Public Policy 190/290: Cyberlife (3 units)                          Office hours

Suzanne Scotchmer and Stephen Maurer                               Scotchmer Monday 3-4, in 203 GSPP, 2607 Hearst Ave

Lectures GSPP Room 105, Thurs 4-7pm                            Maurer Friday 9-10, 347 New Addition GSPP

 

There will be nine short homework assignments, a book report, (possibly) a short class presentation, a midterm and final. You are expected to attend class having read the materials, and to contribute to the discussion. It is easiest to get the books from Amazon, Cody’s, Border’s, Barnes and Noble, or the publisher, such as National Academy of Sciences Press. You might want to buy many of the books listed, but in particular,

Weaving the Web , Harpers Business, 2000, by Time Berners-Lee

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Basic Books, 1999, by Larry Lessig

Innovation and Incentives, MIT Press, 2004, Suzanne Scotchmer

 

Homework Assignments: Send a digital copy to the instructor, and also turn in a hard copy.  They should be on time. Homeworks are mostly to guide your reading, and will not be returned. They will be reflected in the exams.  We will “sample” them before assigning your grade.  They will count about 10%.

 

Book report: Choose a book or (for graduate students) two research papers related to internet issues, and write a review. Due in 13th week.

 

introduction, a short history of information technology and the internet

WeekS 1,2

 

Required:   Berners-Lee, T., Weaving the Web, HarperCollins (1999), Chs. 1-9

      or find the same material in Gillies and Cailliau, How the Web was Born, Oxford Univ. Press (2000)

Required:

How Robust is the Internet?, Nature, 17 July 2000

“Souped-up Search Engines”, Nature, 11 May 2000

“Home Computers and Internet Use in the U.S., August 2000”, U.S. Census Bureau

 “Accessibility of Information on the Web”, Lawrence and Giles, Nature, 8 July 1999, pp107+ 

 

Homework 1: 

 

Recommended, two Saturday-night reads on the history of computing, also good for book reports:

Eniac, Victorian Internet

Recommended Video (largely for fun):

At end of first three classes, three parts of the PBS special Triumph of the Nerds

 

economics of intellectual property and information goods              

Week 3,4

Homework 2:  Due Monday Feb 17 by email (give me a hardcopy in the following Thursday's class)

Required:    Ch. 2 (Investing in Knowledge) of Innovation and Incentives (S. Scotchmer 2004, MIT Press)

  Ch. 10 of Code

Required:  Digital Economy 2000, Department of Commerce

Recommended:  Producing Knowledge, S. M. Maurer and S. Scotchmer. 2004. In Libecap, G., ed., Intellectual Property and Entrepreneurship: Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Growth, Vol 15, pp. 1-31. The Netherlands: JAI Press (Elsevier).

Recommended:  Chapter 8, Digital Dealing by Robert Hall (Norton, 2001).

Recommended: Envisioning Copyright Law’s Digital Future, Peter Menell, New York Law Review

Recommended: Digital Dilemma, National Academy of Sciences Press (1999), Chapter 3 (pp 96-106),

Recommended:    Paul Goldstein, Copyright’s Highway: from Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox, Hill and Wang 1994

 

PROTECTING AND COMMERCIALIZING Data

week 5

 

Homework 3:  due March 3 MONDAY

 

Required: Maurer, et al, “Science’s Neglected Legacy”, Nature 11 May 2000,  p117.

Maurer and Scotchmer, “Database Protection: Is it Broken and Should we Fix it?”, Science May 16, 1999.

 “The Writing is on the Web for Science Journals in Print”, D. Butler, Nature 397, 21 Jan 1999  (to be distributed in class)

Code, Ch. 1,2,14

 

Recommended:  (You needn’t absorb the legal details; read lightly for facts and basic legal principles)

Cases: REGISTER.COM, INC. v. VERIO and eBay v. Bidder’s Edge

“The eBay v.Bidder's Edge decision, the Verio v. Register.com decision,” by Maureen O'Rourke, 16 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 

Dan Burk, “The Trouble with Trespass”, 4 J. of Small and Emerging Bus. Law, 27 

 “Across Two Worlds: Database Protection in North America and Europe”, Stephen Maurer, Intellectual Property and Innovation Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy, Jonathan Putnam, ed, Industry Canada, forthcoming 2002.

 

The economics of interoperability and Standards

week 6

 

Homework 4:  (network economics) due March 10 MONDAY

 

Required:  Ch 10 (Networks and Network Externalities) of Innovation and Incentives (Scotchmer).

Journal of Economic Perspectives 4(8), 1994, pp93-150:  Katz & Shapiro, Besen and Farrell, Liebowitz & Margolis

 

Recommended (for a sample of modeling techniques):

Joseph Farrell and Michael Katz, The Effects of Antitrust and Intellectual Property Law on Compatibility and Innovation, 43 Antitrust Bulletin 609, 1998

Jeffrey Church and Neil Gandal, Integration, Complementary Products and Variety, 1 JEMS 25, 1992. 

 

Recommended: “The Economics and Law of Reverse Engineering”, P. Samuelson and S. Scotchmer, Section IV.

