Computer Ethics, Spr 2015
Corboy 301, Thursdays 4:15
Class 2
Week 2 Readings
Finish reading chapter 1 and read the first three sections
of chapter 4.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has now admitted that, like the NSA,
they were collecting metadata information (but not the call contents) on
essentially every international call placed to or from the US. In the past,
it was believed that the DEA was obtaining call records from the NSA on an
as-needed basis, but was not maintaining the whole database.
See http://www.stripes.com/news/us/dea-admits-it-once-kept-sweeping-database-of-us-to-international-calls-1.324366.
The DEA also instructed agents to use "parallel construction" when writing
up the evidence for prosecution: don't mention the phone database, but
instead try to identify other ways the agent might have learned of the
alleged crime.
We left off last week with the question of who is copyright intended to
benefit:
- Musicians: deontological approach; a creator is owed the duty of not
sharing his or her work without permission
- All of us: utilitarian approach; the justification for copyright is to
support music prices in order to create a market.
The US Constitution specifically justifies copyright with the latter
approach.
Counterfeiting is also in the second category. If you circulate counterfeit
bills, it increases the money supply and, in principle, causes inflation
corresponding to the amount in question. (If someone else has one of your
fake bills and it is detected, they lose that money, but this isn't the
most common outcome.)
Moral rights?