1. DIGITAL ETHICS CHARTER
Venice, October 25, 2009
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Art.1 (Digital Opportunity)
Anyone should be universally guaranteed the opportunity to access the Internet for
the dissemination of free thought
Art.2 (Development)
Governments promote local access to the Internet as a democratic development of
the Knowledge Society
Art.3 (Promotion)
Governments encourage the use of Internet governance by developing procedures
that ensure transparency, efficiency and timeliness in the relations between state
and citizen.
Art.4 (Respect)
Anyone using the Internet is required to respect this technological resource for
themselves and the community.
Art.5 (Verify)
Everyone disseminating or sharing information is to ascertain and verify, before the
release of same, the veracity of the source.
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2. Art.6 (secret)
Anyone who shares information on the Internet is not obliged to disclose the source
of information except at the request of the courts.
Art.7 (anonymity)
Anyone can use anonymous ethical systems if the government acts in a manner
detrimental to the rights and freedoms of man.
Art.8 (Compilation)
Anyone who writes and runs code or a computer algorithm must respect the
personal rights and property of others.
Art.9 (Standard)
Anyone who writes and runs code or a computer algorithm must use all means
available to ensure that it may be used on all operating systems.
Art.10 (Free)
Anyone who produces and freely circulates their knowledge is not required to
pay fees or be subject to constraints or outside control.
to join in a personal capacity or as an association, institution, or university, send an email with name,
surname returning object: Join CED to ced@innovatori.it
Attempting to “customize” the internet through personal ideologies and unfortunate
commercial ideas is a common error amongst users
The aim of this Digital Ethics Charter(CED) is to trace the ethical line of conduct that
addresses the correct approach to the “Infosphere", where "info" refers to the world of
digital information.
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3. The internet has been and is still an instrument capable of providing free reliable
information to those who, adopting appropriate precautions, have the opportunity to inform
and be informed.
Before asking for "net neutrality" it is necessary that users of technological resources
approach the web in an unbiased way, avoiding the influence of the social and
economic interests that afflict censors and anti-liberal standards.
The increasingly dynamic application of ICT in the social field, despite offering enormous
opportunities for development, is creating new ethical and social issues as well as
influencing existing ones
ICT pervades society to such an extent that it renders the traditional models of
representation and interpretation of ethics obsolete, requiring an inevitable evolution of
these as envisioned in the Digital Ethics Charter.
Therefore, the application of ethics to new technologies poses important questions by
shifting the focus of attention away from virtue or utilitarianism, which base the moral
evaluation on the agent, and towards the ethics of the patient, or the entity that undergoes
the action.
The search for a digital code of ethics regards any information entity as a possible patient,
and identifies not only humans but also the use of technology among the class of agents.
The Digital Ethics Charter originates from this perspective, and by focusing on the
centrality of human, becomes a reference point for a process of interaction between
citizens, governments and companies in the digital domain.
Despite the limited number of articles, the Digital Ethics Charter addresses a number of
matters relating to the conduct that day after day comes to the attention of users of new
digital communication technologies.
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