The Politics of Digital Piracy

Projects

-Project Guidelines/Ideas (50% of grade):

Students have the option to:

a. do two smaller projects, one due in Week 8, and the second due the last week of class.

b. do a semester long ‘creative’ project. See description and ideas below:

Small Project Ideas: These should be no shorter than 3 pages double-spaced.

  1. Policy Analysis:

A. Choose a current/recent policy/law related to the course, and make a list of who the key stakeholders are, who is for and against this policy, what are the pros and cons? There must be some sort of opinion, conclusion, and/or suggestions for this policy.

-Some ex. policies may include:

  • ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement)

  • TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership)

  • DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act)

  • CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act)

  • Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

  • CDA (Communications Decency Act)- specifically Section 230

  • PATRIOT Act

B. Comparative Analysis: of a policy with a comparable or lack of law/policy in another country/jurisdiction. How do they differ? What are the pros and cons of each, and for whom?

C. Analyse a major governmental body or organization.

Discuss the backround of this group or organization (why, how, when and by whom they were formed), who is part of it, how are they selected, what is the political agenda, what purpose do they serve, what is the general public’s view of this org, where do they get their funding?

-Examples:

  • OECD-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (USA)

  • NSA- National Security Agency (USA)

  • Global Network Initiative

  • WIPO- World Intellectual Property Organization

  • NTIA- National Telecommunications and Information Administration

  • W3C- World Wide Web Consortium

  • WGIG- Working Group on Internet Governance

  • FTC- Federal Trade Commision (USA)

D. Edit or Create a Wikipedia Article

This option requires one to make at least 3 “significant edits” or create a new page that is related to the course. Future details on what constitutes significant edits will be discussed in class. The list below includes some potential articles, but it's fine to choose something not on this list. If you haven't found a topic on your own yet and don't like any of the ones currently listed here, check back later.

  • Fair use

  • Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation

  • Copyright misuse

  • Lasercomb America, Inc. v. Reynolds

  • Perfect 10, Inc. v. Google Inc.

  • Berkeley Software Distribution

  • DMCA

  • digital rights management

  • RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc.

  • deCSS

  • Illegal prime

  • Free software

  • GPL

  • Copyleft

  • Network neutrality

  • Grokster

  • Corporate authorship

  • Criticism_of_Facebook#Privacy_concerns

  • Music law

  • Freedom of panorama

  • MPAA

  • RIAA

  • Audio Home Recording Act

  • Work for hire

  • Trade group efforts against file sharing

  • EFF

  • Public Citizen

  • RIAA v. Tenenbaum

  • Capitol v. Thomas

  • Crowdfunding

Semester-long Creative/Hack Project

This project can be as big as you want it to be, as long as you are actually creating something original that can be shared with others digitally, preferably if it has some sort of social significance. Here are some very general ideas of what one might be interested in doing:

  • Contribute to an open source project

  • Create a remix of your favorite video or music clips

  • Make an educational video about something class-related (and release it under a CC license)

  • Hold a workshop on how to encrypt/ decrypt messages and maximize online privacy

  • Start an initiative on campus to advocate for something digital-rights related

Remember, these are rough guidelines. Be creative.

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