<p>As the OP, it's interesting to come back after being away for a few days (business) to see in what unexpected directions the discussion has gone.</p>
<p>Let me recap what I observe since posting the original comment:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>General agreement among MIT students that the administration makes mistakes, and some encouraging comments that they often learn from those mistakes (let's hope so, my child is in their hands, so to speak).</p></li>
<li><p>No disagreement that the 3 students exploring the faculty lounge should not have been charged with felonies. The charges have been dropped, and the case is closed.</p></li>
<li><p>People presuming that Star Simpson knowingly caused the incident at Logan airport, rather than discussion of whether the administration erred when it released a statement condemning her actions before even knowing the facts or speaking with her. The press reported that she had a "fake bomb strapped to her chest" when in fact she had a circuit board with LEDs, wires and a battery on it. I don't know her, but I do think you have to give her the benefit of the doubt in a situation like this. Poor judgment? Perhaps, but last time I checked that wasn't a crime. My experience is that very smart people (such as Star) often overestimate the intelligence of average people. Here's my prediction--she will not be convicted of "possessing a hoax device" because the prosecutor can't possibly prove that she intended to frighten people with her circuit board--she didn't. Only in Boston.</p></li>
<li><p>Opinions that the heavy-handed actions of the RIAA are justified since they're aimed at stopping ILLEGAL (caps for emphasis) downloading. My issue is not with stopping illegal activity, but the end does not always justify the means. Can police conduct illegal searches, as long as the criminal is convicted in the end? Of course not. Is torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees OK as long as it provides "useful" information? I don't think so. Should MIT's administration simply go along with the RIAA's tactic of bullying college students into paying the settlement fee (few thousand dollars) when the legal system otherwise would not allow it? I think not. I believe that a more principled administration might be willing to protect its students and not facilitate their mistreatment.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Three examples of the MIT administration letting their students down in 2007. Let's hope they learn from their missteps and do better in 2008!</p>
<p>^^4. I can't see where MIT should be in the business of protecting the privacy of theft. Owners of intellectual property have every right to sue or to threaten to sue infringers in order to stop the infringement and force a settlement for damages. It's the way IP law works -- not just for the recording industry but for everyone.</p>
<p>The fact that young people in general and computer geeks in particular are of the opinion that anything obtained on-line should be free for the taking does make it so as a point of law. Nor does it mean that the owners of what was illegally taken should refrain from seeking compensation for their loss. That's not "bullying." That's just the way IP thieves normally get dealt with. </p>
<p>Being smart and tech-savvy enough to go to MIT does not exempt someone from the need to obey the law. MIT is not letting its students down. It's trying to keep them out of trouble and make them take responsibility for their actions.</p>
<p>you are WAY overboard on point 4. MIT, as all Universities, OWN their networks - the students do NOT. If MIT allows/enables ILLEGAL activity to take place on its own networks, just like any corporation they are subject to possible prosecution. Whether or not that is fair or right is not the issue...it is the law in most states (dunno about Mass). MIT and other Unis can spend big money in court, or just stop the illegalities from happening to save their own $$ which they can spend on services for other, law-abiding students. This is a no-brainer to me.</p>
<p>Perhaps an ethics class should be an admission requirement?</p>
<p>The RIAA lawsuits were a joke. They had no definitive proof of anything. That's why the letters were addressed to "John/Jane Doe" and didn't name a particular defendant. They didn't even know who they were suing. They missed an opportunity to capitalize on something and now they're suing their own customers because iTunes is cutting into their profits. RIAA sales are down not because of piracy, but because they produce mostly crap music. If you buy a CD, you'll find that most of the music is crap filler except for one or two possibly mediocre tracks. That's 95% of the crap they put out.</p>
