Without Honour. (Hijack Ware)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Hijack Ware
Date:	29/08/01 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: plenty for those who think that money is more important than anything else.

Disadvantages: abuse of small, vulnerable companies, unethical

Being the owner of a small online company, stories like this one fill me with dread. I have worked long and hard for my handful of customers, and to think that someone could steal them away is depressing indeed. However, my concerns about the attitudes of some online businesses go beyond the desire to protect my own bank balance.

It seems that for many these days, money is the bottom line money is all that matters and in order to become rich, one can justifiably be totally inconsiderate and unethical. The internet makes ths easy - how after all can a surfer tell if the advert has popped up because of the site, or from some more sinister source? A company can behave with no honour at all, and still come out smelling of roses.

There have been no shortage of reports over the last few years to say that increasing numbers of people consider ethical issues when they buy. We take note of fair trade and do not think well of companies who use sweat shops. We encourage our banks not to support animal testing and so on. Companies are more than happy to take advantage of the fact that consumers are starting to develop a conscience. Abusing other, small companies is still common practise however, and as yet, no one is up in arms.

The internet is home to thousands of small, innovative business (as well as many very bad ones) and this sort of software will inevitably put many of them in danger. It is obvious to me that this software will be most popular with the undesirable end of the market - those who cannot advertise on willing sites will hijack small businesses and take advantage of them. There has alerady been an element of this with porn sites buying up failing companies to use them as entry pages, thus giving access to their conten via legitimate searches.

In my wanderings around the web I have stumbled upon adverts for some truly horrendous and alarming sites offering very disturbing materal - if the adverts are to be believed. As it st
ands, such sites depend on other sites willing to link to them for advertising, but what if they were free to paste themselves all over the web? As it stands, there are enough fears about the safety of web use for children, but if any site might expose them to adverts for rape videos and other nasties, the internet will become a truly undesirable place.

The internet does not lend itself well to policing and being the slipery fish that it is, it will be impossible to get many new laws to stick to it. There will always be countries who will ignore the rules of others to earn money, and who will host the elss desirable through to utterly illegal sites. If it does not police itself, there is probably little that can be done.

I don't see the world through rose tinted spectacles, but none the less I am saddened every time I encounter stories like this one. We, as people, have a capacity to behave with honour and integrity, with consideration and occasional altruism. Every time money is raised up to be greater in value than ethical practise, the world becomes a slightly grimmer place. I can only fight this by protesting, but I suspect that speaking here, I am largely preaching to the converted.

Summary: