Subject: Ethics and Technology 5th ed

We briefly considered the question whether some cyberethics issues are new or unique ethical issues. In the following scenario, which could be titled "Contesting the Ownership of a Twitter Account," (i) identify the ethical issues that arise and (ii) determine whether any of them are unique to cybertechnology. (SENARIO) --Noah Kravitz was employed by PhoneDog Media, a mobile phone company, for nearly 4 years. Phone dog had 2 divisions: an e-commerce site (phonedog.com) that sold mobile phones and a blog that enabled customers to interact with the company. Kravitz created a blog on twitter (called Phonedog_while employed at PhoneDog and his blog attracted 17,000 followers by the time he left the ompany in Oct 2010. Kravitz informed PhoneDog that he wanted to keep his Twitter blog, with all of his followers, in return, Kravitz agreed that he would still "tweet" occasionally on behalf on his former company, uder a new (Twitter) "handle" or account name, NoahKravitz. Initially, PhoneDog seemed to have no problem with this arrangement. July 2011, however, PhoneDog sued Kravitz aguing that his list of Twitter followers was in fact a company list. PhoneDog argue also that it had invested a substantial amount of money in growing its customer list, which it considered to be the property of PhoneDog Media. The company has sought $340.000 in damages - the amount that PhoneDog estimated it had lost based on 17,000 customers at $2.50 per customer over an 8 month period (following Kravitz's departure from the company)."