Ethical and Legal Issues in Web Technology

Running head: ETHICAL AND LEGAL ISSUES IN WEB TECHNOLOGY 1
Ethical and Legal Issues in Web Technology
Student’s Name
Date

ETHICAL AND LEGAL ISSUES IN WEB TECHNOLOGY 2
Introduction
Online businesses need to abide by ethical and legal issues which are crucial and
fundamental in launching and management of such businesses. When starting a business some
ethical and legal issues could include establishing and signing contracts, business licenses,
employment of new employers, establishing and registering trademarks, coming up with policies
and carrying out other business operations (Bennett & Raab, 2017). As an intern in a company
assigned to investigate legal and ethical issues around a startup company intending to launch an
online web application, my focus will be on requirements for data privacy as a legal issue and
identification of policies for advertising of illegal or unethical products as an ethical issue. Data
privacy is a branch of data security which is concerned with how organizations handle and use
client’s data (Martin & Murphy, 2017). Advertisements on the other hand are notices that are
aimed at promoting products, services or platforms.
I focused on these topics because of their importance for startup companies and due to
the recent trends in misappropriation of customer and employee data as reported on 30th May
2019 ABC News. Other global misuse of data has recently been witnessed in Facebook and
Twitter according to OAIC (Mittelstadt et al., 2016). Several companies have also been reported
for wrong, misleading or unclear advertisements aimed at fulfilling their business ambitions as
seen in Brisbane times in the lawsuit over weed killer Roundup (Leikas & Kulju, 2018). This
report therefore looks into these issues in Australia consulting a wide range of resources as
discussed below.

ETHICAL AND LEGAL ISSUES IN WEB TECHNOLOGY 3
Resources
While conducting my research on the legal and ethical issues around the web application
by the startup company, most resources on legal issues were intertwined with ethical issues
which made my work easier given my major focus was on Australia. Some of the resources
consulted in coming up with this paper include: Australian laws and regulations such as Privacy
Act 1988, The Australian Consumer Law and Australian Privacy Principles. The privacy Act
1988 is an important and major Australian law that helps in dealing with the issue of privacy, it
captures and contains vast details from other laws such as Invasion of Privacy Act 1971,
Information Privacy Act 2014, Workplace Privacy Act 2011, Personal Information Act 2004 and
Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014. The Australian Consumer Law has also been key in the
protection of consumer rights since its amendment (Pearson, 2018).
Other resources that have been used are publications and information from organizations
such as Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and European Union
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Bennett, 2018). GDRP are regulations by the
European Union that organizations under it must follow while OAIC is government agency
formerly known as Office of the Australian Privacy Commissioner whose purpose is to enforce
Privacy Act 1988, Freedom of Information Act 1982 and other government information policies
(Witzleb & Wagner, 2018). Lastly, other peer reviewed journals have been used in expounding
into the research topics. These resources are very useful in this research due to their in-depth
analysis of the research topics.