MIT 6.805/6.806/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Electronic Surveillance and Copyright Control

Information on the Midterm

The midterm will be held in class on October 16. It will be similar in style to the midterm used in this class in Spring semester 2001. There will be two essay qeustions, and you will have 2 3 hours to write answers. You can bring whatever paper notes you wish, although we don't expect that you will find these very helpful.

Correction added on October 14: You will have three hours to do the example, not two, as we originally announced. In addition, we will be handing out printouts of relevant cases that we covered in the first half of the semester, so you needn't bring copies with you unless you want to. If you briefed the cases as you read them, then your notes would be a good thing to bring to the exam.

• Cases
  • Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969)
  • FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978)
  • Sable Communications of California, Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115 (1989)
  • Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980)
  • Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997)
  • National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1988)
  • Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991)
  • United States v. American Library Ass'n, 123 S. Ct. 2297 (2003)
  • Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
  • Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)
  • Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)
  • United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976)
  • Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)
• Statutes
  • Communications Decency Act of 1996 sec. 502, 47 U.S.C. sec. 223 (2000)
  • Children's Internet Protection Act sec. 1712, 20 U.S.C. sec. 9134 (2000)
  • 18 U.S.C. secs. 2511, 2518 (Supp. II 2002) (Title III Wiretap Act)

Note on using laptops: You may use a laptop to compose your answers, although we suggest that you use the exam booklets instead. If you do use a laptop, you must use it for text processing only---not for consulting notes or connecting to the web (which, by the way, would be a really poor use of time during the exam). You must turn in your answers to Hal, Danny and Keith within 15 minutes after the exam ends: no exceptions. You can save your answers on a floppy or CD, or you can send them by email.

If you do use a laptop, you accept all responsibility and all consequences for anything that goes wrong (losing your work in a system crash, writing an unreadable floppy, lossage in the email system, etc.). This is called "liability".

Midterm from spring 2001(PDF)