Mar 28, 2024  
2020-21 Catalog 
    
2020-21 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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CMST 138 - Media Digital Law & Ethics


5 CR

Explores the legal and ethical issues raised by modern communication technologies. Specific topics include copyright, free speech, pornography, and universal internet access. Students analyze how the U.S. justice system responds to emerging technologies. Class format incorporates lectures, discussions, case studies, and media clips.

Course Outcomes
  • Apply Supreme Court precedents in order to predict judicial outcomes when analyzing cases.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of core decisions relating to the First Amendment.
  • Identify the various laws in the American Legal system (e.g., common law, statutory law, equitable remedies, and administrative rules).
  • Define various terms concerning new media technology, including “Internet,” “cyberspace,” “cyberporn,” “hacking,” and “spamming,” “P2P File sharing,” “Net Neutrality,” and “Traffic Throttling.”
  • Define the meaning of ethics and apply various theoretical frameworks that have been used to understand ethics through the ages.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of how ethics apply to television, radio broadcasting, and new media.
  • Define “net crime” in the legal sense of the term.
  • Describe Intellectual Property Law, including the basics of copyright, patent, and trademark law.
  • Describe major principles of Media and Mass Communication Law.
  • Identify and analyze specific cases concerning the law and obscenity on the Internet and/or other media.
  • Describe precedent-setting Supreme Court rulings.
  • Describe the history of communications regulation in the United States since the Civil War and apply this history to current & future issues surrounding the regulation of terrestrial broadcast and digital media.


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