开始时间: 04/22/2022 持续时间: Unknown
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所在平台: CourseraArchive 课程类别: 其他类别 |
课程主页: https://www.coursera.org/course/internetgiants
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Please note: This session will be offered as an On-Demand Course beginning July 13, 2015.
This seven-week course will explore the relationship between law and technology with a strong focus on the law of the United States with some comparisons to laws around the world, especially in Europe. Tech progress is an important source of economic growth and raises broader questions about the human condition, including how culture evolves and who controls that evolution. Technology also matters in countless other ways as it often establishes the framework in which governments interact with their citizens, both in allowing speech and blocking it and in establishing exactly what the boundaries are between private life and the government. And technology itself is powerfully shaped by the laws that apply in areas as diverse as copyright, antitrust, patents, privacy, speech law and the regulation of networks.
The course will explore seven topics:
1. The Desktop vs. The Internet. We will start with a look at three cases against Microsoft: (1) the U.S. antitrust case over Microsoft’s response to Netscape Navigator; (2) the European Union case regarding Windows Media Player; and (3) the EU case over Internet Explorer. These disputes arose at the point of maximal competition between the free-standing personal computer and the Internet world that would come after it and we may know enough now to assess how these cases influenced that competition.
2. The Fight over Google Search. Google has emerged as one of the dominant platforms of the Internet era and that has led to corresponding scrutiny by regulators throughout the world. Decisions that Google makes about its algorithm can be life altering. Individuals are finding it more difficult to put away past mistakes, as Google never forgets, and businesses can find that their sales plummet if Google moves them from the first page of search results to a later page. With great power comes scrutiny and we will look at how government regulators have evaluated how Google has exercised its power. Both the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union have undertaken substantial investigations of Google’s practices and we will look at both of those.
3. The Smartphone Wars. The Internet started on the desktop but the Internet is increasingly mobile and people are seemingly tethered to their smartphones and tablets. The legal infrastructure of smartphones and tablets is extraordinarily complex. We will look at the activities of standard setting organizations, the creation of patent pools and the regulation of standard essential patents, as well as some of the ongoing patent and copyright litigation among Apple, Samsung, Google/Motorola Mobility and others.
4. Network Neutrality. Facebook has more than 1 billion users and measure that against a world population of roughly 7 billion and a total number of Internet users of roughly 2.5 billion. A course on law and technology simply has to grapple with the basic framework for regulating the Internet and a key idea there is the notion of network neutrality. Nondiscrimination obligations are frequent in regulated network industries, but at the same, discrimination can be an important tool of design for communication networks. We will start our look at the Internet by looking at the great first communications network of the United States, the post office and will look in particular at the Post Office Act of 1845. We will then move to modern times and will consider efforts by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to produce sensible and sustainable nondiscrimination conditions for the Internet and will touch briefly on comparisons from around the world.
5. The Day the Music Died? In many ways, the Internet came first to music with the rise of peer-to-peer (p2p) music sharing through Napster and its successors. We will consider the copyright issues raised by the creation and distribution of music and the litigation over the p2p technologies. We will then turn to second- wave litigation against consumers and against emerging digital locker technologies.
6. Control over Video. Images are some of the most powerful ways in which ideas and speech are communicated and video has long been regulated by the state. That starts as a communications law issue with government regulation of the radio spectrum, but also leads to the design of the television system with the assignment of channels and eventually the definition of digital television. And with the emergence first of cable TV and subsequently the VCR critical copyright roadblocks had to be overcome for new distribution technologies to emerge. We will look at all of those issues and the recent U.S. Supreme Court case concerning a new entrant, Aereo. Students will be able to examine the briefs filed by the parties and to play the audio of the argument in the Supreme Court before looking at the (not-yet-released) opinion.
7. The (e)Printed Word. Gutenberg revolutionized books with his printing press and for academics, books are sacred objects. But the printed book is on the run and with the rise of the ebook, we are entering a new era, the era of the mediated book. This is more than just a change in technology. We will look at the issues created by the rise of the ebook, issues about control over content and licensing and of the privacy of thought itself. We will also look at the legal skirmishes over this space, including the litigation over Google Books and the Apple ebook antitrust case.
Engage with the stories of major legal battles that have defined how we experience the internet today. See the memos, cases, and briefs between major corporations like Microsoft and Google, and learn how law has shaped the technology and media platforms of our modern age.
