Ethics is not the study of what is legal or socially accepted or tolerated; it is the study of what is right and wrong according to the IT people-- in the sense of trying to discover reasonable general principles that will help them decide what they ought to do and what they ought not to do in all cases. Most people think that obeying the law and company policy or following the Golden Rule is sufficient. But laws and policies have loopholes and are often incomplete.
In fact, Information Technology (IT) people figuring out what wrong things in which no one has thought to make a rule against it. Instead, the rules grow in response to such creativity, but will always be behind because it cannot create rules that will anticipate every possible bad act that's there are hackers that not properly oriented about the word "ethics". It is to aware that the IT people should learn right conduct in publishing such programs. There are many legal activities that are not morally right to do but exists.
