On Ethics Of The Right To Network Privacy

With development of science and technology,human ethics always faces new challenges.The reason is: the development of science and technology changes the existing relationship between humankinds,and between human and nature.Before the technology of network appeared,people communicated with each other mainly through letters,telegram,and various traditional media.The network has revolutionized the way of communication all of a sudden all over the world.The traditional way to deal with the relationship between humankinds is hard to be adapted to the new situation.Among the relationships between human beings,the privacy right has been a longstanding problem.The progresses of science and technology are deemed to contribute to widen the freedom of individual,and the same as the relationship between humankinds.Widening the freedom of individual would challenge the protection for privacy right.It is impossible for us to slow down the progress of science and technology,what we can only do is to consider how to protect the privacy right in the new situation.In current network society,we cannot protect adequately the privacy right of individual with traditional ethical idea yet;new network ethics and moral concept of the network users have not developed systematically.In this new situation,the phenomena of infringement often happen,and the tension between existing ethics and the network technology is very obvious.The main characteristics of the infringement upon network privacy include low cost,great speed,wide range,changeable ways,and high-tech,main ways include the way of network technology,and the way of newt work media.The key to solve the problem is to foster the ethical system and qualified network users adapted to network technology,establish laws and regularities accordingly.The new ethical system should imply three important principles—respect,information,and consent.While educating network users,we should enforce moral education,combination of autonomy and heteronomy,and management of government and industries.