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On The Responsibility For Uses Of Downstream Software, Marty J. Wolf, Keith W. Miller, Frances S. Grodzinsky
On The Responsibility For Uses Of Downstream Software, Marty J. Wolf, Keith W. Miller, Frances S. Grodzinsky
Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings
In this paper we explore an issue that is different from whether developers are responsible for the direct impact of the software they write. We examine, instead, in what ways, and to what degree, developers are responsible for the way their software is used “downstream.” We review some key scholarship analyzing responsibility in computing ethics, including some recent work by Floridi. We use an adaptation of a mechanism developed by Floridi to argue that there are features of software that can be used as guides to better distinguish situations where a software developer might share in responsibility for the software’s …