C.H.E.S.S.B.O.A.R.D.: An Interactive Chess Learning Aid; Categorical Embarrassment: Ethical Failures in the Sony BMG Copy Protection Software Scandal

In my Technical Report and STS Research Paper, I focus on software deployed within physical devices that have human users. My Technical Report documents a “smart” chessboard which I helped write software for. The chessboard’s software interacts with human players by processing moves they have made and highlighting possible moves for them to make next. My STS Research Paper investigates CD copy protection software which Sony BMG sold, sparking an outcry beginning in late 2005. Unlike the chessboard in my Technical Report, Sony BMG’s software came to market as part of full-fledged consumer products. Both documents, however, engage with the technical details, social factors, and ethical implications of software that interacts with human users. My technical project, a “smart” chessboard, teaches players the rules of chess by sensing piece movement, providing visual feedback underneath each tile with LEDs, tracking moves with software, and computing the best move for each turn to offer as a hint to players. The board distinguishes the various piece types and colors by using embedded Hall effect sensors to detect and interpret the unique magnetic field strength from each piece. As one of my team's two lead computer programmers, I wrote the software that recorded players' moves, forwarded these moves to the Stockfish chess engine to get information about all possible moves and the best such move on the next turn, and communicated game data between our board's computers. In my STS research, I investigate whether Sony BMG's conduct related to its 2005 CD copy protection software scandal was ethical according to Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative. Specifically, I explore Sony BMG's decision to offer copy protection software on CDs to prevent piracy, Sony BMG's disclosure of the software's nature in its end-user license agreement, Sony BMG's management of the controversy its software created once discovered, and the social and technical implications related to the case. I examine the case's ethics using the universality formula and humanity formula versions of the categorical imperative; according to both, I conclude that Sony BMG's conduct was not ethical. I worked on my technical project in Fall 2024 and conducted my STS research in Spring 2025. The software I wrote collected, stored, and transmitted data about human players' chess moves between onboard computers. Throughout my design process, I was aware of the ethical implications of collecting data from human users even if this data never identified those users. This influenced my team and I's decision to accommodate the IEEE 2089-2021 Age Appropriate Digital Services Framework (AADSF) in our product. Considering the security implications and ethics of software I wrote in my technical project influenced my decision to conduct STS research related to software security and ethics. My technical experience proved invaluable for understanding and critiquing the software I profile in my STS Research Paper. Having written software that carefully collected limited user data, I could more readily spot the careless data collection practices and deceptive design of the software at the center of Sony BMG's 2005 copy protection scandal.