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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

Guests

• Ben Scott State Department

Cybersecurity and Diplomatic Transparency

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, 228-231 required)
• Read Chapter 7 (pp 161-173 required) and Chapter 8 of Solove's The Future of Reputation
• Read Craig Newmark's Trust and reputation systems: redistributing power and influence

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, founder of Turker Nation forums
• Lukas Biewald, Crowdflower

Required Readings for Class

• Explore Turker Nation forums.
• 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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Winter class: Please disregard the below links for now.

Class Schedule

Class Notes

Topic Sign-up!

CrowdConf Brainstorm page

New Difficult Topics