The Social Network: An Ethical Response

I felt like the movie brings up a clear ethical dilemma. There was a debate about whether or not Mark Zuckerberg stole a portion of his idea from the Winklevoss twins. This is an issue of intellectual property. If somebody comes up with an idea, then they are entitled to that concept and any financial gain that comes from its use. Often times, multiple people will have the same idea and only one implements the idea. If those people never communicated with each other about their idea, there is no moral dilemma. The rule of first come, first serve applies. The problem arises when one individual knowingly uses another individual’s idea.

The Winklevoss twins came up with The Harvard Connection and asked Zuckerberg to partner with them. He never did, but decided to create his own site called The Facebook. The debate revolves around how similar the two sites are, if at all. It is proven that the sites do not share any coding, so from a programming standpoint Zuckerberg is in the clear. But that could be argued as physical property. This is a question of intellectual property. If Jim invents the chair using maple wood, and Alex invents the same chair using oak, it is still the same idea.

So in order to determine if the idea was stolen we have to compare the concept of the two sites. The Harvard Connection was intended to help people connect, as was Facebook, but its purpose was geared more towards dating. Facebook’s intentions were to capture the entire social experience, not just dating. The Harvard Connection wanted to capitalize on the feeling of exclusivity, which is certainly the route Facebook took in its early launching period. We can see that the ideas are both very similar and, at the same, fundamentally different.

I believe Zuckerberg does owe them something. It would appear they were his inspiration and they paved the way for his idea to take hold. I also think the original settlement of $65 million dollars and some stock in Facebook is reasonable considering their apparent contribution. I believe the most ethical scenario would have been for Zuckerberg to approach the Winklevoss twins and explain the direction he wished to go. If they didn’t like it, they could have parted ways and they wouldn’t have had any claim to the Facebook concept.

Morning Glory: An Ethical Review

The ethical issue involved with the movie “Morning Glory” was fluff vs. news. The morning news shows are known for their soft entertainment value and very little for their actual hard news. The debate is whether it is okay for a news program to run stories that are based purely on getting the ratings.

I feel that capitalism gives our society a unique democratic opportunity. Because the success of a television program is based on its ratings, we are, in a way, voting on the programming they put on for us to watch. Meaning, if we thought what they were doing was unethical and chose not to watch, they wouldn’t get the ratings, and advertisers wouldn’t pay for time. In this case, the stations would either have to change or they would go out of business. This means the programming we see on TV is a direct result of what the general population wants to see. It is our own fault.

To me, this is all an issue of labels. Is it wrong to play a program that is just for entertainment? Of course not, but is it okay to do that and call it news? Maybe the real issue is the fact that these shows are labeled morning news. If we started calling them morning gossip, or morning mindless wake up time, maybe there would be less of a debate. There are plenty of opportunities to get hard news, and if that is what we really want than we need to pay more attention to it. One fear I have is hard news becoming so unprofitable it stops being produced. I wouldn’t, however, blame the morning news for this. I would look at myself and my community and wonder why we took good journalism and hard facts for granted.