Tracy Mitrano, Director
The University Computer Policy and Law Program's (UCPL) mission is to further information technologies ethics education. Typically, UCPL sponsors three or four speakers a semester for both small workshops and university lectures on topics such as digital copyright and libraries, Internet privacy and security, disability access technologies, logging and monitoring of network flow data, compliance strategies with relevant laws and campus IT policies and policy development. Complicated legal and policy issues require the expression of a variety of voices, perspectives and opinions. UCPL respects this diversity of opinion and desires to encourage campus community discussion and debate on these topics.
All events are broadcast live on video, and on CUTV channel 100
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Upcoming Events
FREE and open to the public
Bits Are Not Atoms: Why Counting Copies Is No Longer Right
Steve Worona, Director of Policy and Networking Programs, EDUCAUSE
June 19, 2008 - time and place to be announced
From sheet music to piano rolls to LP's to CD's, music has been distributed as tangible artifacts. As "things" that you can see, touch, mark, and move from place to place. Things that you can count. And so it's been natural to monetize intellectual property by counting these things, by counting copies. But in the digital world of the Internet and magnetic storage, we're dealing with bits, not with atoms, and bits are not just smaller atoms. In this talk, we'll explore how the laws of physics undercut traditional business models for intellectual property and how legislation and public policy are struggling to cope with this new reality.
Can't make it? Watch it live - on this site or CUTV channel 100
Participate in the discussion - email questions to ucpl@cornell.edu
Recent Events on Video
Data Dilemmas: Privacy, security and propriety of electronic information
Fred Cate, Professor of Law, Indiana University
Beth Cate, Associate University Counsel, Indiana University
April 17, 2008
Fred and Beth Cate discussed how the decentralized nature of university environments, with growing reliance on technologies that collect and store data, make it challenging to provide privacy and security for students, faculty and staff information. The role that sites such as juicycampus.com play in privacy and security, as well as notification breach law compliance, were discussed.
Copyright Goes to Kindergarten:
The Cultural Work of Anti-Piracy Campaigns
A discussion with Tarleton Gillespie
February 11, 2008
To curb unauthorized downloading, major film, music and software corporations have developed public education campaigns for K-12 classrooms that extol the virtues of copyright and the immorality of piracy. Presented as educational, anti-piracy campaigns tend to perpetuate an industry-centric idea of what copyright is for and how technology is meant to be used. This attempt to solidify the distinction between producer and consumer works against the tide of emerging forms of creativity and collaboration.
Tarleton Gillespie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, with affiliations in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Information Science program. His book, Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture, was published by MIT Press in June 2007.
On-Line Access to Court Records:
A Study of the Interaction of Technology with Law
A discussion with Peter Winn
January 30, 2008
In 2002, with almost no debate, US courts began using electronic filing systems. Under the earlier paper system, court records were required to be kept public to maintain the accountability of the legal system, but given the difficulty of accessing paper records, most legal files remained "practically obscure," thus still protecting the privacy of litigants. This accountability/privacy balance was dramatically changed by the shift to electronic court records, subjecting a treasure trove of sensitive information to unintended uses - from wholesale extraction by commercial data-miners to individual mischief by identity thieves. What is the proper balance between accountability and privacy in an age of electronic judicial information?
Peter Winn is an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. He teaches privacy law at the University of Washington School of Law, and is a senior fellow at the University of Melbourne where he teaches cybercrime. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School.