Comp 317-001/417-001

Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing

Peter Dordal, Loyola University CS Dept

Summer 2016: Tuesdays & Thursdays 5:30-8:45, Comm 010 (in the basement).
(The schedule says until 8:45, but we're not having any exams, so we will end most evenings at 8:30.)

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 course. The first writing assignment will have a rewriting component: you will 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: 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: Tues, May 24
 Class 2: Thurs, May 26
Class 3: Tues, May 31
Class 4: Thurs, June 2
Class 5: Tues, June 7
 Class 6: Thurs, June 9
Class 7: Tues, June 14
 Class 8: Thurs, June 16
Class 9: Tues, June 21
 Class 10: Thurs, June 23
Class 11: Tues, June 28
 Class 12: Thurs, June 30

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, please read all of chapter 1 and sections 4.1 through 4.3 of chapter 4.

Paper topics

Paper 1: Copyright and the Cloud, or Music Sampling, first draft due Friday June 3

Paper 1 final version: due Tuesday June 14

Paper 2: Encryption or Defamation, due Tuesday June 21

Paper 3: Software Patents or Computer Crime, due Saturday July 2


Use the following instructions if you want me to encrypt your papers before I email them back to you.

You will need to install Gnu Privacy Guard, from gnupg.org. The installation directory must be in your PATH, so that if you type the command "gpg" it is recognized.

A useful "cheat sheet" for this is at irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/~lockhart/gpg/gpg-cs.html.

The first step is to create your keypair:

    gpg --gen-key

Mostly the defaults are ok. You will need to enter your real name and email address; I recommend using your Loyola email.

I had a problem with this: the system needs to generate random bytes. This is time-consuming. The command waits for what can be hours.

After you create your keypair, you must extract the public key:

    gpg --export -a "Your Name" > myname.public.key

This creates the file "myname.public.key". This is what you need to email to me.

At that point I can install your public key on my keyring, encrypt your paper, and email you back the encrypted file. You decrypt with, for example:

    gpg -d mypaper.gpg
 

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.