Ethics & Law in New Media

In short

• EMIM/IMKE joint e-course, due autumn term 2008
• Code: IMKE/TLU code: MII7148, EMIM code: EMIM06
• 3.5 Estonian CP (AP), 5.0 ECTS
• Ends with guided assessment, tasks include a course paper, blogging and online discussions
• Instructor: Kaido Kikkas

Objectives

• To increase the level of concern related to the uneven distribution of technology, networks and education, and the consequent problems with respect to gender, age, democracy and economy.
• To promote awareness of ethical problems and dilemmas in today's society where media and IT are ubiquitous, thus making the consequences of questionable ethical decisions the more profound.
• To encourage awareness of political processes boosted by new media technologies (direct participation), empowering feature of new media technologies for minority groups (e.g people with disabilities), as well as consideration of the influence of media in the new media context.
• To guide the students toward new media solutions that avoid digital divides in terms of considerate design, and by taking into account the constraints of various special groups.
• To allow students to obtain adequate insight into today's IPR issues, covering both traditional approaches (copyright, licenses, patents) and new community-based developments (FLOSS, Creative Commons, content communities)

Outline

As it is, the course has got two distinct topics, while references are made between them as well.

I Ethical issues in information society

1. Ethics in turbulent times
2. Towards the information society
3. The networked world
4. Censors vs Cyberspace
5. The Big Brother on Menwith Hill
6. Rid the fools of their money – the online world of crime and fraud
7. The Digital Divide
8. The Ubiquitous Computing and network society
9. The Hacker Ethic in a Networked World
10. The Empowerment: Different People, Digital World
11. From Hacktivism to Cyberwar
12. Global networks in global politics (social movements, participatory democracy and the Net)
13. Social software, social engineering (social aspects of online manipulation)

II Legal matters and new media

1. Intro: the author vs the information society
2. The history and development of copyright
3. The proprietary world: the WIPO approach to intellectual property
4. More WIPO: Contracts and licenses
5. The hacker approach: the development of free licenses
6. The Millennium Bug in the WIPO model
7. One Microsoft Way: the world of proprietary software
8. The digital enforcement: DRM and others
9. The uneasy alliance: Free Software vs Open Source
10. The content models: Creative Commons
11. Hybrid approaches
12. What about the future?

Independent tasks include reading, analysis of various materials

Literature

Nothing compulsory, the following falls under the replacement literature:

Books on paper

• George, J.F. (2003) Computers in Society: Privacy, Ethics and the Internet. Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey
• Himanen, Pekka (2002). Hacker Ethic. New York: Penguin Books
• Levy, Steven (2001). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Updated edition. New York: Penguin Press
• Theobald, Robert (1998). Reworking Success: New Communities at the Millennium. Fourth Printing. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers

Online books

• Barnes, P. (2006). Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 1576753611
• Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
• Boldrin, M., Levine, D.K. (2006). Against Intellectual Monopoly. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm
• Chance, T. (2005). The Hacker Ethic and Meaningful Work. University of Reading.
• Goldman, R., Gabriel, R. (2006). Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy. Online version. Morgan Kaufman Publishers,
• Hietanen, H., Oksanen, V., Välimäki, M. (2007). Community Created Content: Law, Business and Policy. Turre Publishing.
• Himanen, P. (2004) "Challenges of the Global Information Society". report for the Committee for the Future in Parliament of Finland.
• Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. The Penguin Press.
• Lessig, L. (2006). Code v. 2.0. Basic Books.
• Levine, R., Locke, C., Searls, D., Weinberger, D. (2001). The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. Perseus Books Group.
• Martin, B. (1998) Information Liberation: Challenging the Corruptions of Information Power. Freedom Press, London.
• McLeod, K. (2005). Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. Doubleday/Random House.
• Okerson, A.S. & O'Donnell, J.J. (1995) (Eds.) Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing. Association of Research Libraries.
• Poynder, R. (2006) The Basement Interviews
• Raymond, E. S. (2000) The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Revision 1.5.
• Stallman, R. M. (2002). Free Software, Free Society. Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Ed. Joshua Gay. GNU Press
• Williams, S. (2002). Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. O'Reilly.
• Willinsky, J. (2005) The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. MIT Press
• Wynants, M., Cornelis, J., eds (2005) „How Open is the Future? Economic, Social and Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free & Open-Source Software“, CrossTalks, VUB Brussels University Press 2005. http://crosstalks.vub.ac.be/publications/Howopenisthefuture/howopenfuture_CROSSTALKSBOOK1.pdf

Articles

• Hilgartner, S. (2006). Acceptable Intellectual Property. Proceedings of the "Biopolitics: Gender, Race and Science" Conference, May 15-16, 2006, Cornell University.
• Lerer, L. (2006). "Meet the dotCommunist". IP Law & Business, February 15, 2006.
• Marson, I. (2006). "Free Software's White Knight". ZDNet News UK, March 20, 2006.
• McCullough, T. (2006). "Prior Art and Its Uses: A Primer". Groklaw, April 17, 2006.
• Moglen, E. (1999). ”Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright”. First Monday, Vol. 4, Issue 8.
• Moglen, E. (2003). The dotCommunist Manifesto. Cabinet Magazine. Issue 10 Spring 2003.
• Nerode, N. (2003) Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL.
• Scott, B. (2001) Copyright in a Frictionless World: Toward a Rhetoric of Responsibility. First Monday, volume 6, number 9 (September 2001)
• Updegrove, A. (2006) Where (if anywhere) are the Boundaries of the Open Source Concept?. The Standards Blog, March 24, 2006.

Other online material

• Rheingold.com
• Designing Business for an Open World
• Digital Journalism
• Benkler.org
• Clay Shirky's Internet Writings
• OpenContext