The Internet: Business, Law, and Strategy STP-307

Note: All Readings for this class will be available on-line

The emergent information economy is dazzling governments, puzzling lawyers, and enriching a new generation of barons some of them robbers. Given that governance and control are accomplished as much by the architecture of the Internet as by the laws that would purport to apply to it, can or should law rule the code? We will explore questions like this with an integrated approach from disciplines of law, technology, and business.

Issues include:

• governance
  How should policy be made -- if at all --about changes to the structure of the Internet?
• electronic civil liberties
  Can and should the speech restrictions of the Internet enforced by schemes as varied as third-party content filtering and legislative attempts such as the Communications Decency Act be scrutinized for their impact on the free expression of the " little guy " ?s
• the sovereignty of technology
  Do the emerging means of technological self-regulation -- computer programs that are impossible to duplicate and online books that can only be read once -- distort the public policy balance inherent in copyright law between property and free expression? Or are they reasonable (and justifiable) responses to the increased threat to intellectual property protection posed by digital communications?
• global electronic commerce
  Are there new dynamics of venture capital at work? Will the gap between rich and poor be widened or narrows by the Internet?,
• structural social change.

The course will feature a strong Internet-based component. All readings, the course schedule, and announcements will be available over the Web. Comfort with surfing and using the Web is the only prerequisite. Students will form research groups to engage in greater depth a topic addressed in class. The groups of students will be international and interdisciplinary, reflecting the types of problems springing from the information realm. The group project and class participation will be the basis of the class grade.