Ethics

Comp 317-001/417-001, Csed 417:

Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing

Peter Dordal, Loyola University CS Dept

Spring 2013: Thursdays 7:00-9:30, Corboy 602

In this course we will be using sakai instead of blackboard.

Text: The textbook will be A Gift of Fire, 4th Edition, by Sara Baase, Prentice-Hall, 2012. This is also available in an e-book format.

There will be several writing assignments during the semester, plus a midterm. The three papers and the midterm will each count about equally.

There will not be an in-class final; the third paper will serve as a substitute.

The takehome midterm is tentatively scheduled for Friday, Mar 15 through Monday, Mar 18.

The course-evaluation survey is here: https://surveys.luc.edu/opinio6/s?s=49270

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

Course notes

Week 1: Jan 17	Week 2: Jan 24	Week 3: Jan 31
Week 4: Feb 7	Week 5: Feb 14	Week 6: Feb 21
Week 7: Feb 28	"spring" break	Week 8: Mar 14
Week 9: Mar 21	Easter break: Mar 28	Week 10: Apr 4
Week 11: Apr 11	Week 12: Apr 18	Week 13: Apr 25

Paper topics

Paper 1: Copyright and Regulation, due Fri Feb 15

Paper 2: Facebook facial recognition / defamation policy, due Fri April 19

Paper 3: Software Patents, due Friday May 3

We will consider some of the topics listed below.

File sharing and copyright
Whether there is such a thing as "Intellectual Property"
The DMCA, and what it means to you
Software patents
Issues in software licensing
Trust and the web: phishing and other matters
website management: cookies, deep linking, user tracking
The continuing erosion of privacy, and why nobody cares
Professional responsibilities in computing fields
encryption and the law
How much can you trust your software?
Hacking
Antitrust issues in software

Articles, references, and links

General

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

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.