6.805 Weekly Assignments

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
in coordination with
Harvard Law School: Internet and Society
Fall Semester, 1999

Week 13, Nov. 29 - Dec. 3:

There is no class on Tuesday, November 30. On Wednesday evening, we will attend the moot court at Harvard on "The Nuremberg Files".

On Thursday, we will be our final topic for the semester: International development.

Special session: Moot court, December 1

There will be a meeting of the class at Harvard Law school on Wednesday, December 1, for a moot court on the topic of "The Nuremberg Files". The session will start promptly at 7PM and run until 9PM with a reception to follow. Please don't be late.

The session will be held in the Ames Court room in Austin Hall. ((Click here for map.)

The moot court will be loosely based on Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), 41 F. Supp 2d 1130 (D. Oregon 1999). The trial will focus on the actual web site put up by the ACLA that lists the personal information of legal abortion providers in a possibly threatening manner. A jury returned a verdict against the ACLA and the judge enjoined them from posting further similar sites, though the real life case involved many elements not present in this moot one.

Heard tonight challenges the jury's and judge's finding of liability of the American Life Activists (a fictional name) and of the internet service provider Brainspring.com (also fictional) that hosted the website - and that has a policy of noninterference with customers' and nonverification of customers' identities.

We expect the briefs and arguments to raise significant issues concerning the First Amendment and privacy rights as applied to speech over the Internet and Internet service providers.

Readings for Wednesday

Please read the following, before coming to the session:

Information on moot court (There's supposed to be more coming.)
The Record for the Case. This is the official record as it would appear before a court.
Brief for the appellants, (also available in Word format)

Readings for Thursday (be prepared to discuss these in class):

Inclusion or exclusion? Will the networked economy widen or narrow the gap between developing and industrialized countries?, Carlos Alberto Primo Braga, The UNESCO Courier, December 1998, http://www.unesco.org/courier/1998_12/uk/dossier/txt21.htm
Integrated Rural Development and Universal Access Brief description of ITU's Buenos Aires Action Plan Programme Nos. 9 & 12, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D-UniversalAccess/reports/PPstatus981016.htm"

Thursday, Dec. 2: International development

There will be a course evaluation today for the Course 6 Underground Guide.

Two oral reports (left over from last week):

Topic	Presenter	Resources
MIT's new draft student information policy	Natalie Douglas	Get in touch with Helen Samuels at MIT for information
The Arms Race over Trusted Systems	Aisha Stroman	article in book by Mark Stefik

As the Internet rockets to greater and greater heights in the developing world, what is happening to cultures and economies in the developing world? Are they being left even further behind? Will expense new information technology with its associated infrastructure and education requirements further increase the gap between 'haves' and 'havenots' around the world? Or, does the radical decentralization of the Net actually increase the opportunities for developing economies and non-dominant cultures to play a stronger role in the world?

Writing assignment: Final paper

The final paper is due December 9. There will be no extensions.

Additional resources for this topic

"New Opportunities in Telecommunications for the 21st Century" Remarks by U.S. Commerce Assistant Secretary Larry Irving Before the Malta Chamber of Commerce Valletta, Malta March 26, 1998, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/speeches/maltasp.htm
Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, US Department of Commerce, National Telecommuncations and Information Administration, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn99/contents.html
Inclusion or exclusion? Will the networked economy widen or narrow the gap between developing and industrialized countries?, Carlos Alberto Primo Braga, The UNESCO Courier, December 1998, http://www.unesco.org/courier/1998_12/uk/dossier/txt21.htm
John Patrick, VP Internet Technology, IBM, The Big Picture, http://www.adtech.internet.ibm.com/patrick/newpitch99/www8/index_www8.html
Worldbank InfoDev Program Annual Report 1998, http://www.infodev.org/library/ann98.pdf
Integrated Rural Development and Universal Access Brief description of ITU 's Buenos Aires Action Plan Programme Nos. 9 & 12, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D-UniversalAccess/reports/PPstatus981016.htm
International Telecommunications Union Valleta Declaration on global telecom development, http://www.apii.or.kr/telwg/lnkfrm-frame.html or http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-d/hrdqpub/hrdq/hrdq74/52049_ww7.doc (sorry, a Word document)
The Private Sector and the Internet by Carlos A. Primo Braga and Carsten Fink, http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/notes/122/122summary.html
"Forging A Connected Global Village" Remarks by Larry Irving Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information National Telecommunications and Information Administration U.S. Department of Commerce at NTCA-World Bank's First International Conference on Rural Telecommunications Washington, D.C. December 1, 1998, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/speeches/ntca120198.htm
Liberalizing Telecommunications and the Role of the World Trade Organization, Carlos A. Primo Braga, http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/notes/120/120summary.html

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Hal Abelson (hal@mit.edu)
Mike Fischer (mfischer@mit.edu)
Danny Weitzner (djweitzner@w3.org)
Jonathan Zittrain (zittrain@law.harvard.edu)

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Last modified: December 5 1999, 4:36 PM

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier in coordination with Harvard Law School: Internet and Society Fall Semester, 1999