<p>How can sales possibly go up when they're promoting talentless hacks like Britney Spears? She's done. She's last decade, get over it. If an artist has talent, the fan base will create itself. Advertising and promotion aren't necessary. Take a look at how many times GM advertises on TV vs. Maybach.</p>
<p>While futurenyustudent's points about the general mediocrity of music today may be true, they are irrelevant. However, his point about the very precarious legality of the RIAA's actions is absolutely pertinent.</p>
<p>That, barrons, is why universities should be fighting the RIAA tooth and nail. The RIAA uses predatory and abusive legal and investigative practices, files lawsuits with little regard to the facts of the case (including filing lawsuits against people known to have not shared files, and filing lawsuits against people they admitted were not infringing, in order to extract judgments from others), sends notices of copyright infringement to thousands of users in order to attempt, by intimidation, to deprive them of their right to have their case heard in a court of law and avoid legal fees, seeks disproportionate damages ($750 per song, much higher than actual damages - by 1071% - and far out of the range of most punitive damages for such actions), is alleged to be colluding in violation of copyright and other laws and overstepping its intellectual property rights, and abuses the legal system via the highly questionable mechanism of repeatedly filing John/Jane Doe lawsuits for the sole purposes of obtaining subpoenas, although at least one judge has ruled that such lawsuits are fundamentally without merit (unfortunately most other judges have gone along with them). They also sue children as young as 12. I could go on.</p>
<p>See why people have problems with universities not protecting their students now? I don't support illegal downloading or copyright infringement, but the RIAA is being abusive and predatory, and it needs to by stood up to be institutions with the power to do so.</p>
<p>On a happy note, when such tactics were tried in Canada, they were immediately rebuffed as legally without merit, based on the same utter lack of evidence which characterizes RIAA actions in America. Let's all hope that American judges show that kind of backbone; the RIAA needs to step back and stop its predatory practices.</p>
<p>Oh, it also includes suing dead people and people who don't even own computers, let alone an internet connection.</p>
<p>Just imagine how fast RIAA would back down if all the universities they intimidated into serving notices filed a class action lawsuit, led by Harvard. Not only would this suit scare the **** out of the RIAA into retreating into their hole where they belong, but it would be great clinical experience for those law students at the universities involved.</p>
<p>And drag the suit in federal court for decades on end. Make it cost 100 to get their 4.</p>
<p>Ummm . . . futurenyu, if you want to wind up at Harvard Law School you had better start paying closer attention to legal arguments and legal strategies.</p>
<p>The RIAA would be perfectly happy to have the universities litigate as a class against it. That would be a relatively cheap and efficient way to get a whole bunch of issues resolved, and the RIAA would be rather more likely than not to win. And even if it lost, that would pretty much guarantee it the sort of legislative relief it has been seeking, too.</p>
<p>If I were a university general counsel, however, I would not be particularly interested in spending my budget on litigating with the RIAA. Sure, I want to protect my students, but I don't particularly care about protecting a couple dozen who are using incredible bandwidth to do wholesale file sharing of copyrighted material. (And, remember, the university and its faculty are the holders of many, many valuable copyrights.) I would be happy to get out of the way and let the students and the RIAA duke it out without me, and get assurances from the RIAA that they won't be suing the university.</p>
<p>As for the RIAA -- sure, it's a dumb, hostile strategy, but that's their problem. No one is forced to accept the settlement offered. I have followed this somewhat for years, and have never seen any indication that, in the cases where the RIAA pursues a ridiculous defendant (the dead person, the baby, the 80-year-old) it hasn't backed off immediately upon being presented with the facts. And if anyone wants to pay to litigate this on principle -- well, that would be fine with the RIAA. The problem is, while there are some decent legal theories which the file sharers could advance, very few if any people are willing to bet hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees and potential fines on those theories winning. The file-sharing services did, and they lost everything. The RIAA would love to spend some money litigating this -- the investment makes all kind of sense for it. An individual student? If you get caught, take the settlement and stop stealing so much.</p>
