Past Rotisserie
Questions
week 1 | week 2 | week
3 | week 4 | week 5
What's your biggest Net-related question, the sort of thing that inspired you to take the course? What would you like to have learned by the end of the term?
Word Limit: 400
Please re-read the letter from Allston Burr Senior Tutor Lambreth that we saw in class. It is available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is02/readings/winthropletter.pdf.
Imagine you were the student who received this letter, and that you do, in fact, have "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadassssss Song" on your computer and available for download by other students.
Write a letter on your own behalf responding to Ms. Lambreth.
Word Limit: 600
The movie industry and the technology industry have collaborated to create a DVD that is unusable after being played once. These DVDs go on sale for 2 dollars each. Oversimplified, the way the technology works is that the DVDs have a coating on them that degenerates as the disc is viewed for the first time (rendering the disc inoperable). Suppose somebody starts selling a chemical that, when brushed on the disc, keeps it from decaying and then further suppose that later on someone gives you the recipe for the chemical. The chemical is difficult to make but the recipe starts making the rounds on the Internet. Is the chemical itself prohibited by the DMCA? Is the recipe?
word limit: 500
Please review Declan McCullagh's article on the SSSCA from last week's readings at http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,46655,00.html and his summary and explanation of the SSSCA at http://216.110.42.179/docs/hollings.090701.html.
You are walking with Senator Hollings down the corridor towards the committee room before he has to vote on the SSSCA, and he asks for your opinion. What would you tell him to do and why? If you are for the SSSCA, please be sure to give your reasons. If you are against the act as written, propose an amendment to it that would improve it or explain why it is unsalvageable.
Word Limit: 500
The readings for this week offer an overview of privacy vis-a-vis non-governmental actors, but it is hard to extract just what the real worry is.
Come up with and describe a concrete, if hypothetical, privacy nightmare that is as plausible as it is lurid. How might your nightmare be avoided? If you conclude that privacy is not a problem after all, try to identify what has so many others so afraid.
[Word limit: 500]