Syllabus 2011

LIS550: Information in a Social Context

Instructor: Brian Rowe, J.D.

thoth@u.washington.edu

Brian@BrianRowe.org

Class Blog: BrianRowe.org/LIS550/

This course examines legal and ethical issues affecting information use, with an emphasis on problems involving competing values. Topics include:

  • the interaction of government and law with information networks
  • the duties and roles of information professionals in legal compliance
  • organizational governance
  • information as intellectual property
  • privacy rights
  • proprietary rights
  • governmental surveillance and private tracking
  • human rights
  • disability and accessibility rights

Course Objectives

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to discuss orally and in writing:

  • The relationship between information policy, ethics and technology
  • Strategies for sharing and protecting copyrights, patents & trademarks
  • The importance of and problems with Terms of Service and End User License Agreements
  • Stakeholder needs and rights in information management policy decisions
  • Reaction from the public for information policy decisions
  • Methods of engaging in open decision making that give stakeholders by in to decision made
  • The impact of information management decisions diverse populations including but not limited to; social, economic, cultural and disability related diversity

Course Philosophy

This is not a lecture class, this is a discussion class with projects and presentations. All readings must be done before class. We will spend about half of each day working through concepts in the readings together in a Socratic dialogue, the other half of class will be spent on group activities, guest speakers or student presentations. I expect you and I to learn as much if not more from your fellow students as from the instructor. The questions in class will often have no right answers.

Most classes will have assigned student discussion class leaders who are to act as facilitator for the class discussion. Discussion leaders will be responsible for coming to class with a set of questions to ask the class generally. These questions will need to be answered by fellow students. Each student will need to help lead at least one class discussion, your grade for leading the discussion will be based on your knowledge of the martial and your ability to engage fellow students in conversation.

Course Schedule, Topics and Readings:

No text is required for this course. All readings are available online through this site or on the UW Libraries Electronics Reserve site for this course, or through the web. Beyond the required reading you would be well advised to keep up on current events related to the topics of this class. Some recent links & news stories will be distributed each week via email & the blog, and will be discussed up at the beginning of each class.

Week 1: Intro and Overview of Topics January 5th & 7th

Class 1: Course Overview, Blogging Assignments, Introductions & Preview of Issues

Readings:

Class 2: Topic Overview Continued and Group Project Assignment

Choose Groups for Group projects, Assigned companies to study, Short presentation on group project with Q&A, Establish Discussion Teams, Schedules

Readings:

Week 2 Ethics Crash Course January 12th & 14th

Class 1: Philosophy overview -Socratic day heavy class discussion lead by Rowe – heavy question day be ready to compare & contrast readings and approaches presented.

Readings: (Heavy reading day class discussion may continue on to class two or this week)

Class 2: ATJ Tech Principles & Applying philosophies to systems.

Come to class prepared to apply differing ethical lenses to test cases

Readings:

Week 3 Economics and Intro to IP January 19th & 21nd

Class 1: Rivalrous property v. Non-rivalrous property

Copyright history, What is a Copyright and is not C, Copyright v. Trademarks v. Rights of Publicity, Class discussion on economics of IP

Readings:

Class 2: Patents

Reading:

Week 4 Copyright, ToS & EULA January 26th & 28th

Class 1: Who owns User Generated Content (UGC), In depth discussion of assigned TOS’s Guest lecture on Youtube by Amelia Abreu

Readings:

Class 2: Wikileaks!

Speaker: TBA

Reading

Week 5: Kindle & Digital Rights Management February 2th & 4th

Class 1: Kindle 1984 and Text to Speech

Owning digital goods, License v. Good

Readings

Class 2: Using / Sharing and Infringement of Copyrights

Readings

Week 6 Secrets and Personal Information & UGC February 9th &11th

Part 1: Is Privacy Dead?

