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Unethical Website of the Month December 2004
Alek's Christmas Lights
Is it ever ethical to set out to fool the public? Alek Komarnitsky of Lafayette, Colorado thinks so. His web site [www.komar.org] claimed that viewers could use his "Christmas web cam" to "pan/zoom the webcam and control the lights - yep, turn 'em on and off and annoy my (understanding) neighbors! ;-)"
Some day the Ethics Scoreboard will commission a study to determine if people who make little punctuation smiley faces are especially prone to unethical behavior.
In reality, Komarnitsky used pictures of his home's lights going on and off to create the illusion that the blinking was being caused by his site's visitors, but enough people fell for it to garner him national publicity and allow him to attract paying advertisers to his otherwise Spartan site.
Alek, for his part, is not at all contrite. His site now alludes to "people with no sense of humor" and claims that his was just a "successful attempt to bring holiday cheer to people around the world." (Alex appears to have an inflated sense of his own importance, among other things.)
If Alek had not himself benefited from his hoax, if he had not received nationwide media attention and some advertising dollars, the Scoreboard would lodge him in the "Trivial Liar" category and be done with him. But he did benefit. If this was just a little joke that grew, he had an obligation to come clean as soon as he began accumulating his fifteen minutes of ill-begotten celebrity. He couldn't bring himself to do that.
But that isn't all that was wrong with Alek's little prank.
When the world reaches the sad state where the only way one can distribute holiday cheer is through lies, maybe there will be a place for web scams like Alek Komarnitsky's. Until then, however, celebrating the casual use of fraud merely accelerates the pace at which we are heading to that very state. Alek's stunt, though essentially harmless, stands at the entryway to the truly sinister and hurtful web frauds that undoubtedly lie ahead. He has shown some very scary people how easily people can be fooled, and when they use his techniques to take money or worse, www.komar.org will not seem so harmless after all.
Is it ever ethical to set out to fool the public? Alek Komarnitsky of Lafayette, Colorado thinks so. His web site [www.komar.org] claimed that viewers could use his "Christmas web cam" to "pan/zoom the webcam and control the lights - yep, turn 'em on and off and annoy my (understanding) neighbors! ;-)"
Some day the Ethics Scoreboard will commission a study to determine if people who make little punctuation smiley faces are especially prone to unethical behavior.
In reality, Komarnitsky used pictures of his home's lights going on and off to create the illusion that the blinking was being caused by his site's visitors, but enough people fell for it to garner him national publicity and allow him to attract paying advertisers to his otherwise Spartan site.
Alek, for his part, is not at all contrite. His site now alludes to "people with no sense of humor" and claims that his was just a "successful attempt to bring holiday cheer to people around the world." (Alex appears to have an inflated sense of his own importance, among other things.)
If Alek had not himself benefited from his hoax, if he had not received nationwide media attention and some advertising dollars, the Scoreboard would lodge him in the "Trivial Liar" category and be done with him. But he did benefit. If this was just a little joke that grew, he had an obligation to come clean as soon as he began accumulating his fifteen minutes of ill-begotten celebrity. He couldn't bring himself to do that.
But that isn't all that was wrong with Alek's little prank.
When the world reaches the sad state where the only way one can distribute holiday cheer is through lies, maybe there will be a place for web scams like Alek Komarnitsky's. Until then, however, celebrating the casual use of fraud merely accelerates the pace at which we are heading to that very state. Alek's stunt, though essentially harmless, stands at the entryway to the truly sinister and hurtful web frauds that undoubtedly lie ahead. He has shown some very scary people how easily people can be fooled, and when they use his techniques to take money or worse, www.komar.org will not seem so harmless after all.