Comp 417-001

Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing

Peter Dordal, Loyola University CS Dept

Spring 2015: Thursdays 4:15-6:45,  Corboy 301.

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



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 from the government: week 5

Privacy from others: weeks 6, 7

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

Software Patents: weeks 10, 11, 12

Crime and Hacking: week 12, 13


Course notes

Most content is now in the files above.

Week 1: Jan 15
Week 2: Jan 22
Week 3: Jan 29
Week 4: Feb 5
Week 5: Feb 12
Week 6: Feb 19
Week 7: Feb 26
Week 8: Mar 12
Week 9: Mar 19
Week 10: Mar 26
Apr 2: Easter break
Week 11: Apr 9
Week 12: Apr 16 Week 13: Apr 23         


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: Copyright and the Cloud, or Music Sampling, first draft due February 6

Paper 1 Final version, due February 27

Paper 2: Third-Party Doctrine or Defamation Policy, due March 27

Paper 3: Patents or Computer Crime, due May 1


We will consider some of the topics listed below.

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)


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.