Readings

Part 2: Non Disclosure Agreement’s and non-competes User Generated Content & Fair Use  – You Decide (possible international perspective)

Readings:

Week 7: Google Books Settlement / Privacy February 16& 18th

Class 1: Orphaned Works and Competition

Readings:

Class 2: Privacy

Week 8: Non-Profit Organizations & Academics February 23rd & 25th

Part 1: Aligning your mission statement with your information policy

Readings:

  • Bring in a Mission Statement from an NPO and be prepared to talk about the implications on Privacy, IP, Trade Secrets

Part 2: Open Access & Paying for Research

Readings:

Week 9: International cross border issues March 2nd & March 4th

Part 1: The Pirate Bay and living between legal borders

Between legal boarders and exceptions

Readings:

Part 2: International Trade issues. Importing goods and information

Week 10: Advanced Topics & Presentations March 9th & 11th

The final week is reserved for a more in depth look at any topics students want to explore along with student presentations not held in other classes.

RSS to Scan

Keep up on current events is essential to this class. Each class will begin with a review of recent news in ethics and information management. Here are a few sources to follow:

DeepLinks – EFF – Digital Civil Rights eff.org/deeplinks

Tech Dirt – Free Culture User Rights Slant -techdirt.com

Bottom up – Timothy Lee – Libertarian perspective on tech and information law timothyblee.com/

New York Times Bits Blog- bits.blogs.nytimes.com/

Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research – zephoria.org/thoughts/

Optional:

Boing Boing – Cory Doctorow’s post only

/. – Slash dot

Assignments & Grading

Short Blogging Assignment:

Each student will write one short 150 to 300 word blog post on a current news items related to the class. The post must contain at least 3 links to relevant sources and one related image or other form of multi media. The post should also include at least one thought from the student about the news item. The next class after you post the short blog post be prepared to be questioned over this news item specifically.

This assignment may be completed in non public format. Instead of posting the blog post to the class blog you post it to the class email list.

Long Blogging Assignment:

Each student will write one long 800 to 1500 word blog post on a topic covered in class. This serious reflection on a topic covered. The student needs to take a point of view and write in favor of against a rhetorical point made in class. The student is free to agree or disagree with points made in class and must reference the class readings. The logic and source cites used to defend the point of view are of critical importance in this post.

The student must also find at least one other online source that disagrees with their point of view on the same topic and respond to that source within the post. This assignment needs to show careful reflection on the topic and must engage viewpoints that agree and disagree with the authors perspective. This assignment may be completed in non public format.  Instead of posting the blog post to the class blog you post it to the class email list.

This assignment may be completed in non public format. Instead of posting the blog post to the class blog you post it to the class email list.

Group Project:

Purpose: Integrate the topics and challenges of the class into a real world case study. Each group of 4 students will be given real a business to study their information policies relating to privacy, copyrights, user generated content, trademarks and other issues discussed in the class.

Each group must prepare a 10 to 20 page case study of the companies policies relating to topics covered in this class. This should include but is not limited to:

Review of the companies TOS or EULA
Review of Privacy policies
* Review of Copyright polices
* Identify any uses of DRM
* Assessment of private information that the company or service might be collecting and how that information should be handled as both an asset and a liability
* Possible rational for why the polices are in place
* Recommendations for improvements in the policies including reasons for the recommended changes

This final group report should be of professional quality as if being presented to a manager at the company you have been assigned to evaluate.

This project is due on Wednesday March 2rd March 3rd  digitally 5pm and March 4th physically at the beginning of class. Please note this is in the 9th week of class. More details about this project will be covered in class. An outline of all specific requirements will be distributed in class and posted to the class website.

Class Presentations:

Each student must choose 1 topic covered in the class and prepare a 5 minute talk that explores that aspect of the class in more depth. Students may choose any topic covered including weekly news, short blog post, or long blog posts.  The time limit on this talk is short, but do not think that this means the talk is easy. The talk should be concise, focused, informative and well practiced.

The talk should include 2 to 20 visual aids or slides. Examples of short informative talks will be provided along with some basic speaking techniques. I take public speaking very seriously, anytime you have the undivided attention of a group of people you should prepare.
Each talk will also be followed by a Q&A section from the professor and class.

Class Participation
Each student is expected to participate in class discussion at least eight time through comments and questions in class or comments on the discussion board or on the blog. At least two of those times must be in class and two of them must be online (via the private forum or the public blog), the other four times are up to you and can be in either forum.

