IS406B –
POLITICS OF CYBERSPACE
SOME SUGGESTED
TOPICS
FOR RESEARCH PROJECTS
Don’t hesitate to discuss your own ideas with Professor Kabay. These are available but in no way limiting. Choice is first-come-first served: only one student per topic.
Addiction,
cyberchat
Addiction,
cybersex
Addiction,
Internet
Addiction,
MMPORGs
Addiction,
social networking sites
Addiction,
video-games
Addiction,
virtual worlds
Anonymity
and crime
Changing
conceptions of privacy across generations
Changing
demographics of Internet access
Changing
face of cybercrime
Code
as speech
Constitution
law and memorized passphrases for decryption keys
Cyberbullying
Cybermercenaries
Cyberpornography
Cybersex:
virtual child pornography
Cybersex:
virtual prostitution
Cyberspace
and the new politics
Cyberstalking
Cyberterrorism
Democratization
of reference: wikis and their implications
Digital
divide: national and international perspectives
Digital
rights management and user rights
Disintermediation
and censorship
Disintermediation:
news
Disintermediation:
political speech
Economics
of commercial software (Who pays for bugs? What are the consequences of
software monocultures?)
Educational
and cultural effects of Internet- and computer-deprivation
Electronic
voting and democracy
Export
regulations on cryptography
Export
regulations on dual-use technology
Full
disclosure debate (whether vulnerabilities should be published quickly and
openly or not)
Global
patterns of Internet censorship
Great
Firewall of China: will it survive? Should it?
Griefers
in MMORPGS
Information
and misinformation underpinnings of the War on Terror
Information
warfare and the Internet
Intellectual
property wars: the economics of intellectual property in a networked world
Internet
and misjudgement
Internet
neutrality (issue of differential service and access imposed by Internet
service providers)
Misinformation
online: educational implications
Misinformation
online: political implications
Moving
on from face-to-face communication in politics
Organized
crime and the Internet
Piracy,
music
Piracy,
pictures
Piracy,
video
Political
control of the Internet including the Domain Name System
Politics
and economics of open-source software
Privacy
in the digital world
Psychology
of risk and user vulnerability to Internet fraud
Public
records online: social, economic, legal implications
Reverse
engineering: law, politics, economics
Search
and seizure in the digital age
Should
writing malware be illegal?
Social
networking: should universities and employers look?
Social
networking: social and political implications
Virtual
economies