If they really were simulating a human brain, that would have some pretty serious moral implications.
In the long term, if and when these things become mass-produced and cheap, people may want to do terrible things to them, in the same vein as animal torture. That may be when laws get put in place to protect them.
Suppose you, at one stage, have a simulation of a brain that isn't quite there; it talks and sees, but it's audio system doesn't work right. What do you do?
Even live debugging to repair it can be controversial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant#Criticism_and_...)
You're assuming that the machines will care about being shut off - we would probably design them so that they don't care about this, because this makes them easier to work with. And then it's no longer unethical.
Ethical? That's the question.
This is the kind of pseudo-science that gets so much attention nowadays. Incredible.
I find it terribly unconvincing that a specific arrangement of matter, or even an algorithm in software, just simply "spawns" a discrete consciousness from nothing. It might make sense if there was an underlying "consciousness field" or some such concept that the matter-arrangement tapped into in some manner.
It's not only unconvincing but unscientific, a pseudo explanation.