a book for the IB Diploma
Policies govern how we use information technology - from user agreements in education and business to the regulations of social media and other sites that we use regularly. Governments also enact laws that determine what can and cannot be said or done online - although, as with all policies, enforcing these can be quite difficult.
Copyright and Fair Use Overview (Stanford) addresses many Frequently Asked Questions related to intellectual property, copyright, fair use, and the public domain.
Teaching Copyright is operated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and contains a lot of valuable information. The Copyright FAQs are very useful.
A number of solutions have been proposed to combat online media piracy, including disconnecting file sharers, controversial letter campaigns, and compelling Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block sites such as The Pirate Bay.Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies are also used on a range of media from DVDs to eBooks.
Media licences explains the differences between the most common types of licences for images, sound, and video. These include Creative Commons and the GNU Documentation licence.
Many computer manufacturers, including Microsoft, Sony, Dell, Apple, and Samsung now have environmental policies that address the chemicals they use in their hardware manufacturing processes. Several manufacturers also offer equipment recycling schemes or takeback schemes. Gazelle is another recycling programme operated by Costco.
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition is an organisation that assesses the environmental impact of different IT companies and is a useful resource that has links to many policies and takeback schemes.
Facebook are once again going to update their data policy, terms, and cookie policy in January 2015. Their Updating Our Terms and Policies page explains the changes that will be made and how users can control the advertisements they see. The main Facebook Data Use Policy page explains in more detail what data is collected by the social network and how it is used.
In the past Facebook has caused storms of online protest regarding its policy changes, including its short-lived real names policy and a huge psychological experiment it conducted on 700,000 users in 2012.
With government surveillance and corporate data breaches, online privacy is rarely out of the headlines. This article from the ACM examines different approaches to data privacy protection around the world.
Legislation in the US, Europe, and Japan are explained in detail, making this a great opportunity to study real-life examples and discuss the benefits and disadvantages of different privacy policies and their impact on customers, users, and citizens. It is also a useful tool to highlight the conflicts that occur when users or companies operate in several different countries with different corporate environments and cultures.
Read the article: Online Privacy: Regional Differences
Information Technology in a Global Society is a textbook for the IB Diploma ITGS course, by Stuart Gray. This site contains resources for ITGS teachers and students, including a sample chapter, exercises, lesson ideas, and further reading.
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