A distinction is made between moral indoctrination and instruction in ethics.
It is argued that the legitimate and important field of computer ethics should
not be permitted to become mere moral indoctirnation. Computer ethics is an
academic field in its own right with unique ethical issues that would not have
existed if computer technology had not been invented. Several example issues
are presented to illustrate this point. The failure to find satisfactory
non-computer analogies testifies to the uniqueness of computer ethics. Lack of
an effective analogy forces us to discover new moral values, formulate new
moral principles, develop new policies, and find new ways to think about the
issues presented to us. For all of these reasons, the kind of issues presented
deserves to be addressed separately from others that might at first appear
similar. At the very least, they have been so transformed by computing
technology that their altered form demands special attention.