Comp 417-001

Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing

Peter Dordal, Loyola University CS Dept

Summer 2015: Mondays & Wednesdays 6:00-9:00, Comm 010 (in the basement).
(The schedule says until 9:15, but we're not having any exams, so we'll use all 12 sessions for lecture and discussion.)

There is no class on Monday, May 25, Memorial Day. We will meet instead on Friday May 29.

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: you will 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: classes 1 and 2

Copyright Laws and Lawsuits: classes 2 and 3

Privacy from the government: class 4

Privacy from others: class 5, 6

Free Speech and the Internet: classes 7 and 8

Software Patents: classes 9 and 10

Crime and Hacking: classes 11 and 12

Miscellaneous Topics: trust and jurisdiction, class 12

Course notes

Most content is now in the files above.
Class 1: Mon, May 18
 Class 2: Wed, May 20
Class 3: Wed, May 27
Class 4: Fri, May 29
Class 5: Mon, June 1
 Class 6: Wed, June 3
Class 7: Mon, June 8
 Class 8: Wed, June 10
Class 9: Mon, June 15
 Class 10: Wed, June 17
Class 11: Mon, June 22
 Class 12: Wed, June 24


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 Friday, May 29

Paper 1 Final version, due Thursday, June 11

Paper 2: Third-party Doctrine or Defamation Policy, due Thursday, June 18

Paper 3: Software Patents or Computer Crime (tentative), due Thursday, June 25

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.