is flat"-those are indicative of the collapsing parameters resultant from the ways in which we create, use, and disseminate information in this moment. This forces us to a broader question.Where is the discipline of information ethics? It is increasingly diffused. It is, simultaneously more important and less important than ever. It is ever important because every discipline essentially grapples now with information ethics issues, and because of that, its "significance" as a "stand- alone discipline" is called into question. Scholars from across an array of disciplines are engaging more directly with issues of data integrity, ethical research practices, privacy, autonomy, identity, trust, reality, data sharing, data manipulation, fragmentation, orientation. Information ethicists have made these issues explicit over the years, but increasingly, disciplinary specificity is collapsing and these issues certainly do not reside in any one clear domain. This is happening because of the nature of digital data which is causing every scholar, researcher, bureaucrat, and individual to think differently about their relationship with the world, in both physical and virtual realms. Information ethics scholarship is changing, pushing boundaries in its scope and reach. A physicist, Vlatko Vedra, recently described the theory of quantum information, that everything, the universe itself, is information. Information is superior. If we follow his lead, everything, then, is information ethics? With that, one might also argue that nothing is information ethics, a stance I do not support.Information ethics has co- existed along with other "ethics" for many years: computer ethics, business ethics, bioethics. Each of these has a corresponding "disciplinary home." Information ethics has had a rocky home in library and information studies, and it is notable to consider Enright's perspectives on this. It is also notable to consider the numbers of LIS programs that still have no ethics course; there is an implicit assumption that because of accreditation standards, ethics will be interwoven across the curriculum, an assumption I question. Ethics is often seen as an afterthought in professional programs, accreditation standards notwithstanding. Other disciplines, for example, those in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), debate heartily what mode is best for ethics education-stand alone courses or infusion models. I have not seen the same curricular debates in LIS. More commonly, LIS ethics are introduced through the standard codes of ethics. Professional ethics are symbolically embodied in codes-codes of ethics, as Zaiane, presents, are universal guiding documents, but do not ensure ethical behavior or professionalism. …

IntroductionTraditionally, information ethics focuses on the moral questions relating to the life cycle of information as it pertains to its generation, gathering, organization, storage, retrieval, and use. As a field it broadly examines issues related to privacy, security, access to information, intellectual freedom, quality and integrity of information, as well as intellectual property rights. In addition, the broader domain of professional ethics is of import, encompassing the ways we as professionals engage with, and respond and react to those ethical issues. The main stakeholders impacted by this array of ethical issues can be divided into three groups. These are the creators/distributors of information products and services, information mediators, including librarians, and the information users. Information and communication technology (ICT) supports the different information life cycle activities and plays a pivotal role in the shaping, understanding, and defining of information ethics.The development of modern ICT has profoundly changed the information and knowledge landscape, and as a result, has fundamentally impacted the field of information ethics. In this article we will examine this impact and illustrate how modern ICT has changed the scope and application of information ethics in the discipline of library and information science, and consider the implications for embedding information ethics squarely within and across an LIS curriculum, in an immersive fashion. We thus structure the article in the following manner: We introduce the topic by outlining the impact of modern ICT on nearly all human activities. We, furthermore, elaborate on the profound change that modern ICT brings about with regards to the unbundling, distribution, reproduction, and manipulation of information. To gain a clear understanding of how ICT impacted information ethics it is important to understand the relationship between technology and society. We discuss this relationship briefly in the next part of the article. Based on this relationship we illustrate in the final section how modern ICT has influenced the field of information ethics, and how we as LIS educators must consider this impact. This first column sets the context for a deeper consideration of information ethics pedagogy, which will be explored further in subsequent issues of JIE.Everything Is InformationModern information and communication technology, which is defined by Preston (2004, p. 35) as "the cluster or interrelated systems of technological innovations in the fields of microelectronics, computing, electronic communications including broadcasting and the Internet," bring about a profound transformation in the information and knowledge landscape and has radically changed most of our way of living and the way in which we do things. As such it is seen as ubiquitous, invading most facets of our existence. It has created a new and unprecedented form of dependence and most organizations and institutions, including libraries, rely on some form of ICT for their daily operations. It is clear that ICT has become the default technology for most of our socio-economic activities and the organizational changes and benefits that it brought about are no longer in question (Introna, 2005).The impact of these technologies arises from three of its characteristics. In the first place it is an enabling technology that has not only become instrumental in most of our activities, but also contributes to further technological development and changes. Secondly, it has grown, in terms of its capacity, exponentially over the last couple of years and thirdly, it has become cheaper, making it more affordable and accessible to nearly everyone (Freeman & Louca, 2002).As such, the introduction of new and modern ICT opens up new possibilities for libraries and information agencies. The most important is the digitization and accompanying manipulation of information. …

