Comp 417-001

Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing

Peter Dordal, Loyola University CS Dept

Spring 2018: Thursdays 4:15-6:45, Comm 013

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.

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

Trust and Licensing: week 13


Course notes

Most content is now in the files above.
Week 1: Jan 18
 Week 2: Jan 25
Week 3: Feb 1
Week 4: Feb 8
Week 5: Feb 15
 Week 6: Feb 22
Week 7: Mar 1
 Week 8: Mar 15
Week 9: Mar 22 March 29: Easter break
Week 10: Apr 5
 Week 11: Apr 12
Week 12: Apr 19
 Week 13: Apr 26         


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 (music sampling or sci-hub), due Feb 9

Paper 2: Facebook Privacy or Defamation Policy, due Apr 6

Paper 3: Software Patents or Computer Crime, due May 4.

Two brief (one-paragraph) examples of essay writing (good and not as good) are here.

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.