The pervasive use of telecommunications technology in general and the Internet in particular is so great that, at first glance, it may seem odd to suggest that the Internet raises moral questions. Yet the fact that information is so readily available via computer creates a double effect. On one hand there are obvious benefits in having a wealth of research and life-management resources available to anyone equipped to tap into the Internet. On the other hand, at a time when much personal information is stored online in data banks used by financial, commercial, and government institutions, the very availability of information puts individual privacy at risk. Investigators, marketers, officials, and unscrupulous persons may intrude on individual privacy with impunity and potentially threaten the individual's well-being as a result. Indeed, marketers are ubiquitous on the Internet. It is a rare online session that is not affected by so-called popup ads, which are unsolicited invitations to users to buy something and which interrupt the data-processing objectives of the Internet user. Meanwhile, the availability of socially controversial information on the Internet--from sexually obscene to hate-mongering political Web sites--has raised questions of who may or should have access to some or all of the Internet. There is also the question of the digital divide, a name commonly given to the fact that those who have the financial resources and the computer equipment to go online with ease are at a greater social advantage than those who do not have such resources, with the result that the Internet brings into specific relief longstanding issues associated with rivalries and tensions between the haves and have-nots.
Questions like these are especially problematic in contemporary Western, and particularly American, culture because of the ethos of freedom that informs its history. The double effect of access to a wealth of online data and the f...