6.805/STS085 Term papers

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fall Semester, 2007

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Term papers

The major factor in your grade will be work on a paper. You can work alone or work with a partner (at most two people on a paper). The paper should be a substantial piece of work. We're expecting papers about 20 pages (one author) or 40 pages (2 authors), but we're more interested in quality than in length.

For examples of the level of work you should aspire to, look at some posted examples of 6.805 papers, particularly the papers from fall 2005 and fall 2003, which were by individuals or teams of two. This is a bit of a stretch goal, since two of the papers in 2003 ended up being published.

Research

We expect you to do thorough research on your topic, with several references. News reports, webzine articles, and Wikipedia can be good ways to get started, but make sure to not stop there, and go to primary references. If you're doing anything even remotely about legal issues, you should make sure to check out law review papers, which can be search from MIT through MIT Electronic Resources Portal. (Search for LexisNexis Academic, to get to the LexisNExis Academic page. The select Legal from the menu bar. You'll need to have MIT certificates installed in your browser.)

Topic

We'd like you to pick a topic in the area of privacy and transparency. But if there is something else related to Internet policy that you feel passionate about, we'll consider approving that as a topic.

Approach and Scope of Paper

We are certainly interested in your opinions and ideas. But you should treat this paper as research and analysis, not just venting or making unsubstantiated assertions. On the other hand, we do expect you to have opinions and a point of view on your topic -- not to just write a book report or a summary of what other people have said.

Your paper should have a thesis, i.e., an idea, claim, or argument that you are putting forward and defending in the paper. We expect that your paper will start out by stating the thesis in the first one or two paragraphs, and that you will proceed to support the thesis in a focused and coherent way. If you are unclear on what we mean by this, have a look at these notes from the Harvard Writing Center.

Paper grades will take into account both the quality of your ideas and the quality of your writing. If you got feedback from rotisserie assignments suggesting that your writing needs improvement, please take that advice seriously.

Be sure to back up your arguments with facts and by citing source material. There is a tremendous amount of reference material available on-line in the course archives and other places on the net. If you cite unpublished on-line material, you can include citations or links to the appropriate URLs in the bibliography.

Note: For citing material published on the Internet, list the URL followed by a note that says "(visited XXX)" where XXX is the date that you last visited the page. For an explanation of how to cite legal cases, see Introduction to Basic Legal Citation by Peter W. Martin of Cornell Law School. The easiest place to start is in the example section (chapter 3).

Schedule

Here is the schedule of milestones for your paper, to help you plan. More detailed information about each assignment will be posted as the due dates come closer.

Oct. 9: Proposal: Write a 1-page description of the topic you plan to investigate in your paper, and how you propose to go about this. For example, who are you planning to talk to? What sources do you plan to consult? This will be due on the rotisserie. Shortly after that, you will schedule an individual meeting with Shekhar to discuss your proposed topic.

Nov. 1 and Nov. 8: Lightning talks (half the class on each date). Give a three-minute talk on your paper. Tell us your topic, your proposed thesis, how you propose to support your thesis, and a mention some references you are going to use or some people you are going to contact.

Nov. 8: Thesis summary: Turn in on the rotisserie a few paragraphs that describe the issue or problem/question you are addressing, a tentative statement of your thesis (that answers this question), the major arguments you will make in support of the thesis, and at least six references (or people) that you have consulted in doing your research.

Nov. 18: Turn in a complete draft of the paper. This should be a late-stage draft, with all sections written, and needing only polish and revision in response to our feedback.
Dec. 12: Final papers due.

Turning in the final paper