20.10) You work for a software company that has developed a system that provides information about consumers and that is used within a SoS by a number of other retail businesses. They pay you for services used. Discuss the ethics of changing the system interfaces without notice to coerce users into paying higher charges. Consider this question from the point of view of the company's employees, customers, and shareholders.
I believe there are two areas that this hypothetical touches on. The first being the moral. It seems obvious to me on a personal level, if a person were to specifically hamper a service in order to coerce another party it is a case of ransom or taking the service hostage. This is obviously morally wrong and I believe it should not be accepted by any party that would be associated with the perpetrator because it could possibly errode trust with the clients. The second area it touches is legal. I am unfamiliar with the precedent on such a unique case of software ransom. Also I believe the views of each relative party would change based on the legality of the action in question. For instance, if there is no legal avenue to identify and prosecute this action I believe at least the company and shareholders would support the action because of the short term gain up until the point where it becomes prosecutable to do such a thing. At that point it might be possible for the company to push the culpability on the employees who made the decision to abuse the system. But it seems more likely that the company would face the brunt of the prosecution for the action. This would mean that employees and shareholders would not approve of this. However in all of these cases the customers would not approve, because they are the ones getting the short end of the stick. In conclusion, although there is a possible gain for the shareholders and the company, this should not be considered ethical practice by any entity because it exploits the client and errodes trust between parties.