Assigned Readings

This page contains the readings for the entire class. Please keep in mind that readings will be updated over the course of the semester, so check back frequently to make sure you aren't missing anything!

January 29 - Politics and Technology of Control: Introduction

Readings/Watchings

What is the Internet?

• Ethan Zuckerman, History of the Internet (approx. 7 mins., watch all)

• Jonathan Zittrain, How the Internet Works (approx. 4 mins., watch all)

How does the Internet change governance?

• John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

• Jack Goldsmith & Tim Wu, Digital Borders (Legal Affairs)

• Eric Goldman, The Third Wave of Internet Exceptionalism

• Rebecca MacKinnon, Let’s Take Back the Internet! (TED.com) (approx. 15 mins., watch all)

Who governs the Internet?

• ICANN, Who Runs the Internet? (infographic)

• Alex Simonelis, A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies (skim, but focus on ICANN, IETF, IANA, and W3C)

Who is the Internet? Who is it not? What can we do about it?

• Eszter Hargittai, The Digital Divide and What to Do About It (New Economy Handbook) (focus on Sections I-III)

• Hargittai’s data is from 2003. For more recent data, see Pew Internet & American Life Project, Who's Not Online and Why (read the summary, skim the sections).

• Ethan Zuckerman, Why Our Webs Are Rarely Worldwide, And What We Can Do About It (approx. 14 mins., watch all)

Optional Readings

• Ellery Biddle, Who Controls the Internet? (Global Voices) (video in Spanish with English subtitles, 10 mins., watch all)

• Chris Locke, Doc Searls & David Weinberger, Cluetrain Manifesto (just the manifesto)

• Tim Wu, Is Internet Exceptionalism Dead?

• Ethan Zuckerman, Good and Bad Reasons to be Worried About WCIT

February 5 - Paradigms for Studying the Internet

Readings

Mechanisms of control

• Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0, Chapter 7 (read intro, "A Dot's Life," and "On Governments and Ways to Regulate")

• Rob Faris and Rebekah Heacock, Measuring Internet Activity: a (Selective) Review of Methods and Metrics (read 1-3 and 9-22)

• danah boyd, White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook (read 1-11, skim 12-18, read 19-end)

The effects of control

• Nate Anderson, Book Review: Jonathan Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It" (from Ars Technica)

• Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Chapter 1, "The Battle of the Boxes," and Chapter 4, "The Generative Pattern," only)

• Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (pp. 379-396 only; stop at "The Physical Layer")

Optional Readings

• Jeffrey Lin, Play Nice: the Science and Behavior of Online Games (Focus on 0:00-27:17. It's a long video, but an interesting exploration of how one company uses game design to regulate griefing and other online bad behavior. Some of the discussed language is NSFW.)

• Megan Garber, The contribution conundrum: Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed?, Nieman Journalism Lab

• Orin Kerr, The Problem of Perspective in Internet Law (Focus on sections I and II)

February 12 - A Series of Tubes: Infrastructure, Broadband, and Baseline Content Control

Readings

Comparing and measuring connectivity

• The Berkman Center, How Do We Connect To The Internet? (about 7 mins., watch all)

• Yochai Benkler, Next Generation Connectivity (executive summary and introduction only)

What is the role of government?

• Wikipedia, Net Neutrality

• Marvin Ammori, The Net Neutrality Battle Has Been Lost, But Now We Can Finally Win the War

• Berin Szoka and Geoffrey Manne, The Feds Lost on Net Neutrality, But Won Control of the Internet

• Daniel Solove, Interview with Dawn Nunziato on her book Virtual Freedom

• Susan Crawford, remarks at the 2013 National Conference on Media Reform

• Adam Thierer, More Confusion about Internet “Freedom” (Tech Liberation)

Optional Readings

• Sam Biddle, How to Destroy the Internet (Gizmodo)

• Ethan Zuckerman & Andrew McLaughlin, Introduction to Internet Architecture and Institutions

• Rob Faris and Rebekah Heacock, Measuring Internet Activity: a (Selective) Review of Methods and Metrics (pages 3-9)

• Ed Felten, Taking Ted Stevens Seriously

• Jim Cowie, The New Threat: Targeted Internet Traffic Misdirection

February 19 - Whose Values? International Issues with Internet Regulation

Readings

One Internet or many?

