August 27, 2006 --
Lex 8256
Seminar: The Law in Cyberspace
Jon Weinberg
- We will meet every Monday from 1:25 to 3:25 p.m.
- Most of the material you will be reading in preparation for class
over the course of the seminar will be selected by your
classmates. For each topic, the person assigned to cover
that topic will create a reading assignment, after consulting with
me. The reading assignment will contain citations to the assigned
readings (including complete URLs for material available on the
Internet), along with any explanatory material and instructions.
- I will put
each assignment on the web server before the previous week's class,
and students in the seminar will have that week to read the assigned
material for the topics scheduled for the following class. We
will typically cover two topics each week.
- Class discussions will proceed as follows: The
person assigned
for each topic will begin and conclude the discussion with a short (5
to 10 minute) presentation. In between, every member of the class will
be expected to speak about the assigned material.
- I expect every student to attend every class,
and to have something thoughtful to say on every topic.
- I've set up a class blog at jtweinberg.blogspot.com.
You each should have received an email invitation to join the
blog. From time to time, I'll post on the blog news about
Internet law developments relating to our class discussions.
I encourage you to post comments on the blog (indeed, you can post new
stories too if you want). In addition, I've asked you to post
comments to the blog about the September 18 assignment in advance of
class. I will ask you to post comments in other contexts later on.
- Both because it'll be helpful in creating your assignments and
writing your papers, and as a matter of general principle, it's a
good thing for you to keep up with Internet law developments. One
excellent source is Professor Michael Geist's Internet Law News, which is a
free daily email service. You'd do well also to look at Derek
Bambauer's co-authored
blog Info / Law.
Paper topic selection:
- I have posted a list of potential paper topics here.
Please give me, no later than noon on
Friday, September 1, your preferred five topics from
that list in ranked order. You may also list up to three dates that you
would
find inconvenient for your scheduled presentation.
- I will try to put together a schedule that flows in a coherent
progression, based on the topics you each select. If what's really
important to you, say, is that your presentation is
scheduled during November and you don't care much what
the topic is, tell me that and I'll try
to take it into account in scheduling. If you'd like to write on
a topic not on the topics list, please discuss it with me
before turning in your selections, and send me a short description of
the
paper you envision writing and the sorts of materials you expect to
assign to the class.
- I will try to honor preferences, and will, in the event of a
conflict, make selections on the basis of the class's scheduling
convenience. Within those constraints, I will give topic choices turned
in earlier precedence over choices turned in later, so it's in your
interest to turn in your topic selections as early as possible.
- Topic selections and all other assignments may be turned in to my
third floor mailbox, handed to me, or e-mailed to me at weinberg@wayne.edu. If you are
sending me something via e-mail, please don't assume that I've
received it unless I send you a confirming message via e-mail.
Creating your assignments:
- I'll give you some initial suggestions for
sources to consult to start your research. After you've developed
some ideas for your assignment, we should discuss your plans either
in person or by email.
- Two weeks before the class scheduled for your topic, please send
me an
email message giving me a brief description of the material you plan to
assign.
- You should turn in your assignment via email
(to me at weinberg@wayne.edu)
by 5 p.m.
Friday, ten days before the class scheduled for
your topic. Late assignments will result in a grade deduction. You
can submit reading assignments in either HTML or in plain (ASCII) text.
(Recent
versions of all major word processing programs include utilities to
convert files into either HTML or ASCII.)
You
may supplement your assignments with material available only in hard
copy format, so long as you distribute it in class the week before your
topic is scheduled.
- I won't put anything up on the server until I've checked
the
links to make sure they work. To the extent that I need to spend a
substantial amount of time correcting your citations and links, I'll
take that into account in assigning that portion of your grade.
- Be original, creative and clever in preparing
your class reading assignment. I don't mean that you should use
graphics or clever
animation; your classmates may have slow modems. Be kind to
them,
and keep their download times short. I'll be looking primarily
at your assignment's effectiveness in enabling the members of the
seminar to learn interesting and challenging material, and I'll pay
attention both to presentation and to selection of sources. Some
past student assignments in this seminar have been quite elaborate; yours doesn't have to be as
elaborate as the one at that link. But you should work hard to
make your assignment thought-provoking.
Papers:
- You should turn in your papers in both hard copy and in
electronic format. Electronic copies may be in any word processing
program, in HTML, or in ASCII text. I will not post
your paper on the web without your permission.
- Your paper should reflect analysis and original thought as well
as description. Be careful to cite your sources: All footnotes
and citations should
conform to the current edition of the Bluebook or AWLD. Citations
to
material
available over the Internet should give the URL.
- First
drafts of all papers must be turned in
by Wednesday, November 1.
Final drafts must be turned in on or
before
Wednesday, November 29. The point of this requirement is
to allow
you
to correct problems with your papers before the final version,
so that the paper is better and I can give you a higher grade. If
you do a half-hearted job on your first draft, so that I see much of
the material in your paper for the first time on November 29, then you
won't have a chance to correct those problems, and your grade will
suffer.
Trust me on this.
Grades:
Your grades will consist of three, equally weighted components:
- The reading assignment designed for the class.
- A 20-to-30 page research paper on the same topic.
- Class participation over the course of the semester. Every
student will be graded on the remarks she or he makes in each
class. I will also take class blog comments into account here.
I
will take the quality of the class discussion on a topic as some
indication of the effectiveness of the assignment for that topic. That
is, what you have to say with respect to a given assignment
will be one of the things I consider in assigning a grade to the
student who created
that assignment. As a matter of fairness to the other members of the
seminar, you need to take sufficient time with each week's assignments
to be able to contribute to the discussion.