Engineering Ethics Essay

Fida Amalia Fathimah

Freedom of Speech and Responsibility-as-Blameworthiness:

An Ethical Case Study of Amazon
Freedom of speech is one of the hallmarks of human rights and particularly so in the western world where
the individualism and the ability to express oneself is highly valued. The phrase freedom of speech itself
encompasses many different things outside of merely speech. It also includes speaking, writing,
singing, acting, burning flags, yelling on the street corner, advertising, threats, slander and so on
(Alexander and Horton, 1984 in van Mill, 2002). The rights of speech are therefore murky since without
enforcing rules and procedures on how speech is conducted then actual two-way conversations couldnt
happen, not to mention the limitations on how much society values free speech relative to other rights.

An aspect to be considered is the Harm Principle concerning freedom of speech and hate speech which
explains that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. as stated by the staunch proponent of
the freedom of speech, John Stuart Mill (van Mill, 2002). If to put a stop to the speech in question will
prevent some harm from being done to the rights of other people, then it is justified to do so. Therefore
to debate the status quo of Amazon selling questionable books is a legitimate question which will not
trample basic human rights.

In the context of individuals, the discussion regarding freedom of speech is already quite complex with
the debate on how far can an individual express their views before it tramples another persons rights.
Taken further to the context of companies and private entities, the discourse becomes convoluted with
business ethics and the different values of many people in the organization. Some conflicts regarding
ethics are therefore to be expected in business environments that are characterized by ethical pluralism
(Stansbury, 2009). It is complicated to breakdown and set limits on how far a company should act and
how far a company is responsible in spreading ideas that can incite hatred since one cannot be completely
sure if something is the consequences of certain acts.

On February 2017, Israel's official Holocaust memorial has asked Amazon to stop selling literature on its
site that denies the genocide of 6 million Jews during World War II and otherwise promotes anti-
Semitism. (Abcnews, 2017). This raises the question on if and how far Amazon can exercise their
authority in banning offensive ideas in the form of books. One of the reasons that cited by the organization
is that there has been a recent spike in hate crime towards Jew community in the US, increasing their
concern in the spreading and inciting offensive anti-Semitism views. The party that requested Amazon
to ban the sales of Holocaust-denying books therefore implies that Amazon as a company who facilitates
transaction of goods is responsibleat least in some parts for the recent and future spikes of hate
crime. There could be certain amount of exposure and encouragement of those ideologies by the sales of
book that happened because of Amazon allows it, that wouldnt happen otherwise.

Amazon has a history of ban the sales of offensive goods. In June 2015, Amazon, along with Walmart,
Sears, and eBay stopped selling Confederate flag merchandise, a symbol of slavery and racism in the
United States (cnn.com). This could be a precedent for sales ban on offensive materials. People are
uncomfortable with the banning of books or books censorship, which makes it a slippery slope, the once
acceptable change towards the status quo on free speech can lead to potentially prohibition of speech in
the future (Schauer, 1985 in van Mill, 2016). Though, as a private company and not government entity,
Amazon does have the rights to accept or deny anyone their business. Still however, to prove if Amazon
Engineering Ethics Essay
Fida Amalia Fathimah

(or other companies in similar situation) is responsible or not in the case mentioned above is a difficult
thing to do.

Responsibility as Blameworthiness

One way to start considering the ethical aspect of this problem is by examining whether or not Amazon
or any company that could facilitate the spreading of material with alleged offensive views are to be
blamed.

The responsibility-as-blameworthiness states that in order for a moral agent to be held morally
responsible, they must fulfill certain conditions which are (to use these conditions for evaluating the
blame, Amazon will be treated as a single entity that is capable of making decisions):

1. Capacity
2. Causality
3. Knowledge
4. Freedom
5. Wrong-doing

(van de Poel, et al, 2011)

If the fault is to spread intellectual material that can be used to express offensive views, the capacity to
decide is present. As a moral agent, Amazon has the capacity to make conscious decision to carry out
certain acts or not. In this case, Amazon can know what are the goods in the transaction between buyer
and seller, and has the capacity to put a stop on it.

The second condition is, however, debatable at this point. It is hard to draw a definite causal relationship
between the sales of books and the spike of hate crime. Hypothetically, there could be some studies
conducted if necessary to prove a correlation in certain geographical areas where the spike is happened.
But then again, it is hard to isolate which are the variables that affect it directly or indirectly with so little
data. Even if there are unprecedented soars in both the sales of anti-Semitist books and anti-Semitist hate
crime in certain areas, it is hard to pinpoint if one is the effect of the other.

