Pick one of the following topics:

• Starting with the codes of ethics and responsible use policies in the readings, illustrate how one or more of these policies might have applied to a situation experienced by you or an organization with which you were involved.
• Craft a code of ethics for information professionals, considering what ethical regulations would serve both the profession and the public, or write a responsible use policy for a company or organization for whom you would want to work, considering the objectives of the organization, its employees, member and customers. In either case, you should balance these considerations against the legal framework and public policy objectives.

The Year 2000 problem, alternatively called a bug, a bomb or a mere issue, presents significant challenges to information professionals. In the Y2K situation, as in the global warming dilemma, picking the correct course of action is especially difficult because the response costs and uncertainty are great, but so too are the ramifications of the feared event if it does come to pass. How should the managers of the systems and computers which are affected by Y2K react to the crisis and what should be done to resolve it? How should information policy makers minimize the legal, social, and political impact of the turn of the millennium? Should the impact be minimized by legislation, or will that remove important incentives to implement innovative and timely solutions? For this assignment you need to draft a Year 2000 policy which considers not only how to attempt to fix or work around the problem but also the possibility that the task will not be completed on time. Three to five pages should be sufficient.

This is a team assignment, where you will form groups of up to five, and work as a team to present some alternative readings to be recommended to the class. Your team will sign up for a particular class topic. Each individual should put forth several possible sources, along with a short paper describing why these sources should be useful to the class. A paragraph or two should be sufficient for each source. Possible sources include articles, reports, policy statements and web sites. Then the group needs to select about five of the proposed sources for inclusion in the class wide reading list.

The individual source list and short papers are due prior to the class period discussing the topic your team has selected. The group's source list should be distributed to the class in enough time to allow people to review the material before the class period.

Write a short (ten to fifteen pages) paper which provides a criticism or commentary on Larry Lessig's article "What Things Regulate Speech: CDA 2.0 vs. Filtering." The following are five suggested topics:

• What are the benefits and burdens of allowing technology to regulate behavior? Is there a principled problem with a system that regulates the Internet to prohibit only harmful and unprotected speech? What if, for example, a technological system was implemented which reviewed every person's on-line activities, identified every instance of obscenity or other harmful speech, and brought that (and only that) to the attention of the authorities? Using the Lessig article as a basis, craft an argument for or against technological regulation of behavior.

• Changing the architecture of cyberspace through the addition of filtering might create a more efficient marketplace of ideas and allow greater control over the speech one observes. Using the Lessig article as a starting point, argue for or against the creation of more efficient marketplace where all speech is accurately marked, and the browser can filter out all unwanted speech. Do we want a certain inefficiency in speech, so that people are exposed to ideas that they would not affirmatively desire?

• How should we resolve the international dimensions of regulating on-line speech? Should we create a labeling system which allows other jurisdictions to regulate speech based on ideologies we might consider repressive? E.g., do we want Iraq to be able to use this architecture to stifle dissent? Should we be troubled if our PICS system allows China to eliminate Tibet or Taiwan related speech? On the other hand, is there a problem with creating an essentially libertarian infrastructure, and then installing it in the phone lines of countries far more concerned with regulating speech? What different benefits and burdens stem from filtering or CDA legislation from an international perspective?

• In what manner does the current architecture of the Internet inherently promote or inhibit speech, and how would a "CDA II" type of legislation or a filtering architectural standard change that? What unintended side effects might be created by these proposals? In order to protect our citizens from certain forms of speech, are we throwing out the baby with the bath water? Who should be responsible for such speech, the sender, the recipient or the intermediary?

• Larry Lessig seems to be trying to address on-line speech issues without altering the fundamental libertarian nature of the Net. In essence, this can be seen as an attempt to redirect the focus on pornography away from a more general focus on governance. But what argument might be made in favor of regulating more generally?