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