<p>Litigation is impossible since the studetns saw an unoffcial acceptance before they were supposed to be released. There would be no way to prove that the student was rejected for the "hacking."</p>
<p>
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Litigation is impossible since the studetns saw an unoffcial acceptance before they were supposed to be released. There would be no way to prove that the student was rejected for the "hacking."
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</p>
<p>100% wrong ^^^</p>
<p>Actually litigation is impossible because private schools can reject for (almost) any (or no) reason they decide, but it would be fairly easy to prove that's why they were rejected.</p>
<p>I don't know about you, but I saw tons of TV time, two AP wires, a school article, and an offical Harvard press release saying "those decisions were correct" and "we rejected those applicants who would have otherwise gotten in because they looked at their decisions." Where I come from proof doesn't come and more conclusive than that.</p>
<p>Anybody basically has the right to sue anybody. However, it's the frivolous stuff that gets thrown out before it comes to fruition. I'm sure this stuff won't get thrown out just because of the gravity of the situation, but there is no way the plaintiffs will get anything out of it.</p>
<p>anisky
Honestly-- yes. You were being sarcastic, but I think it's true. I believe that victimless crimes (<em>excepting</em> crimes that are victimless but had the potential to have a victim, ie drunk driving) should not be crimes. If it doesn't hurt anybody, well then, I don't see the harm. It doesn't hurt someone, therefore it doesn't hurt someone. This is a logical necessity."</p>
<p>With this logic we should get a group of top hackers together and get all are decisions early, no harm no foul ,right.</p>
<p>@2bad4u: If this is so-called "black-hat" cracking, then I am a criminal at large. This is NOT illegal or exploitative. I get VERY frustrated when people hurl terms that they don't understand . . .</p>
<p>EDIT:
It may be immoral in the eyes of some, and private colleges have every right to deny people admission for whatever non-discriminatory reason they choose, but you cannot compare it to a group of malicious security computer experts breaking in through a backdoor and publicizing the revealed data for all to see.</p>
<p>i know understand exactly what they did I do it all the time (im usually looking for something)but there's a difference in intent, is that not obvious, I wouldnt do it at an admissions site, why would I ,unless i was looking for something,what would I be looking for? my decision which i am not supposed to know till it is given to me, not taken by me.
My whole point is that its not like they stumbled on their decisions , they knew what they were looking for and they knew the school didnt want them to know.</p>
<p>of some, and private colleges have every right to deny people admission for whatever non-discriminatory reason they choose, but you cannot compare it to a group of malicious security computer experts breaking in through a backdoor and publicizing the revealed data for all to see.""</p>
<p>I was trying to refute the logic of victimless crimes, who is the victim when a group of hackers break in through a backdoor.</p>
<p>I understand exactly what they did. I do it all the time (to look for something)but there's a difference in intent, is that not obvious. I wouldnt do it at an admissions site, why would I ,unless i was looking for something,what would I be looking for? my decision which i am not supposed to know till it is given to me, not taken by me.