In this issue of JIE, readers will be immersed in an emerging and fascinating research field, a sphere that fits squarely in the larger domains of information and research ethics. Internet Research Ethics (IRE) has been growing steadily since the late 1990s, with many disciplinary examinations of what it means to conduct research-ethically-in online or Internet-based environments. Seminar guidelines, through such influential bodies as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999), Association of Internet Researchers Ethics Working Group (2002), and the American Psychological Association's Working Group (2004) (see Kraut, et al.) have been developed; three edited collections appeared in the last few years (Buchanan, 2004a; Johns, Chen, & Hall, 2003; Thorseth, 2003), and a plethora of interdisciplinary and international conversations have occurred in the face of IRE.The issues involved are indeed complex, significant, and truly philosophically robust. Ranging from traditional research ethics notions of informed consent and respect for persons to such legal issues as loss of reputation and liability to larger, more complex issues such as privacy and autonomy, IRE contributes to a wide range of ethical, legal, and policy debates. Multiple layers of difference contribute to the complexity surrounding IRE: disciplinary differences in and to research, from the humanities to social sciences, for instance; national and international laws and policies differing over research ethics and human subjects protections; differences across the continuum of research done online, ranging from "simple" surveys to in-depth ethnographic studies of online communities, and so on. Much additional scholarship is necessary in this field, as online research is burgeoning while many researchers fall short of fulfilling their ethical responsibilities in online environments, not due to intentional malfeasance but to ignorance. A broader goal of this issue is to shed light on the larger domain of information ethics and how thinking first and foremost about this realm and a global information ethics helps us as researchers in online environments.The articles brought together in this issue come from a range of disciplines and from some of the foremost thinkers in information ethics in general and IRE in particular. First, Herman Tavani sets the stage with a framework for examining moral, legal, and social issues involving cybertechnology-the field he calls "cyberethics." Tavani's discussion provides a thorough review of the field, which should help us as researchers in understanding the complexities of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and how researchers fit into this scheme. Whether or not cyber-, information, or Internet research ethics issues are indeed novel, as Tavani questions, IRE often finds itself embedded in the sorts of policy vacuums described. And, as Tavani carefully describes, different modes of ethics, from philosophical to descriptive to professional, inform us on multiple levels, while his methodological framework contributes to a researcher's starting point concerning fundamental ethical issues. We have seen these levels in the emergent IRE debate, and can refer to Tavani's discussion as IRE continues to grow in scope.From Tavani's large-scale discussion, we move more directly into IRE to consider some of its critical aspects. First, Annette Markham, who prominently placed Internet ethnography on the international research agenda with her Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space (1998) examines research itself, questioning the concept of ethics and how it dictates method, often resulting in compromised ethics and methods. Markham contextualizes her thoughtful discussion by asking questions of seminal importance to IRE: Who owns online data? Are online communities private or public spaces? How do we gain informed consent? How does one verify the age or vulnerability of participants? …

IntroductionThe concept of copyright or other ownership rights has been discussed in the literature as an impediment to the free flow of information within an institutional context (e.g., Rice, 2001; 2002) This impediment is often presented as a rubric of two conflicting rights: property rights (copyright) and communicative rights (free speech), which we are calling rights of inquiry, in the context of the academy, though these rights of inquiry are not limited to the academy alone but embody a public-wide plethora of rights to inquire, read, receive, discuss and debate, and share information. To illustrate the position of developing threats against these rights of inquiry, we use developments in the United States. This is done for several reasons, foremost because the legal infrastruc- ture is most prone to facilitate that threat, e.g., through implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, and second, because the conflicting right of freedom of inquiry is also well, if not most, developed in the United States, as codified in the First Amendment to the Constitution.In the US, we have accepted free speech as a constitutional right, or at least its formulation as a right in balance with others, such as a right against which the government may not intrude, or as a private right (for instance, copyright). The lack of free speech as a constitutional right in countries other than the US, may however, account for the lack of development in the legal rubric of communicative rights such as the right to speak, read, and inquire. Yet, Hugenholtz (2001), in his review of European case law, posits a cluster of reasons (natural law mystique, reluctance to fundamental rights in relationships between citizens, lack of constitutional adjudication mechanisms) "for the late development of European interest in the potential copyright/free