My inclination at present is that each week I'll choose a disputed topic and ask for papers dealing with it. Each topic will have two sides that can be argued, and each should be argued at two levels: the current law and what the law might be (i.e., first arguments to the courts, and then arguments to Congress). Each paper should present the arguments on both sides: in class discussion you'll be asked to give both sides. As differences from the MLIS-level classes, I'm proposing the following differences: (a) I won't give the precise references to be read and discussed, but ask you to find background information yourself; (b) the papers should be slightly longer, say a maximum of 4-5 pages instead of 2-3; (c) each student will do alternate assignments, so something is due every two weeks. My plan is to divide the class into those who were born on odd-numbered days and those born on even-numbered days and each group gets half the assignments.
Finally, and most ambitious, I'll ask you to think if there is some factual
point in dispute and what kind of experiment might answer it. As an example
from my own work, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) argued
in court briefs that a longer copyright term was necessary to justify
spending money on preservation of old movies:
The MPAA writes that, ``Relatively new media such as cable television, video cassettes, and DVDs offer holders of copyrighted films vehicles for generating the substantial sums required for restoration and preservation ... But the costs of restoration must be invested up front, and, as many witnesses at the CTEA hearings noted, individuals or firms are unlikely to make the required investment in the absence of copyright protection'' (MPAA 17-18).
the DMCA remains controversial because it has had a chilling effect on academic research, access to information and the ability of libraries to preserve information resources
I'm not sure whether there should be a final term project. I'm tempted to say that everybody will take one idea from their research suggestions during the semester and follow it up, but I am not confident that we'll have enough good ideas. So we'll hold this one for discussion in class, along with generally whether the rest of this plan makes sense to people.
I'm also not sure whether it is unreasonable to ask the MLIS students enrolled to try the same thing ... I think it's OK, but an alternative is to ask the MLIS students to say (a) does ALA have a position on this issue, and (b) if not, what should it be? But frankly I'd rather everyone try the harder problem, and we'll see how it goes.
As I said in class, the ideas coming from the individual week projects are generally not sufficiently numerous or practical for me to think that asking everyone to pick one is going to work. I thought about a good final project topic, and decided that the best idea I had so far was:
Pick some other country. Find out its Internet governance policy. Discuss its advantages and disadvantages compared to the USA.The problem is that too much foreign language knowledge is required to do this. For example, the Scandinavian countries generally have stronger privacy rules, weaker copyright rules, and legal deposit for electronic materials. But they publish their laws and their newspapers in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish, none of which I can read. So rather than ask everybody to do a poor job at this exercise, I think we'll omit it.