Towards an ethical analysis of the W3C Web services architecture model

This article explores the relevance of information ethics, the field that concerns itself with the study of ethical issues arising from the development and use of such technologies, for a specific information technology viz. Web services. In particular, the Web services architecture, as conceptualised by the W3C, is analysed using Floridi´s theory of Information Ethics (IE). Firstly, it is shown that a technology such as Web services (acting as autonomous software agents and artificial agents with moral agency) should and could be subjected to a systematic ethical analysis that yields useful results. Secondly, the suitability and applicability of Floridi´s ethical theory of IE is demonstrated by applying it to a complex system such as the Web services architecture. It is shown how the central notion of IE, viz. so-called levels of abstraction, supports major software systems design principles such as top-down design, structured analysis and design, and stepwise refinement and affords us the opportunity of interrogating the ethical behaviour of Web services. This result is of particular significance since it opens up opportunities for the systematic and appropriate ethical analysis of any software system and may provide a general approach to “ethics by design”.