OUTSTANDING BUSINESS ETHICS ESSAY COMPETITION
Alexander Murray
“Apple's Ethical Dilemma” Congratulations! Newsweek has just named you the author of one of the 100 greatest novels of all time. This is nothing new, just another accolade on your seemingly endless resume. Your name continually appears on lists alongside Faulkner, Chaucer, and Tolstoy. Time Magazine, the Library of Congress, and countless literary re views praise your work as one of the greatest literary achievements of all time. As you graciously accept yet another honor, it sickens you to wonder, "How did I get here?” The answer is simple, but unknown to anyone except you. To answer it, you must go back to the winter of 1925. As you walk along the frigid Manhattan sidewalks, you find a manuscript lying upon a table outside of a restaurant. You page through the document, reading about a woman named Daisy and a man named Gatsby. Not wanting to put the document down, you place the manuscript inside your jacket and continue to walk down the sidewalk. After a brief moral deliberation, you decide to publish the novel under your name. Later that year, a lawsuit is filed by an unpublished author named Fitzgerald. The litigation is dropped and nothing is ever heard from the plaintiff again. Fitzgerald forever fades from the public eye as your name becomes increasingly recognizable among high school and university students throughout the United States. Nearly a century later, you are still credited as the author of The Great Gatsby. While the aforementioned situation may seem impractical, similar ethical dilemmas continuously arise in the corporate world. Media outlets continuously report copyright infringement upon intellectual property, such as literary and musical works, but these scenarios are not limited to artistic creations. All too often, similar scenarios unfold in business settings, where executives