Recent policy documents, legislation and court cases aimed at charting a course for copyright law in networked environments have rested upon tacit and often unsupported assumptions about the nature of digital documents, information societies and knowledge economies. And we can also expect considerable attention to be spent on the constitutional issue of whether, and to what extent, the First Amendment freedoms of speech and of the press extend to the writing of computer programs, especially as the instructor in the course is the plaintiff in the case of Junger v. Daley where he seeks an injunction on First Amendment grounds against the enforcement of federal export regulations that forbid the publication or other communication of cryptographic software on the Internet or the World Wide Web or through other electronic means. The rapid development of information technology is having a substantial impact on the whole of society. Remarkably lower costs of capturing, storing, and disseminating information are changing the relationship between individuals and machines, shifting the basis of political power, opening new economic markets, and challenging personal privacy. In this framework we examine factors that influence the social dynamics of an information society.
Social accountability involves the impact on individuals, organizations, and communities.
It is expressed in implicit and explicit social contracts and understandings. Focusing on privacy and data access tensions, this course will address such specific topics as distance learning, electronic publishing, political processes, telecommunications, and computer law in cyberspace. A variety of applications will be explored in such areas as health care management and electronic commerce.