Ethical Decision Making

Iris had gathered her planning team and announced the choice for the model on which they would base their approach, and now one of the more senior people was asking her why she had not chosen the ISO/IEC 27000 series as a model.

Since the 27000 series is mostly complete these days, why wouldnt we use that? he asked.

Well, I looked at the details of that approach, Iris said, and I decided that the expense of purchasing a copy of the standard for our use was not worth the few extra benefits it would provide us.

But why do we have to pay a license fee? the senior analyst asked. I have a copy of the standard that I got from a friend of mine. Its a PDF file and we can use it right away. Iris sighed, then paused.

Its a copyright-protected document, she finally said.

1-What did Iris mean by her final remark?

2- If the company intended to develop its own plan based on an unlicensed but copyrighted document, and if detection and prosecution for having violated the copyright was unlikely, would it still be unethical to take that approach?