6.978
Communications and Information Policy
Spring 2006
Topics
- A Quick Guide to the Internet
- Application Design on the Internet
- EE 101
- Internet Interconnection
- Why have Regulators been so involved in Telecommunications?
- Overview of Methods of Technical and Policy Analysis Applicable to the Final Project. Discussion of Problem Definition and Issue Framing for Topics with Interwoven Technical, Social, Economic, and Political Dimensions
- Spectrum Management Reform, Part 1
- Spectrum Management Reform, Part 2
- Intellectual Property: Content and Digital Telecommunication Policy
- Architecture and Control
- Culture, Content and Copyright
- Challenges for Convergence: Interconnection
- Challenges for Convergence: Interconnection (cont.)
- Competition in Access Networks
- Case Studies: VoIP, Municipal Broadband
- Municipal Broadband (cont.)
- Network Neutrality
- Network Neutrality (cont.)
- IPTV
- Internet Governance
- Open Access, or Making Money Openly
- One Laptop per Child (aka $100 Laptop); the Internet and Developing Countries
- Classroom Presentations and Discussion
Readings
- Blumenthal, Marjory S., and David D. Clark. “Rethinking the Design of the Internet: The End-to-End Arguments vs. the Brave New World.” ACM Transactions on Internet Technology 1, no. 1 (August 2001): 70-109.
- Textbook, Chapter 2, part I (pp. 31-45), and Chapter 4, up to section on broadband technology (pp. 115-134). Useful background for students not already familiar with telecommunications and Internet technology.
- Markey, Hedy Kiesler, and George Antheil. U.S. Patent 2,292,387. Secret Communication System; filed June 10, 1941; approved August 11, 1942.
- Textbook, Chapter 1.
- Bray, Hiawatha. “Groups mobilize against fees for bulk e-mailings: YAHOO®, AOL target spam.” Boston Globe , February 28, 2006.
- Textbook, rest of Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
- Stone, Deborah. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2001. ISBN: 0393976254. (Recommended for students without ESD.10 pre-requisite.)
- Textbook, Chapters 7 and 8.
- Hazlett, Thomas. “The Wireless Craze, The Unlimited Bandwidth Myth, The Spectrum Auction Faux Pas, and the Punchline to Ronald Coase’s “Big Joke” An Essay on Airwave Allocation Policy.” AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Working Paper 01-01, January 2001.
- Baumol, William, and Dorothy Robyn. “Toward an Evolutionary Regime for Spectrum Governance: Licensing or Unrestricted Policy?” AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, 2006.
- Farquhar, Michele C., and Ari Q. Fitzgerald. “Legal and regulatory issues regarding spectrum rights trading.” Telecommunications Policy 27, no. 7 (August 2003): 527-532.
- Marcus, J., Lorenz Nett, Mark Scanlan, Ulrich Stumpf, Martin Cave, and Gerard Pogerel. “Towards More Flexible Spectrum Regulation.” WIK-Consult, Germany, December 2005.
- Noam, Eli. “Beyond spectrum auctions. Taking the next step to open spectrum access.” Telecommunications Policy 21, no. 5 (June 1997): 461-475.
- Owen, Bruce, and Gregory Rosston. “Spectrum Allocation and the Internet.” In Cyber Policy and Economics in an Internet Age . Edited by William Lehr and Lorenzo Pupillo. Boston MA: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 2002.
- Werbach, Kevin. “Radio Revolution: The Coming Age of Unlicensed Wireless.” New America Foundation, 2003.
- Mann, Charles. “Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?” Atlantic Monthly (September 1998).
- Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” In The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988. ISBN: 0226902110. Cited by Lessig as his inspiration for his model of the modalities of control, the “new” Chicago School.
- Vaidhyanathan, Siva. “Remote Control: The Rise of Electronic Cultural Policy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 597 (January 2005): 122-133.
- Bowman, Lisa. “Programmers enroll in political training.” CNet News , June 10, 2002.
- Mann, Charles. “The Heavenly Jukebox.” Atlantic Monthly (September 2000).
- Hansell, Saul. “Crackdown May Send Music Traders Into Software Underground.” The New York Times , September 15, 2003.
- Fisher, William. “An Alternative Compensation Scheme.” Chapter 6 in Promises To Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
- Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity . New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2004.
- Textbook, Chapter 9.
- Textbook, Chapter 10.
- Armstrong, Mark. “The Theory of Access Pricing and Interconnection.” In Handbook of Telecommunications Economics . Edited by Martin Cave, Sumit Majumdar, and Ingo Vogelsang. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: North-Holland, 2001.
- Charles River Associates. “Interconnection Pricing: Bill and Keep Compared to TSLRIC.” Final Report submitted to Telecom NZ, April 2003.
- European Commission (2002a), Access to, and interconnection of, electronic communications networks and associated facilities, Communications Services: Policy and Regulatory Framework, INFSO A/1, Brussels April 24, 2002.
- Federal Communications Commission. “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking In the Matter of Developing a Unified Intercarrier Compensation Regime.” CC Docket No. 01-92, April 27, 2001.
- Gabel, David. “A Competitive Market Approach to Interconnection Payments.” In Networking Knowledge for Information Societies: Institutions and Intervention . Edited by Robin Mansell, Rohan Samarajiva, and Amy Mahan. Delft, The Netherlands: Delft University Press, 2002.
- Vogelsang, Ingo. “Price Regulation of Access to Telecommunications Networks.” April 2003. Journal of Economic Literature 41, no. 3 (September 2003): 830-862.
- Textbook, Chapter 4 (remaining section on broadband technology, pp. 134-147) and Chapter 5.
- Textbook, Chapter 6.
- Krim, Jonathan. “FCC Probes Blocking of Internet Phone Calls.” Washington Post , February 17, 2005, p. E01.
- O’Connell, Patricia. “At SBC, It’s All About Scale and Scope.” Business Week Online , November 7, 2005.
- Bar, F., S. Cohen, P. Cowhey, B. DeLong, M. Kleeman, and J. Zysman. “Access and Innovation Policy for the Third-Generation Internet.” Telecommunications Policy 24, no. 6-7 (2000): 489-518.
- Textbook, Chapters 11 and 12.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.