Fall 2008: Mondays 4:15-6:45, 25EP Room 602
Text: The textbook will be A Gift of Fire, 3rd Edition, by Sara Baase, Prentice-Hall, 200x.
Spring 2025:
I am generally in my office on Mondays from 10:00 to noon, and from 1:45 to 3:45.
Sometimes I have meetings or come in late, so check first.
I am also available other times via Zoom, by appointment. Contact me via email for the Zoom meeting ID.
There will be several writing assignments during the semester, plus a midterm and final. The final will be Monday, Dec 8, at our usual place and time. The papers will count for about half your grade; the exams will each count for about a quarter.
My general course groundrules are here. Loyola's academic integrity rules are here.
The final exam study guide is here. The final exam is Monday, Dec 8, at our usual time; it will consist of "short answers" to some relatively straightforward questions.
The take-home midterm was released here, on Sunday Oct 19 (or perhaps Saturday). I will send an email when it is released. It will be due by midnight Tuesday, Oct 21.
You were given six topics, and were asked to write an analysis of four of them. You do not have to organize your answers into self-contained essays; you can just plunge in without introduction. While I'm giving you two days, it shouldn't take much more than an hour or two to finish.
| Week 1: Aug 25 | Labor Day: Sep 1 | Week 2: Sep 8 |
| Week 3: Sep 15 | Week 4: Sep 22 | Week 5: Sep 29 |
| Columbus Day: Oct 6 | Week 6: Oct 13 | Week 7: Oct 20 |
| Week 8: Oct 27 | Week 9: Nov 3 | Week 10: Nov 10 |
| Week 11: Nov 17 | Week 12: Nov 24 | Week 13: Dec 1 |
Paper 2 (due Nov 17)
Paper 3 (due Dec 10)
Here's a more Spring-2008-specific list of these topics.
Wikipedia on John Locke
Wikipedia: leading cases in copyright law
Appelate Court decision in Perfect 10 v Google, on thumbnail-image use.
Simpson Garfinkel on RFID and privacy
Event Data Recorders in automobiles (wikipedia)
Smyth v Pillsbury on email privacy at work.
An interesting Fair Use case
ACLU page on California SB 30 on RFID chips
Bill O'Reilly on Intellectual Property
Stored Communications Act, see esp Sections 2703(a)&(b)
Paul Venezia's blog, with lots of info on Childs
Andrew Odlyzko's paper on price discrimination
some notes by me on Batzel v Cremers and Planned Parenthood v ACLA
Judge Berzon's Ninth Circuit opinion
in Batzel v Cremers
Also note Judge Gould's partial dissent, beginning page 8460 (1st page is 8425)
GATT.org (WTO site?)
MIFARE MTA hack, MIT
more mundane information on the MIFARE RFID chip
Hacking RFID-equipped credit cards
bin Mahfouz v Ehrenfeld, wikipedia
A Stanford site with background information about PP v ACLA
PP v ACLA federal district court ruling
PP v ACLA Ninth Circuit en banc opinion
"Nuremberg Files", without strikethrough
archived "Nuremberg Files", with strikethrough
Neal Horsley's defense of the Nuremberg Files
Dozier Internet Law and their amazing user agreement.
David Touretzky's DeCSS Gallery
Some things on software patents:
Here's Richard Stallman's essay,
Can you trust your computer?.
Here's something on
browser plugins and security.
Don't forget StopBadWare.org.
Here's the Felten video on Diebold voting machines, with papers too.
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.
Link farms
Individuals
Friends of Randal Schwartz -- Randal Schwartz is the author of the bestselling Perl reference book. As a consultant at Intel, he continued to perform some routine system administration duties after he was officially transferred to other tasks. These duties unfortunately were classified by a then-new Oregon law as "theft", and Schwartz was prosecuted and convicted.