Programme of Studies: School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast

 

Name of the course unit:  Law in Information Society

 

Type of course (e.g. major, minor, elective):  Elective

 

Level of the module /course unit (e.g. BA, MA, PhD): LLB

 

Prerequisites:  NA

 

Number of ECTS credits:

 

Skills to be developed:

 

1            Presenting information visually and orally

2            Information Technology Law

3            Accessing legal texts

4            Interpretation of legal texts in context

5            Application of legal texts in context

Learning outcomes

Educational activities

Estimated student work time in hours

Assessment

Lectures- What is the internet and what aspects of IT have produced the basis of the EU programme dedicated to building an ‘information society’.  In this lecture we look briefly at the technical side of the internet and the potential legal problems arising from the internet.

The course will be assessed by two essays on any parts of the course (but not on the same general topics).  These will be of no less than 2,000 words in length and no more than 2,500 words. 

Each essay will be worth 50% of the final course mark

Lectures.- The objective of this lecture is to familiarize with a wide variety of legal issues related to crime implicated by a world interconnected through the medium of the World Wide Web

E-Commerce I & E-Commerce II

Lectures.- The purpose of this lecture is to give an overview of e-commerce-trends as seen from three different perspectives. Law is influenced by both technological and economical trends. This lecture will set the stage by giving insight in the developments of a technology, economy and law. an overview of basic ideas in cryptography and public-key infrastructures (PKI), and then move to a recap of policy efforts throughout. This Lecture will also deal with the concepts of international e-commerce taxation, offshore taxation of e-commerce and other related tax issues such as compliance and administration issues of e-commerce tax

Intellectual Property

Lectures.- This lecture looks at the EU programme on protection of copyright materials and how successful this might and should be. Is there a place, say, for ‘free’ personal copying.  IP is, of course, wider than copyright (including patents, confidentiality, trademarks

Data Protection and State Surveillance

Lectures.- In this lecture we look at the some of the problems caused by these kinds of transformations of the nature of information.  We also look at what is omitted from Data Protection – the needs of the State to observe its populations.

Privacy & Freedom of Expression

Lectures.- We look at attempts to legislate for privacy and it’s related opposite, freedom of expression. Europe is particularly divided on this, and further, the US is even more divergent from Europe.  What policy underlies privacy and freedom of expression in the Information Society?

E-Government

Lectures.- In this lecture, we are going to look at the concept of E-Government, its nature and characteristics. We will also investigate legal regulation of E-Gov at the European level.

Issues in Developing Countries

Lectures- The purpose of this lecture is to provide an overview of technological and legal issues in developing countries