Moving on to knowledge as a condition for blame, in this case Amazon has the duty to know what are the
goods that are being distributed via their channels. Outside of the problematic books that are the central
of this essay, in general, Amazon surely enforces certain procedures to make sure no illegal transactions
happen on their website. One way to ensure that is to possess the knowledge of what are the goods that
are the object of the transactions. However, in practice, identifying which books contain harmful
ideologies will be more complicated. The concept of determining that a moral agent fulfills their duty to
know is not as easy to implement.

The fourth point is about whether or not Amazon has the freedom of doing what they do. As they are a
big company operating in the free world, they are bound by the law of the country where they based on.
They have to uphold the law of the country but they are not the subject of compulsion or under anyones
coercion. Therefore, the fourth condition is fulfilled.

Finally, the last and trickiest part of the condition, is the wrong-doing status of facilitating the sales of
books containing the denial of Holocaust and other anti-Semitist views. For a mere observer, it is easier
to identify what comprises an offensive visual symbol, than to identify books containing ideas and then
Engineering Ethics Essay
Fida Amalia Fathimah

agreeing that it constitutes hate speech. Is it necessary, then, to gather scholars and experts on Jewish
history to vet which books are containing the ideas and have the benefit of spreading knowledge to
mankind and separating them from books that incite hate crime and therefore worthy of ban? The answer
could be yes if the decision on bans are being done case by case. To examine the whole problem that way
instead of enforcing all-encompassing rule could be a sensible alternative to approach the problem.

The fundamental moral guidance for companies is the business ethics which states that the compliance
of a company with the law where they operate is the central tenet of companys ethical behavior
(Robinson, et al 2007). When a government entity, or set of law that applies, or court order decide to put
a stop on the sales of some books then the company is morally obliged to comply. The question then back
again to decide whether or not the books in question are harmful and responsible for the spike of hate
crimes and to distribute it is therefore an illegal act and morally wrong according to business ethics.

The business ethics of Online Service Provider (OSP) which typically includes websites that host user-
generated contents also concerns business that concerns international market which Amazon is. The same
question also appears in this discussion, that whether or not OSPs bear any moral responsibilities for
circulating on their infrastructures third-party generated content that may prove harmful (Taddeo and
Floridi, 2016). It is also stated that the preferable thing is to hold the OSPs morally responsible for the
distribution of harmful content throughout their channel which, however, would raise the need to further
assigning responsibility of curating the contents.

Back into examining the moral responsibility of Amazon as the moral agent using the 5 conditions of
blameworthiness, the fifth condition remains hard to decide. The level of importance of the 5 conditions
is in itself debatable and could change between cases. Analyzing moral dilemma of the freedom of speech
in general is also tend to lean towards this case-by-case basis which perhaps is the most sensible approach
as stated by Stanley Fish (van Mill, 2002). Approaching the problem case-by-case will however pose the
burden of determining the harmfulness of a book or any goods that potentially containing hate speech.
Whose responsibility it is to verify them is another question altogether which could be involving different
parties with different distribution of responsibilities on different cases.

References

1. Van De Poel, Ibo, et al. The Problem of Many Hands: Climate Change as an Example. Sci Eng Ethics
vol 18 (2012): 4967
2. Robinson, et al. Engineering, Business, and Personal Ethics. (2007). Routledge
3. Van Mill, David. (2002). Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-
speech/ (Accessed 2017-02-28)
4. Stansbury, Jason. Reasoned Moral Agreement: Applying Discourse Ethics within Organizations.
Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2009): 33-56
5. Fiona Duthie. Libraries and the Ethics of Censorship. The Australian Library Journal 59:3 (2010):
85-94,
6. Taddeo, Mariarosaria and Floridi, Luciano. The Debate on the Moral Responsibilities of Online
Service Providers. Sci Eng Ethics, Vol 22 (2016): 15751603
7. The Associated Press. Israel to Amazon: Stop selling Holocaust-denying literature. 2017.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israel-amazon-stop-selling-holocaust-denying-
literature-45746218 (Accessed 2017-02-28)
Engineering Ethics Essay
Fida Amalia Fathimah

8. Lee, MJ. Walmart, Amazon, Sears, eBay to stop selling Confederate flag merchandise. 2015.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/confederate-flag-walmart-south-carolina/
(Accessed 2017-02-2018)