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 26 - 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

• You can hear Barlow read this here.

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

• Eric Goldman, The Third Wave of Internet Exceptionalism

• Rob Faris and Rebekah Heacock, Platforms and Policy (from the 'Internet Monitor' 2014 annual report)

• 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); and New Clues

• Tim Wu, Is Internet Exceptionalism Dead?

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

February 3 - 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)

• Maeve Duggan, Online Harassment: Summary of Findings (from the PewResearch Internet Project)

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")

• Ethan Zuckerman, The Internet's Original Sin

• Nadiya Kayyali and Danny O'Brien, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facing the Challenge of Online Harassment

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.)

• 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)

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

• Adi Robertson, Wikipedia Denies 'Purging' Feminist Editors over Gamergate Debate

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

February 10 - Privacy Part 1: Corporate Data Gathering and Intrusions by the Public

Readings

Conceptualizing privacy

• Daniel Solove, Understanding Privacy (Chapter 1) (skim)

Privacy and data

• Robert Faris and David O'Brien, Data and Privacy (from Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World)

• Chris Anderson, The End of Theory

• Viktor Mayer-Shoenberger, The Rise of Big Data

• Bruce Schneier, Why Anonymous Data Sometimes Isn't

• Play around with some of the websites by Latanya Sweeney

• The Data Map

• About My Ride

• About My Info

Corporate data practices

• Jeremy Singer-Vine, How Dataium Watches You

• David Veldt, LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

• play around with the WSJ's interactive graphics)

Optional Readings

• 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) (pages 36-42)

• Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (Chapter 7) (focus on "Privacy in Public: Data")

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

• Wikipedia, Privacy Laws of the United States

• Solveig Singleton, Privacy as Censorship

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

February 17 - A Series of Tubes: The Internet's Backbone and Network Neutrality

Readings

Connectivity

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

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

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

• White House Report - Community Based Broadband Solutions: The Benefits of Competition and Choice for Community Development and Highspeed Internet Access (p. 5-19)

Network Neutrality

• Wikipedia, Net Neutrality

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

• NYT: Obama Asks FCC to Adopt Tough Net Neutrality Rules

• Obama's Gone Old School Net Neutrality: A Tim Wu Q&A

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

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

• New reading (optional, but highly recommended) - Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Wheeler Proposes New Rules for Protecting the Open Internet

Optional Readings

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

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

• Ingrid Burrington, Seeing Networks in New York City (peruse)

• 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

• Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: Net Neutrality

February 24 - Privacy Part 2: The Right to Be Forgotten

Readings

• Jeffery Rosen, "The Right to Be Forgotten," 64 Stanford Law Review Online 88 (February 13, 2012)

• Eric Posner, "We All Have the Right to Be Forgotten," Slate, May 14, 2014

• Jonathan Zittrain, "Don't Force Google to 'Forget'," New York Times, May 14, 2014

• Gail Sullivan, "'Right to be Forgotten' gets real as Google wipes stories from search results," July 3, 2014

• Jeffery Toobin, "The Solace of Oblivion," The New Yorker, September 29, 2014

Optional Readings

• Google Spain SL v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (an abridged version of the ECJ decision from May 2014 - built on the Berkman Center's own H2O Platform for online textbooks)

• Aleksandra Kuczerawy and Jef Ausloos, European Union and Google Spain (from the brand new report from the Global Network of Internet and Society centers)

• EU Data Protection Working Party, Guidelines on the Implementation of the Court of Justice of the European Union Judgment on Google Spain and accompanying press release

March 3 - Privacy Part 3: Government Surveillance

Readings

Government vs. Corporate Surveillance

• Brian Fung, Yes, There Is Actually a Huge Difference Between Government and Corporate Surveillance

• Bruce Schneier, The Trajectories of Government and Corporate Surveillance

Surveillance Theory and Practice

• Neil Richards, The Dangers of Surveillance (pages 1934-96; 1942-45; and 1952-58)

• Kit Walsh, The NSA's Spying Powers: Reading the Statute

• Jack Goldsmith, We Need an Invasive NSA

• Steve Vladeck, Laura Donohue's Comprehensive Case Against Bulk Metadata Collection

• If you're interested, the Donohue article can be found here.

• Re/Code, An Interview with President Obama (10:50-15:25 only)

• Orin Kerr, Apple's Dangerous Game and Apple's Dangerous Game, Part 2: The Strongest Counterargument

Transparency and Accountability

• Ryan Budish, What Transparency Reports Don't Tell Us

• Electronic Frontier Foundation, Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying (skim)

• IC on the Record (skim)

• Google Transparency Report: United States (skim)

• Twitter Transparency Report (skim)

Optional Readings

• The Jennifer Granick / Orin Kerr debates on metadata and the Fourth Amendment

• Granick's opening
• Kerr's response
• Granick's reply
• Kerr's sur-reply

• Emily Bell et al., Comment to Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technologies Regarding the Effects of Mass Surveillance on the Practice of Journalism (pages 9-12 ("Mass surveillance raises issues beyond individual surveillance," "Secret and confusing law," and "Chilling Effects") only)

