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March 07, 2005

Lecture: File Sharing (Intellectual Property & Rights Management)

Web Reading: The Digital Dilemma

Read portions of: Committee on Intellectual Property Rights in the Emerging Information Infrastructure. (2000). The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. (online)

Read Ch. 1: The Digital Dilemma. http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/ch1.html

Read portions (from the section starting with WHAT CAN BE DONE? to the heading CONSTRAINTS ON TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS) of Ch. 2: Music: Intellectual Property's Canary in the Digital Coal Mine. http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/ch2.html

OPTIONAL: Ch. 5: Protecting Digital Intellectual Property: Means and Measurements. http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/ch5.html

Announcement: The URL has been fixed for the Weber reading

The URL has been fixed for the Weber reading

Assignment: BLOG POST: Hacktivism

Find Web pages that document an activity that Jordan & Taylor would describe as "hacktivism." (You might look for personal home pages, project pages, or news stories.) You can choose an example hacktivist project from the readings and research it online, or you can choose a cause that interests you and look for hacktivism efforts toward that cause. Provide the URLs to the pages that you found.

Then, critically assess the hacktivist project using ideas from Jordan & Taylor. The way you assess it will depend on the project you choose, but you might consider one or more of these questions: How is it analogous to (or different from) offline activism? How effective is it? Why is it "digitally correct" vs. "mass action"? Does it have an effect on law and policy?

Post an answer in your blog that is at least 200 words. DEADLINE: 1 p.m. -- one hour before class begins.