Essay on Classical Theories of Ethics

Running head: CLOUD COMPUTING HITS SNAG IN EUROPE
Cloud Computing Hits Snag in Europe
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1CLOUD COMPUTING HITS SNAG IN EUROPE
“Cloud Computing Hits Snag in Europe”
Cloud computing is the technology utilized for transferring data or any type of services
via Internet. The services include analytics, networking, servers and storage. The services are
configurable (Dewey, 2016). The main benefit of cloud computing is that the data analysis can
be done easily. Apart from this, cloud computing is affordable for all organizations. It even does
its job with intense speed and this in turn increases the overall productivity of the organization
easily. However, in spite of helping the technological world with so many advantages, cloud
computing do has some of the major disadvantages (Hashizume et al., 2013). The major
disadvantage of cloud computing is that the downtime is excessive high. The essay given below
briefly describes the major turmoil that occurred in Europe due to cloud computing. The essay
helps to understand whether the case is ethical or not with the help of the four classical theories
of ethics. Proper justifications are also provided to understand the case study.
Cloud computing helps to transfer data and other services over the Internet easily. This is
done with utmost security and reliability. However, in 2010, Europe suffered from several
drawbacks in the cloud (O’Brien, 2017). The European government wanted to secure European
cloud and the confidential data from all types of cyber threats and risks. The free flow of data
can be easily modified and intercepted by the cyber criminals and terrorists. One of the major
disadvantage of cloud computing is that the security can be intercepted. Due to this reason, the
government of Europe restricted the cloud to such level that no data was theft was intercepted
through this. However, the problem with such restrictions was that the procedures and processes
of the cloud were slowed down with the comparison of the United States (Zissis & Lekkas,
2012). The government of US allows all the organizations to transfer data through cloud
computing legally. Europe was lagging behind in terms of sales by almost 6 times than US. The

2CLOUD COMPUTING HITS SNAG IN EUROPE
total sales in 2012 were about 102 billion dollars in US, whereas in Europe it was only about 18
billion dollars. The main problem was that all the data were being encrypted before transferring
them. This was slowing down the entire process. Another problem in this case study was the
European Data Privacy Directive. This directive did not allow data from European Union to
move internationally (O’Brien, 2017). Handful countries like US, Argentina and Canada were
allowed for providing the services of cloud.
The main objective of this essay is to understand whether the case study of the European
cloud is ethical or non ethical. There are four classical theories of ethics (Arntzenius, 2014).
They are the utilitarianism theory, deontology theory, virtue theory and the contract theory. The
government of Europe was stopping the data to transfer in the cloud. The utilitarianism theory
states that every activity should have a utility. This type of activity can be said as the best
activity. In this case study, the European government was trying to secure and protect the
European data. They did not have any wrong or unethical intentions behind this (Crimmins,
2017). However, the activity did not have any utility. Rather, it was negative. Therefore, as per
the utilitarianism theory, the case study is non-ethical.
The second theory is the Deontology theory. This theory states that all decisions taken by
human beings must be taken on the basis of the morality of an action (Chen & Schonger, 2017).
According to this theory, every decision is based on obligations and duties. The moral obligation
obliges a person to complete his task. This type of obligation comes from external and internal
sources like personal, cultural values, legal, religious and universal laws. In the case study of
cloud computing, the government of Europe is not non-ethical as they did not do anything wrong
(Lazar, 2017). They were only performing their responsibilities. The case study is not unethical
as per the deontology theory.