Internet-based research is increasingly important for conservation science and has wideranging applications and contexts, including culturomics, illegal wildlife trade, and citizen science. However, online research methods pose a range of ethical and legal challenges. Online data may be protected by copyright, database rights, or contract law. Privacy rights may also restrict the use and access of data, as well as ethical requirements from institutions. Online data have real-world meaning, and the ethical treatment of individuals and communities must not be marginalized when conducting internet-based research. As ethics frameworks originally developed for biomedical applications are inadequate for these methods, we propose that research activities involving the analysis of preexisting online data be treated analogous to offline social science methods, in particular, nondeceptive covert observation. By treating internet users and their data with respect and due consideration, conservationists can uphold the public trust needed to effectively address real-world issues. KEYWORDS compliance, copyright, cyberethics, data protection, integrity, intellectual property, internet mediated, privacy PALABRAS CLAVE cibernética, cumplimiento, derechos de autor, integridad, mediado por internet, privacidad, propiedad intelectual, protección de datosThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
