Technology Ethics and the Legal Landscape

Final Exam

Our subject for this module is the rapidly evolving and interdisciplinary field of cybersecurity law. Cybersecurity as a field covers a vast range of topics, and every area of law is beginning to incorporate cybersecurity elements to it. This module offers a high-level overview to illustrate some general principles about cybersecurity law, looks at how artificial intelligence is involved, looks at...

Privacy is among the most important and controversial topics for technologists to understand--privacy used to be the default, but in the modern digital era, almost everything that we do leaves a persistent digital trail. However, despite its importance, privacy law does not describe a single coherent area of law. Rather, when we think about privacy law, we need to understand a hodgepodge of a doze...

This module introduces antitrust law, one of the most important areas of law in modern technology. In it, we'll see a brief introduction to the core features of antitrust law (including an overview of the key goals and statutes of antitrust law,) a breakdown of the three key areas that antitrust enforcers focus on, and a discussion of contemporary antitrust issues in the United States and European...

Intellectual property law (copyright law, patent law, and trademark law) is very important for engineers to have some familiarity with. In this module, we're going to look at patent law and trademark law. Patent law gives inventors the exclusive right to use their inventions for a fixed period of time and trademark law protects the identifying features, called marks, of brands and products, giving...

Intellectual property law, which generally includes copyright law, patent law, and trademark law, is a very important area of the law for engineers to understand. In this module, we're going to look at one of these areas-- copyright law. We'll delve into how copyright law works, the role of licensing in copyright law, and the idea of fair use, along with some interesting case studies.

In this module, we're going to look at disruptive design. We'll start by looking at various theories of innovation and see where disruption fits into these theories. And we'll also look at some of the technical, business, and legal challenges that come alongside with innovation, disruptive or otherwise.

In this module, we're going to look at the trade-offs that occur when you are designing a product for consumers via a series of vignettes. Each of these vignettes will highlight a different aspect of the relationship between the consumer and product design. Later in the module, we'll tie all these discussions together with some consideration of general principles of who the consumer is.

In this module, we're going to look at the relationship between standards and legal liability. Standards arise in many contexts, technical design standards, legal and regulatory requirements, to standards of professional conduct, all of which we will delve into.

In this module, we will explore another area of law: products liability law. Products liability law has unique rules that apply to products that have defective designs, are manufactured with defects, or fail to include sufficient warnings to inform users of risks.

In this module, we will explore the two basic areas of law that deal with risk: tort law and contract law. These will be foundational for the rest of the unit.

In this module, we will conclude Unit 1 by looking at law and the state, and the limits of what we can do with them. The first half of the module, we'll look at practical limitations on what we can do with the law. In the second half, we'll look at the various regulatory actors that exist both within the United States, as well as competition between the United States and other countries.

In this module, we're going to begin thinking about what the law is and how concepts of what the law is relate to technology

This module will give you an understanding of the state that we will build on for the rest of the course, and how that state derives its power

This week, we will lay the foundations for our course by exploring several key examples in the field of engineering ethics.