• The Economist, The Future of the Internet: A Virtual Counter-Revolution

• Hal Roberts et al., The Evolving Landscape of Internet Control

• Biz Stone and Alex Macgillivary, The Tweets Must Flow and The Tweets Still Must Flow

• Rachel Whetstone, Free Expression and Controversial Content on the Web

• Eliza Krigman, Next Battle over Net Ramps Up Worldwide (Politico)

Case Study - The Innocence of Muslims

• Wikipedia, The Innocence of Muslims

• Jillian York, Should Google Censor an Anti-Islam Video?

• Ryan Budish, Little “i” Internet: The “Innocence of Muslims” Video’s Impact on Free Speech

• Andy Sellars, The Structural Weakness of Internet Speech

Optional Readings

• Anne-Marie Slaughter, Adapting U.S. Policy in a Changing International System

• Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey, Reluctant Gatekeepers: Corporate Ethics on a Filtered Internet (from Access Denied)

• Nate Anderson, Explainer: How Can the US Seize a “Hong Kong site” like Megaupload?

February 26 - Regulating Speech Online

Readings

Private and public control of speech online

• Berkman Center, How Internet Censorship Works (about 7 mins., watch all)

• Ethan Zuckerman, Intermediary Censorship (from Access Controlled)

• Jeffrey Rosen, The Delete Squad (New Republic)

• Biz Stone and Alex Macgillivary, The Tweets Must Flow and The Tweets Still Must Flow

• Rachel Whetstone, Free Expression and Controversial Content on the Web

Speech laws and liabilities in the United States

• Wikipedia, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

• Letter to Members of Congress from 49 state and territorial Attorneys General

Cross-border concerns

• Susan Benesch, Dangerous Speech (audio interview, about 9 mins., listen to all)

• Jessica McKenzie, Obeying French Courts, Twitter Hands Over Identities of Users Who Employed Anti-Semitic Hashtag (TechPresident)

• Jillian York, Should Google Censor an Anti-Islam Video?

Optional Readings

• David Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (Read all of Section I, Parts C&D of Section II, and Conclusion)

• John Palfrey & Adam Thierer, "Dialogue: The Future of Online Obscenity and Social Networks" (Ars Technica)

• Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997)

• Hal Roberts et al., The Evolving Landscape of Internet Control

• Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey, Reluctant Gatekeepers: Corporate Ethics on a Filtered Internet (from Access Denied)

• Anne-Marie Slaughter, Adapting U.S. Policy in a Changing International System

• Andy Sellars, The Structural Weakness of Internet Speech

March 5 - Copyright Part 1: Guiding Principles and Online Application

Assignments

The first half of assignment 2 (posting your prospectus) is due before class today. Information on the assignment can be found here. Please note that we have updated the final project page's FAQ section based on some student questions that have come to us over the past week.

Readings/Watchings

The mechanics of copyright law

• Wikipedia, Copyright Clause

• U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 1: Copyright Basics (read only Who Can Claim Copyright?, What Works Are Protected?, What is Not Protected by Copyright?, How to Secure a Copyright, and How Long Copyright Protection Endures)

• 17 U.S.C. § 107 - Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use

Digital applications and new challenges

• Lawrence Lessig, It is About Time: Getting Our Values around Copyright (watch first 6 minutes)

• James Grimmelmann, Why Johnny Can’t Stream: How Video Copyright Went Insane

Copyright solutions

• Creative Commons, A Shared Culture (video, watch all) and Spectrum of Rights

• Terry Hart, There is No Magic Bullet

• U.S. Department of Commerce: Internet Policy Task Force, Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy (Executive summary only)

• Maria Pallante, The Next Great Copyright Act (skim Section II (323-339) only)

• Maria Pallante is the Register of Copyrights for the United States.

Recommended Readings

• Lewis Hyde, Common As Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership (video, watch from 2:12 to 24:37)

• Jessica Litman, The Exclusive Right to Read (introduction and Sections I and II only)

• Julian Sanchez, Ars Technica, 750,000 Lost Jobs? The Dodgy Digits Behind the War on Piracy

• Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Culture Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (Introduction only)

March 12 - Copyright Part 2: Enforcement and Balances

Readings/Watchings

The DMCA Notice-And-Takedown Process

• Digital Media Law Project, Claims Based on User Content and Protecting Yourself Against Copyright Claims Based on User Content

• Electronic Frontier Foundation, Takedown Hall of Shame (peruse)

• Chilling Effects, About and peruse the weather reports.