My whole point is that its not like they stumbled on their decisions , they knew what they were looking for and they knew the school didnt want them to know.</p>
<p>of some, and private colleges have every right to deny people admission for whatever non-discriminatory reason they choose, but you cannot compare it to a group of malicious security computer experts breaking in through a backdoor and publicizing the revealed data for all to see.""</p>
<p>I was trying to refute the logic of victimless crimes, who is the victim when a group of hackers break in through a backdoor. read the anisky qoute that i posted with the hope that someone wouldnt be able to put my comment out of context but obviously that didnt happen given your comment.</p>
<p>i don't think what they did is as horrible as everyone is making it out to be. i guess they do deserve to be rejected but it's not like they hacked into the system to <em>change</em> their acceptance or anything like that. they were just checking it. they didn't do any harm to other people's applications either. it's unethical but it's not THAT unethical.</p>
<p>Most schools have honor codes. Violate that code as you're knocking on the door and you're likely to have that door slammed in your face. If these are supposed to be some of the best and brightest, what did they think would happen if/when they were caught? </p>
<p>The internet generation needs a gut check when it comes to ethics. Is file sharing stealing? It's certainly unethical. Do they still do it? Yup! What the Harvard 119 did was also unethical. I know I wouldn't have dont it without checking with admissions first. Perhaps this will help avoid the next Enron...</p>
<p>At the risk of reviving a dead thread.</p>
<p>I am not making a statement as to whether what was done is ethical or unethical. Ultimately, ethics is about whether somebody out there is getting hurt by what you are doing, and whether anybody else was getting hurt by your seeing your own admission/rejection early is difficult to say. Obviously every school has the right to accept or reject whoever they want, that is not the issue. Whether what those applicants did is ethical or unethical is obviously a tough call, otherwise there wouldn't be any debate about the issue at all. There wouldn't be 70 posts about a clearcut topic that everybody agrees upon. </p>
<p>However, I would point out that one of the reasons that has been advanced for why it might be unethical seems spurious to me. It has been asserted that people who get advance knowledge of their admit/reject will have more time to figure out their future plans compared to those who sat and patiently waited for their letter. Honestly, I think this is a red herring. The reality of B-school admissions iis that all the top business-schools will make a phonecall and often times send email to many if not most of their admittees substantially before the official accept/reject notification date. This is a rather standard practice. B-school applicants to the top B-schools have therefore been conditioned to understand that if they have not somehow been contacted by the program to which they are applying by the official notification date, they probably didn't get in. </p>
<p>I remember one guy I know who applied both to Harvard Business School and to the MIT-Sloan LFM program (the dual-degree MBA/MS program run at MIT), who had a personal policy of never answering his cellphone if he didn't recognize the incoming phone number - but explicitly changed this policy for a month to answer any calls coming from the 617 area code (which is Cambridge, Mass), because he knew that such a call might be from HBS or LFM, and if it was, then obviously had gotten in (they wouldn't call him early to tell him he had been rejected). As it turns out, he ended up getting 2 phone calls from the 617 area code, because he had been admitted to both programs, and is now very happily ensconced in LFM. </p>
<p>The point is, that that calls into question whether knowing early by itself constitutes unfairness. After all, because of those phone calls, that guy got substantial early warning about where he had gotten in, and was therefore already making plans to move before other applicants knew what happened to them. Was he being unethical? Was he being unfair? I don't think so. </p>
<p>Now I know what some of you are going to say - that it was the B-schools themselves who chose to give advance warning to admittees, including that guy. But that's my point - that the simple act of knowing in advance does not by itself constitute an ethical violation. LFM and HBS didn't just contact that one guy early, I'm sure they had contacted early a bunch of other admittees as well. They clearly didn't see any problem with having some of their admittees knowing early what the decision was. </p>
<p>The point is that you cannot say that simply the act of knowing early is by itself an ethical violation. Maybe the act of knowing early when the B-school doesn't want you to know could be construed as unethical, because you could say that you have taken the power away from the B-schools to decide whether they should notify early or not. However, simply having early notification is not by itself an unethical violation, unless you want to accuse all of the B-school applicants around the world who had been provided early notification by their B-schools of behaving unethically.</p>
<p>What ever happened to the link in the first post of this thread? It's gone now! Anyone know the new URL?</p>
<p>sakky, I fail to see how your example relates to this situation. The school itself initiated contact at a time it deemed appropriate. The applicants in this situation acted in an irresponsible manner to find out their decision at a time that the school did not deem appropriate.</p>
<p>Let me use a situation that everyone can relate to:</p>
