Case Study Resources for an Ethics and Computing Course

Case studies can be an e ective part of an ethics and computing course. However, it is often time-consuming for the instructor to build a list of good case studies. This is especially true if the instructor wants to use real-life incidents for the cases. Even for the instructor who prefers to use "anonymized" or "synthetic" case studies, a compilation of real incidents provides a good starting point for creating realistic cases. This paper provides brief descriptions of real case study incidents which have been classroom-tested in an undergraduate "ethics and computing" course. Special e ort is made to include incidents with themes that are sometimes given less coverage relative to, for example, hacking or software piracy.