Co-leading a class discussion:

Each student is expected to co-lead one class discussion. There will be a sign up sheet during class 2 for groups of two to four students to sign up and run the class discussions for each class. The students that sign up to cover a particular class will need to work together to coordinate class discussion in advance of the class. You will be graded on your understanding of the material and ability to engage the rest of the class.

Extra Credit:
Students may submit one video(3 to 5 minutes in length), an additional blog post, or written assignment of 500 to 1000 words. The video or written work include either best practices or contain a comparisons with another countries or groups norms. The extra credit must include sources and at least 2 sources not assigned in the the class. The extra credit may be done online and posted to the blog or posted to the email list. All extra credit must be received by the professor by the last day of class (not finals week). Each extra credit topic must be pre-approved by the professor.

Grading:

Class participation: 10%
Co-leading a class discussion 10%
Presentation 15%:
Short Form Blog Post: 5%
Long Form Blog Post: 20%
Group Project: 40%
Extra Credit: .2 grade points

Evaluation of Student Work

You may expect to receive comments on and evaluations of assignments and submitted work in a timely fashion. All work from the course will be returned, with comments, within two weeks of being submitted.

Students with Disabilities

To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services: 448 Schmitz, 206-543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from DSS indicating that you have a disability which requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me so we can discuss the accommodations you might need in the class.

Academic Integrity

For writing assignments, when ideas or materials of others are used, they must be cited. The format is not that important–as long as the source material can be located and the citation verified, it’s OK. What is important is that the material be cited. Parallel citations to open access sources should be included when ever possible.

In any situation, if you have a question, please feel free to ask. Such attention to ideas and acknowledgment of their sources is central not only to academic life, but life in general.

Please acquaint yourself with the University of Washington’s resources on academic honesty (http://depts.washington.edu/grading/issue1/honesty.htm).

Students are encouraged to take drafts of their writing assignments to the Odegaard Writing Center for assistance with using citations ethically and effectively. Information on scheduling an appointment can be found at: http://depts.washington.edu/owrc/.

Copyright

All of the expressions of ideas in this class that are fixed in any tangible medium such as digital and physical documents are covered by copyright law by default. These expressions include the work product of both: (1) your student colleagues; and, (2) your instructors (e.g., the syllabus, assignments, reading lists, and lectures).

All work product of your professor, Brian Rowe, are made available under the Creative Commons BY License

* to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
* to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following condition: You must attribute the work as from “LIS:550 Information in a Social Context Winter’11 by Brian Rowe, 2011; First published by University of Washington’s iSchool”

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Creative Commons License preserve your “fair use”, under Section 107 of the copyright act. Learn about those rights and use them!

All work products of your student colleagues are under All Rights Reserved and you must approach them to reuse their work beyond what fair use allows. Note that the class blog is default licensed under a CC BY license, if you want your work on the blog under a different license you must state that at the end of your blog post! (This is an example of opt-out licensing which we will discuss the ethics of in class)

If you have any questions regarding copyright, fair use or Creative Commons, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.

Privacy

To support an academic environment of rigorous discussion and open expression of personal thoughts and feelings, we, as members of the academic community, must be committed to the inviolate right of privacy of our student and instructor colleagues. As a result, we must forego sharing personally identifiable information about any member of our community including information about the ideas they express, their families, life styles and their political and social affiliations. If you have any questions regarding whether a disclosure you wish to make regarding anyone in this course or in the iSchool community violates that person’s privacy interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.

Knowing violations of these principles of academic conduct, or privacy may result in University disciplinary action under the Student Code of Conduct.

Student Code of Conduct

Good student conduct is important for maintaining a healthy course environment. Please familiarize yourself with the University of Washington’s Student Code of Conduct at:
http://www.washington.edu/students/handbook/conduct.html.

Change Log:

updated Posner and Becker links 1-4-11

Added readings for Microsoft i4i 1-17-11

Added wikileaks readings 1-24-11

Changing topic for the February 11th 1-28-11

Movd due date back by 1 day for group projects to March 3/4th 1-28-11

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