One of the systems analysts on the project team thought that he did a good job of designing the company’s tech support w

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One of the systems analysts on the project team thought that hedid a good job of designing the company’s tech support webpage, buthis supervisor isn’t so sure. His supervisor is concerned that thedesign is very similar to a page used by the company’s majorcompetitor, and she asked him whether he had used any HTML codefrom that site in his design. Although the analyst didn’t copy anyof the code, he did examine it in his web browser to see how theyhandled some design issues.
The supervisor asked the analyst to investigate webpagecopyright issues and report back to her. In his research, theanalyst learned that outright copying would be a copyrightviolation, but merely viewing other sites to get design ideas wouldbe permissible. What is not so clear is the gray area in themiddle. The analyst asked you, as a friend, in your opinion on thisquestion: Even if no actual copying is involved, are there ethicalconstraints on how far you should go in using the creative work ofothers? How would you answer?