» MIT OpenCourseWare » Electrical Engineering and Computer Science » Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier, Spring 2002

Syllabus

General Information for Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier

Class Meetings:
Two sessions / week
1.5 hours / session

Instructors

Hal Abelson
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, MIT.

Joe Pato
Chief Technology Officer, Internet Security Solutions Division, Hewlett-Packard.

Danny Weitzner
Director for Technology and Society, World Wide Web Consortium.

Mike Fischer
Professor of Anthropology and Sci. Tech. Studies, MIT.

Joanne Straggas
MIT Information Systems.

Jonathan Zittrain
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.

Welcome

In this class, we will consider the interaction between policy and technology as it relates to the Internet and the World Wide Web, and the evolving fights for control of the internet. Topics include: intellectual property and copyright control, privacy and government surveillance, and freedom of expression and content control. See the course calendar for the complete list of topics.

MIT course 6 students may count this subject as one of the general engineering concentration subjects required for the S.B. or M. Eng. programs, or use this subject for HASS elective credit (but not both). Students wishing engineering concentration credit should enroll under the subject number 6.806, and students wishing HASS credit should enroll under either of the numbers 6.805 or STS.085.

Graduate credit can be granted under the STS.085 number (not the course 6 numbers), although this will require making special arrangements for extra work.

Once a week, we will be meeting jointly with the Harvard Law School class, Internet and Society: The Technologies and Politics of Control.

Readings

The class will have many readings, mostly short. Most of these are linked off the readings section. In addition read the book, The Future of Ideas, by Larry Lessig (Random House, 2001).

Laptop Computers

If you have laptop computer with an ethernet port, you should bring it (and a cable) to class, both at MIT and Harvard. If you don't have a laptop, don't worry -- this is not required.

Grading and Required Work

Grades will be based on:

Short Writing Assignments (30%): There will be weekly short writing assignments. Many of these will be done in conjunction with the Harvard students, the assignments will include commenting on other students' papers in addition to writing your own papers.
Term Project (30%): You will be required to do a term project, leading to a final paper. You can make this an individual project, or work in a group of two or three. The project can be purely a research paper, or it can involve design and implementation (but this still requires a paper). Papers may be selected for inclusion in the class archive of student papers on the Web.
Oral Presentation (10%): At least once during the semester, you will be required to make an oral presentation on an assigned topic, or on your project, and you will be asked to help lead the class discussion.
Midterm Exam (20%): There will be an in-class midterm exam in week 7.
Final Exam (0%): There is no final exam.

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Syllabus