6.805/STS085 Term papers

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fall Semester, 2010

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Term papers

The major factor in your semester grade will be your term paper. You can work alone or work with a partner (at most two people on a paper). The paper should be a substantial piece of work. We're expecting papers about 20 pages (one author) or 40 pages (2 authors), but we're more interested in quality than in length.

For examples of the level of work you should aspire to, look at some posted examples of 6.805 papers, particularly the papers from fall 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2008, which were by individuals or teams of two.

Research

We expect you to do thorough research on your topic, with several references. News reports, webzine articles, and Wikipedia can be good ways to get started, but make sure to not stop there: go to primary sources. If you're doing anything even remotely about legal issues, you should make sure to check out law review papers, which can be search from MIT through LexisNexis Academic Legal Reviews. You'll need to have MIT certificates installed in your browser. And it really helps to interview people who are directly involved with the topic you are writing about.

Topic

We'd like you to pick a topic related to what we're covering in the course. But if there is something else related to Internet policy that you feel passionate about, we'll consider approving that as a topic.

Picking a good topic is one of the hardest parts of writing paper for this class. Often people start out by picking topics that are too broad or too vague, or topics where they have no chance of making original contributions. Look here for advice on choosing a topic.

Approach and Scope of Paper

We are certainly interested in your opinions and ideas. But you should treat this paper as research and analysis, not just venting or making unsubstantiated assertions. Even so, we do expect you to have opinions and a point of view on your topic — not just write a "book report" or a summary of what other people have said.

Your paper should have a thesis, i.e., an idea, claim, or argument that you are putting forward and defending in the paper. We expect that your paper will start out by stating the thesis in the first one or two paragraphs, and that you will proceed to support the thesis in a focused and coherent way. If you are unclear on what we mean by this, have a look at these notes from the Harvard Writing Center.

Paper grades will take into account both the quality of your ideas and the quality of your writing. If you got feedback from the short writing assignment suggesting that your writing needs improvement, please take that advice seriously.

Be sure to back up your arguments with facts and by citing source material. There is a tremendous amount of reference material available on-line in the course archives and other places on the net. If you cite unpublished on-line material, you can include citations or links to the appropriate URLs in the bibliography.

Note: For citing material published on the Internet, list the URL followed by a note that says "(visited XXX)" where XXX is the date that you last visited the page. For an explanation of how to cite legal cases, see Introduction to Basic Legal Citation by Peter W. Martin of Cornell Law School. The easiest place to start is in the example section (chapter 3).

Schedule

Here is the schedule of milestones for your paper, to help you plan. More detailed information about each assignment will be posted as the due dates come closer.

Sept. 30 Proposal: Turn in a one-page description of the issue you plan to investigate in your paper, and how you propose to go about this. For example, who are you planning to talk to? What sources do you plan to consult? Shortly after this is submitted, you will have an individual meeting with one of the staff to discuss your proposed topic.

Oct. 14: Detailed plan: This is a refined and extended version of the proposal. The plan must include your topic, a problem statement (i.e. what is the issue this paper is addressing), the main arguments and methods you plan to use to support your thesis, and list at least six sources you are planning to use or some people you are planning to contact and speak to. Try to have at least one primary source — more would be better. Note that in order to have even tentative arguments at this point, you must have already done some significant work on your topic.

Oct. 28: Extended abstract: Turn in a few paragraphs that describe the issue or problem/question you are addressing. Your thesis must be stated in the first two paragraphs. Outline your arguments in support of your thesis, and give at least six references (or people) that you have consulted in doing your research. Notice that, in ourder to state your thesis and the arguments, your research must be mostly finished at this point.

Nov. 24: Complete draft: Turn in a complete draft of the paper. This should be a late-stage draft, with all sections written, and needing only polish and revision in response to our feedback, which we'll provide in order for you to do the final draft.
You should prepare your draft and upload it to the Stellar site. This is due by 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time, November 24. There will be no extensions.
Dec. 9: Final papers due, turned in on the Stellar site. Late papers will not be accepted.

Turning in the final paper

Turn in your finished paper on-line on the Stellar. Make your paper a single document, not a collection of linked documents. Actually upload the paper — don't just put it up on a web page and tell us the URL.