CS 305: Social, Ethical, and Legal Implications of Computing

Course coordinates:
Tuesday 4:40pm-6:30pm
FAB 150
Class e-mail
cs305 at lists.pdx.edu
Click here to join
Class WWW
http://thefengs.com/wuchang/work/courses/cs305

Instructor:
Wu-chang Feng
wuchang at cs pdx edu

Office hours:
4pm-5pm Monday
By Appointment
FAB 120-14 (4th Ave Bldg.)

About the course

This course provides an insight into the social, ethical, and legal implications of computing. The introduction of advanced computing hardware and software has had significant impact on society, both good and bad. This course is intended to make students think critically about the impact of such technologies and the legal and ethical implications of the profession. Students will be required to write a term-paper on a chosen area of computing and ethics or its impact on society. Furthermore, students are required to present their topic to the class in a 10 minute presentation towards the end of the quarter.

Course objectives http://www.cs.pdx.edu/course/coursedetails/146

Identify the ethical issues that relate to computer science in real situations they may encounter.
Decide whether a given action is ethical as regards computer science professional ethics, and justify that decision.
Look up relevant ethical standards as developed by the ACM.
Prepare and deliver a short (8-10 minute) professional-quality talk on a topic relating to ethical, legal, and social implications of computer science.
Research and write a professional-quality paper about a topic relating to social, legal, and ethical implications of computer science.
Recognize situations in which there may be legal issues as regards computer science and related topics such as intellectual property, and know some legal principles to apply.
State several important impacts of computer science and related fields on contemporary society.
State several examples of important ethical principles as they apply to computer science related situations.

Class Mail List

All students are required to join the class mail list. A great deal of information is communicated on this mailing list, including general questions, information, updates, and schedule changes.

Textbook

Ethics for the Information Age (4th ed.), Michael Quinn, Pearson, 2009. ISBN 0-13-213387-3.

Homework Assignments

Assignments are due at NOON on the day of class unless otherwise specified. Late assignments will docked 10% for each day late up to 5 days. After 5 days, late assignments will not be accepted.

Tentative Schedule

9/28	Chapter 1, 2	History of Computing Intro to Ethics	slides
10/5	Chapter 3	Networking Issues	slides	Homework #1 due
10/12	Chapter 4	Intellectual Property	slides	Homework #2 due
10/19	Chapter 5	Privacy	slides	Homework #3 due
10/26	Chapter 6	Security & computer crime	slides	Homework #4 due
11/2	Chapter 7	Reliability	slides	Preliminary slides and abstract due
11/9		Presentations (Privacy)	jsund Legality and morality of photo-radar tickets jonesac Ethics of using satellites for spying sudin Employee e-mail privacy tvu Privacy, ethics and Facebook erik3 Mandatory backdoors in comm. software hewij Ethical systems administration lberge Social/legal issues with digital medical records ccornaby Ethics of collecting info with mobile software lpm Legal issues pertaining to electronic voting
11/16		Presentations (Intellectual Property)	kelleye Oracle vs. Google rdfalls Apple, Psystar abohliqa Google Books rhnakamu Copyright protection beyond death darcyb The legality of selling virtual goods jusakj Intellectual property and games (fair-use) dwaley Digital rights management and the law osamh Software piracy and international law bhuddle The legality of bit torrent software/indices
11/23		No class
11/30		Presentations (Societal Impacts)	ppokorny DMCA and Free Speech charled The ethics of distributing anti-censorship software cboylan Wikileaks aren Ethics of hacker websites giovanny Religion and technology twooster Transhumanism arik182 Robots in the Military christoy Cyber-crime nojp Ethics of designing addictive social games	Final paper due (hard copy, in class)
12/7		Final exam 5:30pm-7:20pm

Academic Integrity

You are expected to behave with integrity at all times. Cheating will result in a grade of zero on the assignment or exam on which the student cheats and the initiation of disciplinary action at the university level. Allowing another student to use your work as his/her own is also academic misconduct. There are a few simple steps that you can take to protect your work from unauthorized copying by another can be found here. For assignments, we will be using source-code plagiarism tools to check that code has not been duplicated.

Grading

Homeworks	20%
Attendance/Participation	10%
Preliminary slides and paper abstract	10%
Presentation	20%
Paper	20%
Final exam	20%