<p>Remember back when you were a 12 year-old kid waiting for your Christmas presents? Well most children by the time they are 12 know that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, thus they know that the gifts that they are going to be getting are in the house somewhere. Now most parents hide their gifts in a spot where their children can't find them, but a very determined child can look pretty much in every possible spot in the house and eventually find them. Once the kid finally finds the wrapped presents then he waits until no one is looking, and he opens one or two of them to see what he will be getting. Even if he wraps them back up then his parents will most likely find out that he had an early peek at his gifts, and they will be upset with him; in a lot of cases, they won't give him the gifts that he looked at. </p>
<p>This is the same situation here. The Harvard applicants found out where their decisions were located, and they looked at them with the hope that no one would find out. Well, people did find out, and they were rightly punished for their actions.</p>
<p>UC_Benz, you missed the point of my post. Read it again. {And people ask why I write such long posts - well, it's precisely to avoid being misunderstood, yet it happens anyway}.</p>
<p>What was asserted by somebody in this thread (can't remember who) was not what you are talking about, and not what I was talking about. </p>
<p>You are talking about whether it is ethical or unethical for an applicant to learn of a decision ahead of time in spite of the wishes of school. That is not what was asserted. What was asserted is the the simple act of knowing ahead of time is, all by itself, unethical, regardless of what manner and means it was known. It is that claim that I dispute. Again, I bring up the issue of the schools choosing to tell most admitted applicants ahead of time (in some cases, several weeks ahead of time). Hence, many applicants know ahead of the official notification date of what their decision was. Yet nobody is saying that that situation is unethical. Hence, the point is that simply knowing ahead of time is not by itself unethical. Lots of people, especially successful candidates, end up knowing ahead of time.</p>
<p>To extend your analogy, what if your parents decided to give the child the presents early? Is the child now being unethical by knowing what his presents are early? I don't think so. The point is that the simple act of knowing early does not by itself constitute an unethical act. We have to look at the method as to how he learned about the decision early. </p>
<p>Read my post again, and I think you will see what I am talking about.</p>
<p>please let's kill this thread:)</p>
<p>I never said that simply knowing early is unethical. In fact, if the school tells the person then it is not "early" at all. It was at a time the school deemed appropriate, so they had to have this time planned all along.</p>
<p>Yeah, but you trashed me for saying something that I never said. It's one thing to disagree with me. It's quite another to disagree with me about something I never said.</p>
<p>I didn't say you were wrong; I said your example didn't relate to this situation. And it didn't.</p>
<p>Of course I agree with you in your example that it isn't unethical for your friend to know if the school initiated the contact, but this wasn't the case in this situation so your example is moot. That's all, ok? Don't be so defensive! :D</p>
<p>How does my example not relate to the situation? Read my post again. You will see that all my examples have to do with people getting told in advance by the school. The example is perfectly applicable because it shows that merely having advance information is, by itself, not unethical. And that is the whole point - merely having the information is not unethical. </p>
<p>Since it looks like you still don't see what I am talking about, here is the post that caused my objection:</p>
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Another thing, because these students saw their letters early it gives them extra time to decide what to do if they weren't accepted - UNLIKE the other students who wait patiently for their letters.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>As you can see, this person is asserting that merely having the information about whether you are accepted or rejected early is, ALL BY ITSELF, unethical, because that information provides that person with extra time to decide what to do. That is what I object to, because the fact is, plenty of people get called by the B-school and told what their decision is, and nobody is accusing them of being unethical because they got told early. Hence, that shows that simply knowing ahead of time cannot by itself be construed as unethical. </p>
<p>UC_Benz, if nothing else, you must agree with me that the above posted quote is incorrect. And that's why I entered this thread. Read that quote, then read my post, and you will see everything in the proper context.</p>
<p>what the f----?</p>
<p>I have to agree that this is a gross overreaction on the part of the institutions. Students are obviously extremely curious and as previous posters have said, for those of us with computer experience this isn't a "hack" it's just stepping outside of the boundaries that everyone's nifty little internet browser creates. I bet half the people here posting have never even SEEN source code, or know what it looks like or how much it tells about a site. </p>
<p>The kids were curious. They didn't lie. Cheat. Steal. Nothing they did ultimately changes anything. Should they have accessed the information early? No. Should you flip someone off when they cut you off in traffic? No. Some things are morally wrong, but carry little of any justified retributivist policies. </p>
<p>If they looked at OTHER files it would be a hack. But since it was just a sneak peak at admissions, who cares? Tighten security and reward the students for being industrious and capable of following instructions. I hardly think ANY applicant who knew the seriousness of the universities response would have checked. This is Arthur Anderson Grandstanding, and nothing more. </p>
<p>Here's a hint to figure out if you're internet clueless: If you're still using internet explorer and don't know why firefox is better you're a "newb".</p>