Spring 2009: Thursdays 7:00-9:30, 25EP Room 901 (note room change!!)
Text: The textbook will be A Gift of Fire, 3rd Edition, by Sara Baase, Prentice-Hall, 2008.
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 papers will count for about half your grade; the exams will each
count for about a quarter.
The final exam study guide is here. The final is Thursday, April 30, at our usual time and place.
Course survey: the course survey is here (until Monday, April 27, 6:00 am)
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.
| Week 1: Jan 15 | Week 2: Jan 22 | Week 3: Jan 29 |
| Week 4: Feb 5 | Week 5: Feb 12 | Week 6: Feb 19 |
| Week 7: Feb 26 | "Spring" break: Mar 5 | Week 8: Mar 12 |
| Week 9: Mar 19 | Week 10: Mar 26 | Week 11: Apr 2 |
| Easter break: Apr 9 | Week 12: Apr 16 | Week 13: Apr 23 |
Paper 2, on GPS and privacy, due Sunday, April 5.
Paper 3, on software patents or software obligations, due April 30.
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
Bill O'Reilly on Intellectual Property
Dozier Internet Law and their amazing user agreement.
xkcd on why you might as well just steal it
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.