Ethical and Legal Aspects of Computing

This essential textbook presents an overview of the critically important ethical and legal issues that arise in the computing field and provides a professional perspective from software engineering. The author gained exposure to these aspects of computing while working as a software engineer at Motorola in Ireland, where he coordinated the patent programme and worked with several software suppliers.

Topics and features:

• Presents a broad overview of ethics and the law
• Includes key learning topics, summaries, and review questions in each chapter, together with a useful glossary
• Discusses the professional responsibility of computer professionals
• Explores ethics in various civilisations and religious traditions
• Discusses ethical software engineering and ethical outsourcing
• Considers what is fair and ethical in data science
• Describes ethical challenges that arise in social media and the AI field
• Reviews intellectual property including patents, copyright and trademarks

This practical and easy-to-follow textbook/reference is ideal for computer science students seeking to understand legal and ethical aspects of computing. The text also serves as a concise self-study primer for software engineers and software managers.

Dr. Gerard O'Regan is an international lecturer in Maths/Computing with research interests in software quality and software process improvement, mathematical approaches to software quality, and the history of computing. He has authored several books in the Mathematics and Computing fields with Springer, including the bestselling, A Brief History of Computing.