12 Feb: Sonya presents
Unwiring the World Project,
using wireless to bridge rich/poor gaps and network remote regions.
Sandy Pentland at the MIT Media Lab.
26 Feb: Anupriya presents "Feminism and the Technological Fix" by
Carol A. Stabile,head of the Women's Studies Department at Pitt, in
honor of Women's History Month.
18 Mar: Chris Long presents the SSSCA, a new law in the draft
phase that would make it illegal to manufacture, sell, or traffic
in new electronics without copy protection support.
18 June: Chris Long presents IP as it applies to software.
2 July: Trey Smith presents the effects of recent
technology on the battle between dissidents and governments (some
suggested reading and comments below).
Human Rights Watch: Free Expression on the Internet
Includes a nation-by-nation guide to government control of
Internet access.
Editorial on Chinese Censorship
An interesting look at the Internet's recent effects in China.
Another article talks about imperfect control, e.g. banned books
being freely available in electronic form from local government
web sites (!)
Eldred v. Ashcroft is Lawrence
Lessig's case to
declare the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
unconstitutional,
which will soon reach the Supreme Court. For more, visit:
UCITA is the Uniform Computer Information Transactions
Act.
Among many other things, it makes software shrink-wrap licenses
more enforcable. It has been criticized as favoring businesses over
consumers. Drafted by a national organization, it is slowly
being introduced
into state legislatures [passed in Virginia (1999) and Maryland
(2000)]. Of special interest because Mary Jo Dively, CMU's new
attorney, helped draft the bill, and will be speaking about it
next week at a CPSR seminar.
Topic: Educating people about computer security Presenter: Chris Paper:Home Network Security
More information:
Chris has proposed that we push for computer security and
privacy issues to be added to the basic curriculum offered
to CMU students (maybe through the Computing Skills Workshop).
This discussion will be about how get started on that. Extra
links:
(postponed from the previous week) Topic: Special Registration Presenter: Sonya Allin
Feb. 20, 2003
Topic: How we address ethics in our work
Presenter: Sonya, Chris, and Trey will start, but we hope everyone will participate.
March 17, 2003
Details TBA.
date TBA
Topic: ICANN Presenter: Peter Shane (director of INSITES) Paper: TBA
More information:
ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers. Among many other things, it determines when new
top-level domains (.biz, .person) get created, how
the potentially lucrative name registration business will
be conducted, and how name disputes will be arbitrated.
ICANN has come under fire lately for not adequately
representing the interests of "Internet users at large".
Peter Shane is helping to draft a report about the state
of ICANN, and may in the future have a voice in restructuring
it. He wants to get us involved.