<p>why should a college spend thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to protect a few students who are file sharing, not to metion sucking up huge network bandwidth? With all of the other student needs out there, including finaid, couldn't the funds be put to much better use than enriching lawyers?</p>
<p>I was always of the belief that Harvard Law School (and any other law school for that matter) is the place where THEY TRAIN you to think like a lawyer, not a place where people who already think like lawyers go and learn to think even more like lawyers.</p>
<p>Magic phrase: "Move to Dismiss, your honor"</p>
<p>Then once the judge determines that RIAA's claim is baseless and it has acted in bad faith with all its John/Jane Doe lawsuits, countersue them for defamation.</p>
<p>Yay, I would be happy to talk to you in PMs about some of these issues. There are bits that I won't post on a public forum.</p>
<p>You should be aware, though, that this is not a new thing. It predates, say, me, by several years. MIT students have worried for years about the administration interfering with student culture and decreasing the student freedoms that make it such a unique place. If you decide to PM me, I can discuss some of the history of this issue.</p>
<p>JHS: Valid point about the motivations of universities.</p>
<p>That said, it is indeed undeniable that the practices of the RIAA are legally tenuous. As you have suggested, I wish somebody would fight the RIAA in one of those cases - and I suspect that eventually someone will, supported by the EFF or another group. That will be a good day for the legal system.</p>
<p>you may be completely correct about the "tenuous" nature of the RIAA's position, or you could be incorrect. But, the question on the table is why should MIT (or other college) spend its own money to test the RIAA in court, when they have no real vested interest.....</p>
<p>My son always travels with a backpack/carry-on full of electronics. Has for years. Last time he traveled overseas (this Christmas) he got stopped and had to take apart everything. Security asked him "why do you carry so many electronics?" He said: "I'm a student at MIT". I can imagine the look on their faces, as in "so?" People just don't get it.</p>
<p>You know, I can envision a perfectly innocent rationale for Star Simpson's airport incident. I hope she has a good lawyer.
Notice the article said "Logan employee", as in one person, singular. One person was "spooked" by "Wire, 9V Battery, LEDs". Clearly, in an airport full of people, especially an airport as alert as Logan, she was not causing alarm until the alarm was raised by one Logan employee -- evidently of the genre: 'when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail'.
Questions:
How long had she been in the airport before the state troopers with MP5 submachine guns arrested her? Many people had to have seen her. Are there eyewitnesses to her behavior? Were other airport customers concerned? Did anyone else alert security?</p>
<p>The girl had blinking lights in the shape of a star, for crying out loud. And her name is Star. Sounds like an 'art piece' to me. She says she was there to meet her boyfriend, and sure enough, the bf was scheduled to arrive on a flight. She had worn the 'device' for days. Did not cause mass hysteria in Boston/Cambridge evidently. Only one employee at the airport chose to call in the troops with machine guns to deal with a young girl with blinking lights in the shape of a star.</p>
<p>If the Department of Homeland Security wants to restrict electronic devices of any type in airports, they need to specify it clearly in writing, post it in airports and disseminate the information through airlines, the same way they do with restrictions on liquids. Otherwise, I say, they don't have a case. Nowhere is it written that you can't bring electronic devices to airports.</p>
<p>My grandmother said something very special about the STAR case. She said that the last time she went to Florida to visit her sister she wore a blinking Christmas sweater. The reindeer nose blinked and so did Santa's hat on the sweater. She was detained for an hour. My grandmother said Star's outfit was the MIT version of that and nobody understood that. And Star was picking her boyfriend up not flying the way grandmother was! Just thought that was an interesting point of view!!!</p>
<p>PS my grandmother was released and permitted to travel when it was determined that her blinking electronic Christmas sweater was not a danger to anyone other than to those in the fashion world. By the way an elderly woman with a walker (and 2 blinking tennis balls attached to the bottom of the walker and her blinking Elf pin) was also detained and released at the same time!</p>