---
title: "Organizational technoethics"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_technoethics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:57.765531+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Internet has become a popular medium of expression and accessing information and data. As the Internet community expands, there has been great debate on whether or not the internet should be censored, and if so, by whom. In Canada, there are many public and private organisations with the authority to censor, including many self-censoring associations and service providers. Canadian internet censorship is not specifically regulated; however local laws do apply to websites hosted in Canada as well as to residents who host sites on servers in other jurisdictions. Canada has seen many cases regarding websites including defamatory material  and material promoting hatred or contempt.
Important Canadian cases that raise the question of control of the flow of content on the Internet include:

The Karla Homolka case. In 1993, the judge presiding over the trial of Karla Homolka placed a Canadian publication ban on the proceedings. Through the use of the internet, internationally published materials were then made available in Canada, undermining the court order. McGill University, followed by a number of other universities, immediately took responsibility of the university law under law to control the reception of content within its own constituency because of its liability as an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to restrict Bernardo-Holmolka material to its internet users, and later extended these restrictions by removing access to various Usenet newsgroups which the administrators felt might be violating the Canadian laws regarding obscenity and hate literature.
The Ernst Zündel case. Ernst Christof Friedrich Zundel, a German Holocaust denier living in Ontario, Canada and author of various works such as Did Six Million Really Die? and The Hitler We Loved and Why was charged by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for violation of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, for promoting "hatred or contempt" against Jews through the American-based and operated Zundelsite.org Internet website. He was deported to Germany in 2005, after being declared a threat to Canada's national security in 2003.
Many cases were ruled through Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, such as the Marc Lemire case, which featured a "white nationalist" website hosted out of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. However, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) found that Section 13 was unconstitutional and refused to apply the provisions against the individual for reasons of freedom of speech. All other Section 13 cases in Canada have been postponed pending on final decision of the applicability of Section 13.

== Future ==
Organizational ethics and technology is a hot-bed for discussion. Whether it is about the maintenance of worker's privacy or the censoring of social network sites, organizations are striving to find a way to balance both their worker's agency and their productivity. It seems the fluid nature of the Internet is forcing the hand of companies to allow their workers some benefits to access the sites they normally would outside of the office, while at the same time maintaining a strict policy to not abuse any privileges meted out. The medical field has brought on a new technology that hopes to effectively and systematically ease the process of updating, storing, and organizing patient's records in a manner that suits both the patients and the doctors that treat them.
With the advent of electronic medical records (EMR), the field of medical ethics has also seen an influx in ethical discourse. While the technology is different from social media per se, the efforts to protect the worker's (or patient's) privacy is similar and equally paramount to their survival. Patients will look to online databases to ensure that their information is both correct and secure, while trying to maintain the pseudo-ageless "doctor-patient confidentiality", even with full knowledge that their information is accessible worldwide with the click of a button.
Looking ahead to how EMR advances, and whether or not organizations will always feel the need to block social network sites all depends on how they continue to be used as people become more complacent with the technology. There will always be instances of ethical debates concerning technology within an organizational context, as the only things that seem to change are the technologies surrounding them.

== See also ==
Applied ethics
Computer ethics
Cyberethics
Digital rights
Information ethics
Organizational communication
Technoethics

== References ==