 Information Rules by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian

 

Overview of antitrust law, discussion of 1970’s IBM and AT&T cases as An intro to current antitrust issues

Week 7:  

 

Homework 5:  (antitrust and browser wars) Due April 2 WEDNESDAY

Required

Background on Antitrust: J. Church and R. Ware, Industrial Organization, McGraw-Hill 2000, pp 889-900.  Antitrust and Technological Innovation”, by David M. Hart

letter from Abbott Lipsky, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Div of DOJ, to the Attorney General, getting rid of the IBM case.  Can be found in “The Transformation of Monopolization Law”, 60 Texas Law Rev, p.639+

Recommended: Trial Court Opinion, U.S. v. AT&T.  (skim for history, economic reasoning)

U.S. vs. Mastercard and Visa, see the DOJ Complaint

Part V of Church and Ware.

Ch. 6 (Licensing, Joint Ventures and Competition Policy) of Innovation and Incentives.

 

 

The Browser Wars (microsoft)

week 8   

 

Required:  U.S. v. Microsoft, appellate decision, 2001.

Late-Breaking News:  Settlement of the States' Antitrust Action, Website for all the Documents, Summary of Settlement Opinion

U.S. v. Microsoft Memorandum Opinion, Nov 1, 2002, State of NY et al v. Microsoft, Settlement Opinion, Memorandum Opinion

Recommended:  Did Microsoft Harm Consumers? Two Opposing Views, by Evans and Schmalensee, experts for Microsoft in U.S. v. Microsoft, and Fisher and Rubinfeld, experts for DOJ side

Richard Gilbert and Michael Katz An Economists Guide to U.S. v. Microsoft

The DOJ’s proposed settlement http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9400/9495.htm

The remedy proposed by the Litigating States, http://www.ccianet.org/legal/ms/statefiling.pdf

Original District court opinion, Judge Jackson, Findings of Fact in US v. Microsoft. 

  

week 9 One-Hour Midterm   March 20

 

open source software

CODE AS LAW

CELLPHONE STANDARDS

week 10

Homework 6:  (browser wars, open source) Due April 14

Required:  Code, pp 100-108 and  Open Source Software Projects on User Innovation Networks, Eric Von Hippel

Recommended for those who are a bit sophisticated mathematically:  Alessandro Aquisti and Hal Varian, Conditioning Prices on Purchase History

 

Standard Setting in Telecommunications and Broadband Access

WEEK 11

Homework 7:  (telecommunications and the internet) Due April 21

Required: Benjamin, Lichtman and Shelanski, Telecommunications Law and
Policy, 3rd edition (2001), Chapters 9 (371-391), Ch 21 (867-914)

Required:    Code, Ch. 5

Recommended: "Access and innovation policy for the third-generation internet" Francois Bar, Stphen Cohen, Peter Cowhey, Brad DeLong, Peter Kleeman John Zysman, Telecommuncations Policy 24 20000 489-518

             

privacy, encryption, and computer crime

WEEK 12

 

Homework 8:   (encryption, national security) Due April 28

Required:  Code, Ch. 4,11,12,    Weaving the Web, Ch. 11,

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Internet Commerce (click download), L. Jean Camp and Carlos Osorio

 

Required: Dorothy Denning  Cyberterrorism, Global Dialogue, Autumn 2000.

Recommended: “Crypto” by Steven Levy, Viking: New York, 2001. (read enough to know about DES, the Clipper Chip, public keys, 3rd party keyholders. Basic question: Is a public role necessary, inevitable or desirable?)

FTC 1999 report to Congress

News Item: Court orders ISP to reveal website owner.

spend an hour reading on privacy websites, Center for Democracy and Technology  and The Electonic Privacy Information Center

Hiding Crimes in Cyberspace Denning and Baugh, Information, Communication and Society,  Vol. 2, No. 3, 1999, pp. 251-276.  Also published in Cybercrime, D. Thomas and B. D. Loader, eds., Routledge, 2000. 

Cases Involving Encryption in Crime and Terrorism – as of October 7, 1997.

Encryption and Evolving Technologies as Tools of Organized Crime and Terrorism, Denning and Baugh, National Strategy Information Center's US Working Group on Organized Crime - May 15, 1997

Dorothy E. Denning, Information Warfare and Security, Addison-Wesley 1999

R. Bayer and A. L. Fairchild, “Surveillance and Privacy”, Science 8 Dec 2000 p1898  

Digital Dilemma, Ch. 5.

Browse http://www.privacy.net/  www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/variety.html#data,

also look for relevant articles in Red Herring Magazine, www.redherring.com/mag 

for privacy issues, a syllabus of Prof. Mary Culnan, Georgetown, www.msb.edu/faculty/culnanm/MGMT255/sylm255.PDF

Useful website http://www.privacyalliance.org/

 

surveillance and law enforcement in the digital age

WEEK 13  Book Reports due this week

 

Homework 9:  (privacy) Due May 1

Required: European Parliament Report on Echelon and Related Technologies: Interception Capabilities 2000

Required: Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute “Independent Technical Review of Carnivore System”,

Required:  Kyllo v. Hawaii (U.S. Supreme Ct., 2001), 

Recommended: USA Patriot Act

 

GLOBALIZATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TREATIES

WEEK 14

 

Required:    Ch. 11 (Innovation in the Global Economy) of Innovation and Incentives.

Recommended:

Keith Maskus, Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy (2000), Institute for International Economics (Washington, D.C.)

Michael Ryan, Knowledge Diplomacy

S. Scotchmer, The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Treaties

 

 

WEEK 15   Book Reports (discussion) and FINAL EXAM