• The Guardian, NSA Surveillance Revelations Decoded (skim)

• Ryan Gallagher, Meet the Machines That Steal Your Phone's Data

March 10 - Speech, Day 1: Free Expression, Information, and Unwanted Speech

Readings

Speech Theory

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

Informing the Public in the Internet Age

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

• Craig Silverman, Lies, Damned Lies, and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread (And Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims, and Misinformation (read executive summary)

Private, public, and platforms - control of speech online

• Adam Holland et al., NoC Intermediary Case Studies: Intermediary Liability of Intermediaries in the United States (Sections I and II.A. only)

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

• Andy Sellars, The Structural Weakness of Internet Speech

• Jeffrey Rosen, The Delete Squad (New Republic)

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

Unwanted and Dangerous Speech

• Sheriffs Expand Concerns About Waze Mobile Traffic App

• Ethan Zuckerman, Susan Benesch on Dangerous Speech and Counterspeech

• Susan Benesch, Flower Speech: New Responses to Hatred Online

• Christina Marcos, GOP Lawmaker: ISIS Shouldn't Have Access to Twitter

Optional Readings

• You may want to revisit EFF's Facing the Challenge of Online Harassment, from the second class's readings

• Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks (Chapter 7) (skim 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?"))

• 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)

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

• Ethan Zuckerman, Intermediary Censorship (from Access Controlled)

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

• Yochai Benkler, Truthiness and the Networked Public Sphere

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

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

• Wikipedia, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

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

• Secretary John Kerry, Outlining an Action Agenda to Counter Violent Extremism

March 24 - Speech, Day 2: Collective Action, Hacktivism, and Social Movements

Readings/Watchings

Framing

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

• Ethan Zuckerman, New Media, New Civics? (read "The Thick and the Thin of Participatory Civics", skim rest)

• 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")

Defining hackers, hacking, and hacktivism

• Gabriella Coleman, Anonymous from lulz to activists (from 0:00 to 54:26)

Case Studies

• Yochai Benkler et al., Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA/PIPA Debate (pg. 4-10 only)

• Rob Faris et al., Score Another One for the Open Internet? The Role of the Networked Public Sphere in the U.S. Net Neutrality Debate (read intro and conclusion, skim rest)

• Bruce Etling et al., Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent (read Key Findings and Introduction, skim rest)

• Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis, Civic Media Project (peruse)

Optional Readings

• Aaron Swartz, How We Stopped SOPA

• 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)

• Erhardt Graeff, Molly Sauter and the Coming Swarm: A Fireside Chat

• 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.)

• 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

• 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

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

• Ethan Zuckerman, The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention

March 31 - Cybersecurity and Computer Crimes

Readings

Cybersecurity

• Brian Krebs, "The Scrap Value of a Hacked PC (infographic)," Oct 2012
• Bill Hardekopf, "The Big Data Breaches of 2014, Forbes, January 13, 2015
• Liana Baker and Jim Finkle, "Sony Playstation suffers massive data breach," Reuters, April 26, 2011
• Sean Gallagher, "Hackers Promise 'Christmas Present' Sony Pictures Won't Like," Ars Technica, December 15, 2015 (for more on this, see here and here)
• Peter Bright, "US Government Fingers North Korea as the Sony Hackers," Ars Technica, December 17 2014

Computer Crimes

• 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 7 - Copyright, Day 1: Guiding Principles and the Special Case of Anti-Circumvention

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)

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.

Case Study

• Cake Wrecks, Ways to Play it Safe

Anti-Circumvention

• Chilling Effects, Anticircumention (DMCA) (skim)

• Digital Media Law Project, Circumventing Copyright Controls

• Cyberlaw Clinic, Defending Research into Medical Devices

Optional 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)

April 14 - Copyright, Day 2: Copyright Enforcement and Applications to New Technology

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.

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

Case Studies

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

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

• Radio Berkman #216: The Internet – A Yearbook (5:58-15:13 only)

• Jon Swaine, Walter Scott: PR firm demands $10,000 from media outlets using shooting video

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

April 21 - Peer Production

Assignments

Assignment 4 is now due on April 28th, but they will be accepted if turned in today. You can submit your assignment here.

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

• Can the Internet Bring the Beginning of the End of Selfishness?

• Wikipedia, Reliability of Wikipedia

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

• Hatnote, Real Time Wikipedia Changes Map

• Congress Gets Banned From Editing Wikipedia

April 28 - Internet Governance and Governments

Readings

• The Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in 'Multistakeholder as Governance Groups: Observations from Case Studies' (case study on p. 214-237)

• NETmundial, Wikipedia

• Explained: The IANA Transition

• Milton Mueller and Brenden Kuerbis, Roadmap for globalizing IANA: Four principles and a proposal for reform

• Jonathan Zittrain and L. Gordon Crovitz Debate the Future of Internet Governance

Optional Readings

• NETmundial Output Document and Principles