Case study resources for an ethics and computing course

Case studies can be an effective 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 effort is made to include incidents with themes that are sometimes given less coverage relative to, for example, hacking or software piracy