Comp 317-001/417-001

Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing

Peter Dordal, Loyola University CS Dept

Mondays 5:30-8:00, Dumbach Hall, Room 6

Text: The textbook will be A Gift of Fire, 5th Edition, by Sara Baase and Timothy Henry, Prentice-Hall, 2017. This is also available in an e-book format.

There will be three writing assignments during the semester; the first writing assignment will have a rewriting component, as you resubmit your first draft.

There will also be one debate/presentation assignment. It is graded on a pass/fail basis; pretty much the only way to fail is to not do it.

There will not be a final exam.

My general course groundrules are here. Loyola's academic integrity rules are here.

You are expected to be familiar with the rules for quoting other sources in papers.

Notes and Readings

Notes Organized by Topic

Filesharing and Ethical Theory: weeks 1 and 2

Copyright Laws and Lawsuits: weeks 3 and 4

Privacy and the government: week 5

Privacy and others: weeks 6, 7

Free Speech and the Internet: weeks 8, 9, 10

Software Patents: weeks 10, 11, 12

Computer Crime and Hacking: week 12, 13

Trust and Licensing: week 13

Tech and Antitrust: week 14



Course notes

Most content is now in the files above.
Week 1: Aug 30
 Sept 6: Labor day
Week 2: Sept 13
 Week 3: Sep 20
Week 4: Sep 27
 Week 5: Oct 4
Oct 11: Fall Break Week 6: Oct 18
Week 7: Oct 25
 Week 8: Nov 1
Week 9: Nov 8
 Week 10: Nov 15
Week 11: Nov 22
 Week 12: Nov 29  
Week 13: Dec 6


Readings

Before the Week 1 class, read 1.1-1.3 and at least 4.1 (preferably 4.2 as well)

Before the Week 2 class, read all of chapter 1 and 4.1-4.3.

Paper topics

Paper 1: DMCA or Music Sampling

Paper 2: Advertiser privacy or §230 and carrying your posts

Paper 3: Software Patents or Amazon/Facebook/Google Antitrust

We will consider some of the topics listed below.

Learning outcomes:

Understanding of laws and issues in areas such as privacy, encryption, freedom of speech, copyrights, patents, computer crime, and computer/software reliability and safety; understanding of philosophical perspectives such as utilitarianism versus deontological ethics and basics of the U.S. legal system.

Articles, references, and links

General

Don't Talk To Cops, Part 1, James Duane, Regent University Law School

And an interesting followup: Reminder: Please Shut Up (advice from an attorney)


Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, by Patrick McKenzie

Organizations

Association for Computing Machinery -- The professional organization for computer professionals (oriented towards programmers). See their USACM subgroup for public-policy issues. See also the ACM Code of Ethics.

Electronic Frontier Foundation -- Founded to fight for citizens' rights in the areas of privacy, cyberspace freedom (specifically, freedom of speech), copyrights, and encryption.

American Civil Liberties Union -- Not specifically concerned with cyberspace law, but nonetheless very involved in the fight against the Communications Decency Act. The ACLU has long fought against censorship in any form, and for personal liberties in general.

Electronic Privacy Information Center -- They are concerned with both government surveillance (directly and by searching your records), the scope of government databases, and encryption.

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility -- "CPSR is a public-interest alliance of computer scientists and others interested in the impact of computer technology on society." Includes privacy issues but also professional responsibilities of programmers and workplace empowerment issues.

Ethics Center for Engineering and Science A useful compendium of ethics case studies and other information pertaining to science and engineering.

US Copyright office home page All sorts of information on copyright legislation, including the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

2600, the Hacker Quarterly, leader in the fight for DeCSS.