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Welcome to Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw, a January course taught by Professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-hosted by Stanford Law School and Harvard Law School.

If you are a student, please see Course Logistics. All regular class meetings will be at Stanford Law School Classroom 272.

This map site has a map of the Bay Area, Stanford campus, and visitor parking at Stanford.

WEEK ONE: Theory and Problems

Monday, January 3th: 5pm to 7pm

Professor Zittrain will give a lecture on the technological workings of the Internet.

There will be time made for brief student introductions.

Required Readings For Class:

• Read Brief Angry Statements of Confusion: How the Internet is Covered
• Read Chapter 2 of The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It

Recommended Readings:

• Salzter, et al End-to-End Arguments in System Design

After Class Reception! 7pm to 8:30pm

Please join us for a celebratory first-day-of-class reception, directly after class.

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Tuesday, January 4th: 11:30am to 1:30pm

Privacy and Technological Points of Control

Guests

• Fred von Lohman EFF
• Dean Hachamovitch Microsoft

Required Readings for Class:

• Read Zittrain's Internet Points of Control
• Read “Supreme Court rules against file swapping” (June 2005)
• Read “Microsoft unveils 'do not track' option for IE9” (December 7 2010)

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Wednesday, January 5th: 5pm to 7pm

Cybersecurity and Diplomatic Transparency

Guests

• Ben Scott State Department

Required Readings for Class

• Read Clark and Landau's Untangling Attribution (sections in italics are recommended, not required)
• Read Zuckerman's Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites (pp 48 through 58 required; pp 8-25 recommended for technical background)
• Read Zittrain and Sauter's Wikileaks FAQ
• Read Clinton's Internet Freedom (January 21, 2010)
• Read The New York Times's Defense Department's Response to Iraq War Logs (October 22, 2010)
• Read The Wall Street Journal Air Force Blocks Media Sites (December 14, 2010)
• Read Roy Revie's Wikileaks and 21st Century Statecraft

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Thursday, January 6th: 11:30am to 1:30pm

Privacy and Reputation

Guests

• Peter Kazanjy Honestly.com

Required Readings for Class

• Read Chapter 9 of Zittrain's The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It (pp 200-221, 225-231 required)
• Read Chapter 8 of Solove's The Future of Reputation
• Read Craig Newmark's Trust and reputation systems: redistributing power and influence
• Read Evlyn Rusli Unvarnished Becomes Honestly.com, Raises $1.2 Million And Opens The Floodgates (October 19, 2010)

Recommended for Class

• Attendance at Zittrain's Minds for Sale lecture is highly recommended. (4:30pm to 6:00pm, Wallenberg Theater)

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Friday, January 7th: 9:30am to 11:30am

Crowdsourcing and The Four Quadrants

Guests

• SpamGirl, admin of Turker Nation forums
• Lukas Biewald, Crowdflower

Required Readings for Class

• Explore Turker Nation forums.
• Explore Panos Ipeirotis's research blog
• Read Cloudwork Best Practices
• Read Zittrain's The Four Quadrants

Recommended for Class

• Though class will run into this event, if you can make it after class, it should be really interesting: National Strategies for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (11 AM - 12 PM)

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WEEK TWO: Analysis through the Four Quadrants

Monday, January 10th: 6pm to 8pm

Government Regulation/Corporate Monopolies (Quadrant One)

Review of groups' work thus far

Discussion and lecture of Professor Zittrain's "The Four Quadrants."

Guest

• Andrew McLaughlin http://twitter.com/mcandrew

Required Readings For Class:

• Read sections of Wu and Goldsmith's Who Controls the Internet

Recommended Readings:

• Review Zittrain's The Four Quadrants

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Tuesday, January 11th: 11:30am to 1:30pm

(Corporate) Self-Regulation (Quadrant Two)

Guests

• Andrew McLaughlin http://twitter.com/mcandrew
• Charlie Cheever of Quora
• Steven Lurie of Zynga

Required Reading for Class

• Read Grimmelmann and Ohm's Dr. Generative

Field Trip!

• to Mozilla!

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Wednesday, January 12th: 5pm to 7pm

Cyberanarchy! (Quadrant Three)

Guests

• Biella Coleman of NYU
• Diaspora

Required Reading for Class

• Watch Coleman's Old and New Net Wars Over Free Speech and Secrecy or How to Understand the Lulz Battle Against the Church of Scientology (about an hour of video altogether)

Field Trip!

• Reception at August Capital with David Hornik

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Thursday, January 13th: 11:30am to 1:30pm

Communitarian (Quadrant Four)

Field Trip!

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Winter class: Please disregard the below links for now.

Class Schedule

Class Notes

Topic Sign-up!

CrowdConf Brainstorm page

New Difficult Topics