speech conflict."1 At least in the United States, with its historical development of strong speech rights, efforts to use other legal rights, public or private, to curtail those rights is an effective vehicle to control and curtail inquiry.Thus, we can ask: Can copyright and other private ownership rights over information (such as a contract) exist along side free speech rights, rights of the academy to inquire, to read, receive, and share information? Or, asked in the negative, what do threats to recent legal developments in the area of copyright and related rights pose for the academy of inquiring minds, and the broader process of expression and inquiry in society? This question bridges legal and ethical grounds, and reveals a potentially uneasy relationship between the two. One approach (Watt, 2000) posits, "In general, new cultural creations are more valuable in the hands of consumers than if they are retained by their creators, and so it is important to consider how such intellectual property can best be transferred between members of society in order to take full advantage of it."2 And, moreover, considering a global perspective, "An international intellectual property regime, designed to facilitate the production and use of the global public good-knowledge-in a way that sustains high rates of growth and is consistent with broad notions of equity, must balance a variety of concerns, including dynamic and static efficiency and the use of the global knowledge commons."3Yet, beyond the broader notion of consumer welfare and inquiry, we focus more specifically here on the concept of the academy:Universities to date have been places where the rewards to individuals for the creation of knowledge have flowed from its diffusion rather than from keeping it a secret or placing a price on it. The diffusion of knowledge is a precondition to rewards of peer recognition and reputation. It is through the many individual acts of communication of their research at conferences, classes, in conversation, through journals, on the Internet and so on that researchers build the publicness of knowledge, a publicness that travels across many sectors of society and across borders. …

IntroductionThe American Library Association's first consideration of a formalized code of ethics dates to i930, with its suggested code of ethics, and with subsequent statements, revisions, or developments in i939, i975, i979, i98i, and i995. Ethics has continued to play an important role in the library and information science field, and significant ethical issues have recently been receiving great attention in light of filtering and CIPA/COPA, as well as privacy, intellectual freedom, and related rights under attack from the USA Patriot Act. We in the information professions must remain committed to the ethical principles presented by the ALA's Code, as foundations to our existence.And although the ALA continues to be the major accrediting body for schools of library and information science, it does not regulate or standardize the teaching of information ethics, nor does it require that accredited schools o∂er coursework in ethics. Some professional organizations, such as the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), has gone this further step and requires computer science students to take ethics coursework totaling i6 hours, with i0 Social/Professional/Ethical units (Tavani, 2003). In the library and information science field, it is assumed that major principles of ethics will be discussed through, for example, management or collection development, but many schools of library and information science have developed elective courses which delve more deeply into the myriad of information ethics issues facing professionals today. Surveys conducted by Buchanan (2003) reveal that overwhelmingly students in the information professions feel that ethics coursework should be required. As the range of ethical issues facing LIS students continues to grow and become ever more complex, such courses may very well come to be required by MLIS programs of study.The introduction and use of the term "information ethics" originates with librarian Robert Hauptman in the late i980s, when Raphael Cappura in Germany also began using the term. Some have defined the domain of information ethics as "all of the ethical issues related to the production, storage, access, and dissemination of information" (Weckert and Adeney, i997, p. ix). Much of what we discuss and teach in schools of LIS revolves in and around these four areas-production, storage, access, and dissemination of information. Within all of these realms, the array of ethical issues has grown quite large and complex: There are many information ethics issues, many ways of teaching ethics, and much diverse reading in this area. As new information professionals leave our schools, they must be equipped with the knowledge and skills to embrace and resolve ethical dilemmas. Just as we teach our students the theory and practice of reference or management, for instance, in preparation for work in the field, we should also teach ethics. Thus, the remainder of this paper surveys ethics courses and their coverage in accredited schools of LIS in the United States and makes recommendations for more consideration of ethics throughout LIS curricula.MethodsA list of all Library and Information Studies schools in the United States2 was obtained from the website of the American Library Association (ALA) in the directory of ALA-accredited Master's programs: Forty-nine ALA-accredited programs were included in the analysis.3, 4The websites of the forty-nine accredited programs were searched to find out whether they o∂ered a graduate-level ethics course. This included searching all posted class schedules and course descriptions. Course schedule/description dates were checked for currency to ensure appropriate representation. Professors teaching the class had to be located, sometimes, by contacting the school or department head; those teaching a graduate level, for-credit ethics class were contacted with a request (sent via e-mail) to provide a course syllabus. In some cases, the syllabi were available on the school web site and it was not necessary to contact the professor. …