When hackers stole nude photos of celebrities earlier this month, only a few commentators (like Peter Roff’s opinion piece in U.S. News and World Report) focused on the fact that this was digital theft of intellectual property. Instead, we heard people say things like “they shouldn’t have allowed these photos to be made anyway.” Or “they shouldn’t have stored them in the cloud.” As one commentator put it, that’s like saying “if you don’t want your credit card data leaked, just don’t have a credit card.”
We may not agree with the photos, but let’s look past them for a moment to realize we have a bigger problem. The intellectual property of individuals, authors, movie producers, and corporations is being stolen nearly every day. And we have a generation of Internet users that seem to think that everything should be free. And we have hackers who probably don’t think taking things off people’s websites and out of the cloud isn’t a moral issue.
Decades ago, I was asked to write a short article in a dictionary of ethics on computer ethics. Back then I used some examples that are relevant here. I said: “The first principle is that one should never do with computers what he or she would consider immoral without them. An act does not gain morality because a computer has made it easier to achieve. If it is unethical for someone to rummage through your desk, then it is equally unethical for that person to search your computer files. If it is illegal to violate copyright law and photocopy a book, then it is equally wrong to copy a disk of computer software.”
The definitions are a bit time-dated. We don’t use computer disks much anymore, but the principles I set forth still hold up. If someone takes an object from your home without your permission, we call it stealing and could consider it a crime. Taking files from someone’s computer or from the cloud is stealing. Theft of intellectual property is a serious problem. The theft of photos of celebrities is merely a highly publicized example of behavior that should also be considered a crime.