Scenario #7

Scenario 7: Mrs. Peters enjoys working with technology. She has been working with computers for several years now and has her own website to allow friends to keep up with what her family is doing. Every year she posts her family's holiday photo on the website. A friend who lives overseas contacts her and says that she saw her family's photo being used as an advertisement. Neither Mrs. Peters nor her husband know anything about it. How do you protect your identity?

Mrs. Peters is not using technology inappropriately because she is not going out of her way to violate the rights of others. The maker of the advertisement, however, is not using technology appropriately. The maker of the advertisement infringed upon their copyright and does not have permission to use their photos for advertisements. An appropriate approach would be for the advertisement maker to contact Mrs. Peters and ask for permission to use any photos to make advertisements with. They may also offer to compensate her monetarily. This is the least they could do in respecting her and her husband’s privacy as well as in being a responsible digital citizen. Preventively, I think Mrs. Peters and her husband could use a watermark or text across important areas of the photo with text of their website url, so that the images are not easily used for other means without at least clear statement of ownership. The textbook page 33 have examples of Illegal Technology Use. One of the example is software piracy. Like softwares, made by programmers, the photos were created by Mrs. Peters. The pirating of such digital content is wrong, without proper permission. What do you think Mrs. Peters or the maker of the advertisement could do?