Unethical Websites

BugMeNot is Not Welcome Here

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I just refused to post another comment from a reader who entered a BugMeNot e-mail address. What is BugMeNot? I wrote about it years ago on the Ethics Scoreboard, as an Unethical Website of the Month. :

“BugMeNot allows web users to access sites that require on-line registration, so they don’t have to divulge their real names, e-mail addresses or other personal information. Through BugMeNot, they share active user names and passwords for more than 130 forced-registration sites, such as the New York Times, and Washington Post sites. In other words, the site facilitates dishonesty in multiple ways. It permits users to access information from a provider without meeting the conditions required by that provider for access, and it facilitates deception, as consumers acquire entry to restricted sites by using false identities.”

I prefer that all posters here use their full names (thank you, Tim, Tom, Bob and Steven!) but I will allow single handles as long as I am given a real e-mail address. (See the conditions of commenting in the body of the page here). Getting a fake screen name from a commenter who lists a BugMeNot address is not only a violation of posted rules, but also an insult: someone who does this is bugging me. If you don’t want to post under the restrictions of Ethics Alarms, fine, but you have a lot of nerve sending in a comment with a fake e-mail address on the theory that I’m infringing on your privacy. I require some modicum of accountability from commenters, who are my cherished guests: don’t tell me I’m “bugging you” by requiring some honesty on an ethics site.


Unethical Web Post of the Month: William Rivers Pitt

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I had been unaware of the existence of a writer named William Rivers Pitt before yesterday, and I now I will look back on those days of naive and blissful ignorance with nostalgia and deep mourning for innocence lost. The face of unreasoning hate and bigotry is always ugly, but one seldom encounters such purple-complexioned, vein-popping, spittle-spewing fury on the web, especially from a published author with a vocabulary exceeding “Deliverance” levels. I had been aware of the website Truth-Out, a hard Left commentary site that I now know exercises no editorial discretion whatsoever.

Mr. Pitt’s rant is entitled “The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right,” which, if it were written by anyone with a history of the relative moderation of, say, Richard Cohen, Nancy Pelosi or Bill Maher, I would assume was satire. Continue reading →

Ethics Fouls and Julian Assange’s Rape Case

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Well, well, well, Mr Assange!

How does it feel to have your own embarrassing and confidential information leaked to the media and publicized to the world?

On the sound ethical principle that two wrongs doesn’t make a right, The Guardian acquiring and publishing the leaked police report relating to Assange’s rape charges in Sweden is no less unethical because Assange is a smug foe of confidentiality. Nevertheless, it is hard to recall an instance when seeing the tables turned on someone was so satisfying. Ethics foul: Whoever leaked the records, and The Guardian for printing them. But thanks anyway.

It is satisfying for reasons other than delicious irony. Continue reading →

The Ethics Of Refusing To Help Wikileaks

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Do private corporations have an ethical obligation to allow Wikileaks to use their services? MasterCard, Visa and PayPal stopped processing Wikileaks donations. Amazon kicked the site off its server. Twitter stopped its tweets; Facebook stopped its interfacing.

Columbia University Professor Tim Wu rhetorically asked them:

“Since when are you in the business of deciding who is and who isn’t a good civil disobedience movement?”

Before I address the Professor’s question, let’s make some distinctions. Continue reading →

Hitler’s Ethics, and Ethics Malpractice From A Health Activist

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I am sure “Ellen S.” is a sincere, caring, lovely person, but the Ethics Police need to put an electric monitor on her tongue that sets off a warning every time she tries to utter the word “ethics.” There are many divergent ethical systems and many legitimate ways of analyzing an ethical problem, but Ellen’s sincere, caring blog illustrate why so many people’s eye glaze over when ethics comes into a conversation, and worse, it shows why so many otherwise educated people let their conduct be governed by rationalizations. The latest post on Ellen S.’s blog for the WEGO Health website illustrates my point; I didn’t have the courage to read more, and you will see why.

