Course Syllabus

Two Important Announcements regarding Class Schedule:

  • This course is offered as a Computer Science course. This means that the class schedule will follow the AS&E calendar, not the Fletcher calendar. Fletcher students should note that the first day of classes is Wednesday September 8; Fletcher students should also note that there will be classes on November 8 and 10 (but these will be be via Zoom and taped to accommodate Fletcher students who cannot attend).
  • There will be an extra optional class on Saturday September 11, time TBD, on how the Internet works. Those who taken/are taking networking courses, Cyber for Future Policymakers, or How Systems Work can comfortably skip. Those who do not know how the Internet works will find the class useful. This extra class is not required.
  • There will be no classes on September 22 and October 18; there is, however, a required assignment for October 18.

Course Schedule:

Please note that cyberlaw and cyberpolicy are dynamic, with rules constantly changing. Thus the readings and even the classes may change as well.

Readings:

There will be a number of readings, including US Supreme Court cases, various government reports, law review articles and other papers, The course reading is demanding; please plan on reading intensively and apportion time accordingly.

There will be a required online text that we will use periodically: James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases and Problems, 10th edition. The Grimmelmann text (Links to an external site.) is available for download only at Semaphore Press. I encourage you to read about Semaphore Press's publishing approach on its website, a piece of which I am excerpting here:

"Each publication has a suggested price. We price full casebooks based on our belief that it is fair to ask a student pay about $1 for the reading material for each one-hour class session. Different schools use different calendars and credit hours, so we've settled on a suggested price for most of our casebooks of $30. We ask that you pay the suggested price either with a credit card (by clicking the appropriate link on our page), or by sending us a check, and then download a digital copy of the casebook. Note that if your professor has assigned, e.g., only 10 class sessions of material from a Semaphore Press book, then we suggest that you pay $10."

I strongly support support this pricing model and hope you will as well. Thank you.

 

Introduction

September 8: Introduction to the course

  • Why a course on cyberlaw and cyberpolicy;
  • Why this choice of topics;
  • Rules of the road.

 

Code is Law

September 13: Sorting out the technical complexities of Internet traffic

  • What is the client-server model?
  • What is peer-to-peer traffic?
  • What is utility computing?
  • What does it mean to say "data is in the cloud"? 
  • Why do these different architectures matter from a legal viewpoint?

Readings:

For those of you for whom computing and the Internet are unfamiliar, please also read:

 

September 15: Who governs the Internet?

  • What roles do governments play?
  • What roles do international organizations have?
  • Who are the different players—ITU, ICANN, IETF—and what do they do?
  • What role do tech companies play?

Readings:

 

September 20: Understanding Jurisdiction Part I

  • Once it was believed that the Internet transcended borders; now we understand otherwise. What does this mean in practice for speech?
  • For criminal activities?

Readings:

September 22: NO CLASS

September 27: Understanding Jurisdiction Part II:

  • The Internet simplifies conducting activities across borders. Which international treaties handle cyber issues?
  • What policy actions effectively act as establishing jurisdiction on cyber matters outside a state's borders?

Readings:

 

Controlling—and Failing to Control—Speech

 

September 29: Free Speech in the US: Genesis and Rationale

  • What does the U.S. First Amendment say?
  • What's the rationale behind the First Amendment?
  • How does it get applied?

Readings:

 

October 4: What is Speech?

  • What exactly does the First Amendment protect?
  • How is this manifested in the online world?

Readings:

 

October 6: Offensive, Dangerous, and Prohibited Speech

  • How has the Internet changed speech?
  • What dangers ensue?

Readings:

 

October 11: Indigenous Peoples Day: NO CLASS

October 13: Controlling Speech

  • Is uncontrolled speech on the Internet a serious danger?
  • Which entities control speech on the Internet?
  • Are their controls effective—and what does "effective" mean?

Readings:

October 18: NO CLASS

Viewing and Tiny Assignment:

Search in Digital Environments

October 20: Searching Communications

  • What does the Fourth Amendment mean?
  • Is searching communications fundamentally different from searching "persons, houses, papers, and effects"?

Readings:

 

October 25: Searching the non-content part of communications

  • Katz protects communications, but what about the non-content aspects of online speech?
  • What information does non-content reveal?
  • What protections does non-content have?
  • How do governments use this information?

Readings:

 

October 27: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

  • What is the law on electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence cases and how does it differ from criminal cases?
  • What challenges does the Internet pose?
  • What advantages does the Internet provide to foreign intelligence surveillance?
  • What challenges does that advantage create?

Readings:

 

November 1: Conducting electronic searches: law and practice

  • What information must the warrants contain?
  • How is a search of electronic devices conducted?
  • How is chain of custody established?
  • What processes and procedures must be done when searching electronic devices?

Readings:

 

November 3: The Crypto Wars

  • What is cryptography?
  • What's the conflict about?
  • How has criminal activity and investigative techniques changed since the 1990s?

Readings:

 

November 8: Regulations—and A Very Brief Look at Protecting Privacy

  • How are regulations in the US promulgated?
  • How did this work in the case of CALEA?
  • How has this worked in the case of privacy?

Readings:

 

Copyright in the online world (a brief look)

 

November 10: Copyright

  • What is the purpose of copyright?
  • What does copyright not protect? What benefit does society accrue from that lack of protection?

Readings:

 

November 15: Consequences of the DMCA: implications for security research, fair use, and the "right to repair";

  • How is copyright working in the digital age?
  • Is copyright working in the digital age?

Readings:

 

November 17: Alternative solutions; Presentation Day

  • Are there ways to enable author control while also enabling fair use, reuse in derivative works, etc.?

Readings:

 

International Cyber Conflict and the Law

 

November 22: What constitutes cyberwar?

  • In what ways has cyber changed attacks, especially those occurring outside of a war?
  • How does a nation determine who is launching the attack?
  • What types of responses are nations able to mount in response?
  • What constitutes an act of war?
  • Are there legal and policy instruments that can be used to deter these attacks?

Readings:

 

November 29:  Hacking Back

  • If someone breaks into your computer, can you follow them back and recover your data?
  • What would happen if the break-in was from abroad?

Readings:

 

December 1; The Conundrum of Cyberattacks: Using Vulnerabilities; Presentation Day

  • How do different nations handle zero-day vulnerabilities?
  • Where does that leave with international agreements regarding cyberattacks?

Readings:

 

 

 

The Coming Challenges

December 6: Platforms and Anti-Trust; Presentation Day

  • Why are tech platforms so concentrated, that is, largely lacking competition?

Readings:

 

December 8: Platforms and Anti-Trust

  • Does market concentration in high tech—the Fearsome Five (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter)—benefit US consumers?
  • What are the costs stemming from this concentration?

Readings:

 

Summing Up

December 13: Summing Up