• Matthew Ingram, Paid Content, How Google did the right thing with the NASCAR crash video, and why it matters

Case Study - SOPA/PIPA

• Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert, and Alicia Solow-Niederman, A Close Look at SOPA

• Ethan Zuckerman and Joi Ito, MIT Media Lab Opposes SOPA, PIPA

The big picture

• Ernesto Van Der Sar, BitTorrent Traffic Drops in America, Grows in Europe

• Erin McKeown, A Perspective On the Complexities of Copyright and Creativity from a Victim of Infringement

Optional Readings

Case Study - ISP "Six Strikes

• Brooke Gladstone, Interview with Jill Lesser of Center for Copyright Information (On The Media)

• Jonathan Bailey, Plagiarism Today, The 6 Likely Impact of Six Strikes

Case Study - Operation In Our Sites

• Andy Sellars, Seized Sites: The In Rem Forfeiture of Copyright-Infringing Domain Names

• Wendy Seltzer, Super Bust: Due Process and Domain Name Seizure

March 26 - Collective Action, Politics, and Protests

Readings/Watchings

Framing

• MIT Communications Forum, What is Civic Media? (skim)

• Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrel, The Power and Politics of Blogs (read introduction, "The networked structure of the blogosphere;" skim "How skewedness affects politics;" read "The constraints on blog influence" and conclusion)

• Bruce Etling et al., Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing (read introduction, "Digital Technologies, Information and Political Transitions," "Online Organizing and Contentious Politics," and "The Uncertain Future of Digital Organizing")

Case Studies

• Yochai Benkler et al., Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA/PIPA Debate (read 4-10, skim 12-38, read 39-46)

• You may also want to play around with the controversy mapper Media Cloud put together in connection with this report.

• Erhardt Graeff, Mapping the Trayvon Martin Media Controversy

• Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance, The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog (read introduction, analysis, and conclusion – i.e., pages 1-3 and 8-15)

• Alex Remington, Social Media and Participation in Political Protest: Observations from Tahrir Square

• Zeynep Tufekci, #Kony2012, Understanding Networked Symbolic Action & Why Slacktivism is Conceptually Misleading

Observations, tactics, and methods

• Aaron Swartz, A Theory of Change

• Ethan Zuckerman, The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention

Optional Readings

• Aaron Swartz, How We Stopped SOPA

• Gilad Lotan, KONY2012: See How Invisible Networks Helped a Campaign Capture the World’s Attention

• Yochai Benkler and Aaron Shaw, A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right

• Jillian York, Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere (focus on the Introduction, and “Social Media: Privacy Companies, Public Responsibilities”)

• Yochai Benker, The Wealth of Networks (Chapter 7 - "The Emergence of a Networked Public Sphere")

April 2 - Peer Production: Development from the Edges and from the Crowd

Readings

Development from the edges

• Eric Von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Chapter 1, focus on pages 1-3 and 13-15, skim rest)

Development as a crowd

• Jerome Hergeaux, Cooperation in a Peer Production Economy: Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia (video, watch from beginning to 47:50)

• Yochai Benkler, News, Information and the Wealth of Networks (video, watch from 8:32 to 26:07)

• if you’re not familiar, you may want to spend a little time looking at Wikipedia’s entry on Seti@home.

• John Tang et al, Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge (Communications of the ACM)

Crowd intelligence

• James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (read excerpt)

• Ethan Zuckerman, Review of Cass Sunstein’s “Infotopia”

Optional Readings

• Wikipedia, Reliability of Wikipedia

• Jonathan Zittrain, Minds for Sale (video, watch all)

• Hatnote, Real Time Wikipedia Changes Map

April 9 - Hacking, Hackers, and Hacktivism

Readings

Defining hackers, hacking, and hacktivism

• Gabriella Coleman, Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls: The Politics of Transgression and Spectacle (from The Social Media Reader)

• Molly Sauter, Activist DDOS Campaigns: When Similes and Metaphors Fail (video, watch from to 1:56 to 21:44)

• Sauter uses the term "DDoS" throughout. This is an abbreviation for "distributed denial of service," a specific form of attack to a web server described in more detail here.

• Benjamen Walker, Doing it for the LULZ (from Too Much Information) (11:00 to 22:45 only, language at times is NSFW. Too Much Information drifts between fiction and non-fiction, but this excerpt is non-fiction.)