The post is entitled “Was Hitler More Ethical Than You?” Continue reading →

Easy Call: Wikileaks Is Naive, Unethical, and Dangerous

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

All one has to know is the degree to which nuclear war was averted through diplomatic back-channels and secret communications during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 in order to begin to understand how dangerous, stupid and wrong the entire concept of Wikileaks is. The latest dump of secret, near-secret and supposedly secure government messages on a wide range of topics has the  same general effect as a group of small, noisy children running amuck, screaming and banging pots and pans, while adults are trying to address urgent issues of war, commerce, human rights, and terrorism in the same small room. Continue reading →

Unethical Website: Hillbuzz

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Hillbuzz is the right wing website leading the charge to get Bristol Palin, who can’t dance a lick, voted as the best celebrity dancer on TV’s  “Dancing With The Stars” because, illogically enough, the site’s operators like her mother. Makes sense to me! Actually, it only makes sense in that I am familiar with how self-absorbed political fanatics on the Right and Left think, which is often inherently unethical. In this case, Hillbuzz thinks it’s reasonable to louse up the fun of a dancing competition and turn it into an expression of Tea Party power. Continue reading →

“How Not To Apologize” by Cook’s Source Editor Judith Griggs

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Not many of you chose to read about the “Cook’s Source” fiasco, which is a shame. It is admittedly a tiny blip on the ethics radar screen–a dispute between a writer and a narrow audience website that launched an Internet vigilante movement—but there are many useful lessons to be learned. Now one of the two key figures, “Cook’s Source” editor Judith Griggs, has generously provided us with yet another: how not to apologize. Continue reading →

What Gawker Calls Unethical: Poor Ex-Rep. Etheridge Was “Tricked” Into Assault

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The ethics-free web zone known as Gawker is indignant that it now appears that the young men roughed up by now-defeated North Carolina Democrat Rep. Bob Etheridge were G.O.P operatives stalking him in the hopes of catching him in a gaffe. Etheridge lost, in part because the video of him grabbing one of the young men in a bear hug was turned into an effective campaign ad by his adversary. He deserved to lose, as much as any candidate running in any race in the country.

Gawker apparently believes that under some circumstances it is no big deal for members of the U.S. Congress to commit assault and battery on the citizens they are supposed to serve, a view that Etheridge shares, but that Ethics Alarms does not.

Neither does Ken, over at Pope Hat, who makes a definitive argument that Etheridge has no excuse whatsoever. I can’t improve on it. You can read it here.

WordPress Ethics, Or How Offensive Obama T-Shirt Ads Ended Up On My Blog

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

WordPress supplies a versatile and useful product that is user-friendly (if I can manage it, believe me, it is user-friendly), inexpensive, and well-serviced. It also seems to be diligent about supplying regular information, which is especially important to me. So many companies, and especially the government, regularly surprise me with unpleasant, disrupting, or costly changes in what they provide that I only learn about by accident, or when they start causing me trouble.

A few months back, for example, Direct TV gave me no-charge charge access to HBO, just a couple of months after I had canceled it. There was no notice about this, and as a result, we didn’t watch the network at all for some time, since we didn’t know we were receiving the signal. It was puzzling that the access to HBO just appeared, and when it had hung around a few months, I decided to look at the bill, which we paid automatically. Now, I discovered, we were being charged for HBO, which I had just canceled.

When I called Direct TV, the representative apologized, took off the charge, credited me with a past months charge before I had realized what had happened, and removed HBO. He also gave me a long explanation about why this had happened, which boils down to this: when your service is interrupted (as it was several months ago; I was late with a bill payment), it is my responsibility to tell Direct TV what channels I was getting before the interruption, or it might just slip in premium channels without telling me when it reconnects my service. Is this written anywhere? No, it isn’t.

I no longer trust Direct TV.

I don’t trust the Transportation Security Administration, either. Last week, in the middle of a trip that involved several flights, I set off the gate alarm, as is my custom (I have a metal hip), and prepared for the ceremonial wanding. But this time, it wasn’t a wanding; oh no no no! It was a bona fide, full-body, rough massage feel-up that included a sprightly hello to my throat, rear-end, and naughty bits. In many cities, such stimulation would have cost me a pretty penny, though only if it were not performed by a large, heavy, middle-aged guy named Carl, as mine was. Yes, in rapid response to the underwear bomber, whose attempted act of terrorism was more than a year ago, TSA has now instituted new pat-down procedures designed to determine, among other things, what’s in your BVDs. There was no advance notice of this to flyers, of course, until I was actually at the feel-up point of no return, having made my meeting schedule and bought my non-refundable ticket. In fact, the new procedures had been instituted mid-day, after I had taken a flight including the usual game of Wand Me.

Now, back on the ground, I learn that some readers of my WordPress blog see a string of Google Ads in the text, ads triggered by key words and automatically generated. Continue reading →