Law and law enforcement

• United States Department of Justice, Prosecuting Computer Crimes (read pages 1-11: Introduction to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Key Definitions)

• Sarah Laskow, Reporting, Or Illegal Hacking

Case studies

• Wikipedia, Operation Payback

• Wikipedia, Project Chanology

• Andy Sellars, The Impact of "Aaron's Law" on Aaron Swartz's Case

• David Kravets, Appeals Court Reverses Hacker/Troll "Weev" Conviction and Sentence

• Jeff Ward-Bailey, Hacking Tool Threatens Healthcare.gov Site

Optional Readings

• Intelligence Squared Debate: "The Cyberwar Threat Has Been Grossly Exaggerated" (an Oxford-style debate with Marc Rotenberg, Bruce Schneier, Mike McConnell, and Jonathan Zittrain; watch the video of the debate)

• Andrea Matwyshyn, Hacking Speech: Informational Speech and the First Amendment

• Nicole Perlroth, Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months (New York Times)

• TorrentFreak, Pirate Parties Use Influence to Halt Anonymous’ Operation Payback

• Christopher Soghoian, The Growing Trade in Software Security Exploits

April 16 - Informing the Public in the Internet Age

Readings

The whos and wheres of modern journalism

• Persephone Miel and Rob Faris, News and Information as Digital Media Come of Age (read executive summary)

• Persephone Miel and Rob Faris, A Typology of Media Organizations (skim)

• Federal Communications Commission, Information Needs of Communities (read executive summary, skim overview)

• Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (Chapter 7) (read from 225 ("Our second story focuses…") to 241 (end before "On Power Law Distributions, Network Topology, and Being Heard"); read from 261-66 ("Who Will Play the Watchdog Function?"))

Threats and issues

• Amy Mitchell, The State of News Media 2014

• This American Life, Picture Show (audio, from 0:00 to 5:09)

• RonNell Anderson Jones, Litigation, Legislation, and Democracy in a Post-Newspaper America (Section I only)

• Brendan Nyhan, Biases Abound (about 15 mins., watch all)

• Yochai Benkler, The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case

• Jay Rosen, Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press

New technologies and models

• Catherine D'Ignazio, Ali Hashmi, and Ethan Zuckerman, Mapping the (Boston) Globe (play with the website)

• Banyan Project, Introduction and Overview

• Chris Faraone, MuckRock City (Boston Phoenix)

• Adrienne LaFrance, From Cold Calls to Community Building, ProPublica Tries to Make Crowdsourcing More Meaningful (Nieman Journalism Lab)

Optional Readings

• Jonathan Zittrain, 2009 Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press (the lecture starts at 19:45)

• Sara Morrison, The Photo That Cried Wolf

April 23 - Privacy

Readings

• Daniel Solove, Understanding Privacy (Chapter 1)

• Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Chapter 9)

• Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, Blown to Bits (Chapter 2) (focus on pages 36-42: “Why We Lost Our Privacy, Or Gave it All Away”)

• danah boyd, Why Parents Help Children Violate Facebook’s 13+ Rule

• Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (Chapter 7) (read “Solutions” through “Rules to Enable Choice About Privacy”)

• Johannes Köppel, The International Dimension of the SWIFT Affair

Optional Readings

• Hal Roberts and John Palfrey, The EU Data Retention Directive in an Era of Internet Surveillance

• Solveig Singleton, Privacy as Censorship

• Dan Solove, The Future of Reputation (Chapter 7)

• Chris Soghoian, 8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight

• Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, Robust De-anonymization of Large Datasets (How to Break Anonymity of the Netflix Prize Dataset) (Arxiv)

• Noam Cohen, It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know It (New York Times)

April 30 - The Profitability of the Internet

Readings

• Wikipedia, Dot-com bubble

• Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (Wired)

• Guy Kawasaki, The Wrong Tail: A Checklist for Long Tail Implementations

• Kevin Kelly, Better than Free

• Eric Von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Chapter 8)

• Digital Music News, The Most Infamous Music Infographic, Updated for 2012

• Benjamin Wallace, The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin (Wired)

Optional Readings

• Lee Gomes, Ivy League 2.0 or Just Another Pets.com? (MIT Technology Review)

• The Future of Music Coalition, Artist Revenue Streams (peruse)