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Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

haufler.org

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Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#161

Post by ggchappell »

shaufler wrote: post #38
ggchappell wrote: post #13

An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your arguments reek of ignorance. > This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech. No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sens…

This is a semantic misunderstanding. When describing freedom of speech in the context of Yale, I meant it in a moral sense rather than a legal sense. Dean Mary Miller also used the term freedom of speech in her open letter to Yale, so I decided to use the same term. You're right though; saying 'academic freedom' would have been more clear.

Sounds good. And sorry for the snarky tone in my original comment. I try to avoid such things, but, alas, the HN edit period is over, and I am now chained to that comment forever.

P.S. I think the reply to your comment by lvs has some good thoughts.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#162

Post by ggchappell »

davmar wrote: post #121
ggchappell wrote: post #13

An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your arguments reek of ignorance. > This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech. No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sens…

possible context: from ggchappell's webpage regarding free speech while at a university: https://www.cs.uaf.edu/~chappell/misc/freesp.html i'm a bit busy atm so i haven't had a chance to review the short post but it could provide some insight into his opinion.

Yeeks, I've been found. ;-)

For the record, I found that memo to be very significant and also quite reassuring. However, it exhibits the same kind of terminological muddled-ness that I was talking about in my earlier comment.

Or maybe it does. Yale is a private organization. The University of Alaska (whose president wrote the memo you linked to) is an avatar of sorts of the government of the state of Alaska. In what sense is such an institution restrained by constitutional limitations on government? This seems to be a surprisingly poorly settled question in U.S. law.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#163

Post by ggchappell »

mbrutsch wrote: post #111
ggchappell wrote: post #13

An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your arguments reek of ignorance. > This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech. No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sens…

Why do you grant "academic freedom" some sort of special status, while decrying freedom of speech? Yes, Americans tend to confuse the legal principle with the ethical one, but both are equally valid.

Freedom of speech is certainly a valid thing. But as a legal principle, it refers to restrictions on government, and Yale is a private institution. If Mr. Haufler wants his effort to succeed, then I think he is better off using the proper terminology.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#164

Post by pistle »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #123
pistle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance, egotism, entitlement, etc. "Hey reddit, watch me fight the (wo)man!!" Maybe you could have inquired about or offered to help Yale's tool/product? Nah, I'll just jack it and cry foul because my little mash-up thing gets turned off. It sure sounds like there is nearly a contractual obligation by Yale to provide data a certain way. Whatever agreement made this possible could get undermined. Then NO data will…

Just a little tip for posting on HN: try not to use any emotion in your arguments unless you are looking for downvotes.

Thanks, but I'm not motivated either way by popularity. What all these kids at Yale are doing is misguided and a waste of their youth and skills. They could have stepped up to try to make a name for themselves by understanding more than just the technical bits. They could have spent just a little time to understand their non-technical landscape prior to showing off technically and crying to reddit Kony 2012-style.

They could have created a business around it. They could have attained departmental, IT, and/or administrative backing... along with all the improvements to access, support, and coverage that can bring.

What looks better? We got shut down right out of the gate for having no idea how to go about securing our venture or... We brought our technical acumen to the right eyes and ears and sold ourselves to the king-makers in our little world.

This is a dress-rehearsal for investors. What these kids proved was they want to be more Pirate Bay than Facebook. More pejorative hacker than Hacker News hacker.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#165

Post by csense »

lvs wrote: post #150
shaufler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a semantic misunderstanding. When describing freedom of speech in the context of Yale, I meant it in a moral sense rather than a legal sense. Dean Mary Miller also used the term freedom of speech in her open letter to Yale, so I decided to use the same term. You're right though; saying 'academic freedom' would have been more clear.

I agree with this revision. It's important to frame your fight in terms of intellectual freedom within the academy, which is perhaps a conceptual framework your faculty can comprehend. Yale does not have any de facto obligation with regard to your free speech, legally or contractually speaking. Unfortunately, our society generally permits speech to be legal cause for termination/dismissal in private institutions (e.g…

> legal cause for termination/dismissal in private institutions

In the US, under at-will employment, an employee "can be dismissed by an employer...without having to establish 'just cause' for termination..." [1]

If you'd prefer a different standard because this rule sounds harsh against employees, think for a moment from a company's standpoint: If you know the law won't make it easy for you fire someone, you'll be really picky about who you hire, how you hire them, and how many people you hire.

I think at-will employment helps everyone by making the job market more liquid and reducing the size of the class of "unemployable" people.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#166

Post by csense »

thisiswrong wrote: post #63
lionhearted wrote: post #12

When I first left America, I disliked and felt disillusioned with the country. I've now spent more of my adult life outside the States than in the U.S., and I've also come to the opinion that the U.S. is one of the most amazing places in the world. Sometimes it's hard to point to exactly why America is so amazing. And the answer, maybe, is on display here. An undergraduate student at an elite university just innovati…

> I've now spent more of my adult life outside the States than in the U.S., and I've also come to the opinion that the U.S. is one of the most amazing places in the world. Yes. The American backed/sponsored slaughter of innocent men, women, and children across the Middle East and Africa in the name of profit, power, and greed doesn't seem to cross your mind. Also, it's clear that as an American you have free speech,…

> The American backed/sponsored slaughter of innocent men, women, and children

I'm pretty sure that the innocent men, women and children who have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not systematically slaughtered, and in fact I do believe that the American military made every reasonable effort to minimize civilian casualties.

> across the Middle East and Africa

Can you go into more detail what, exactly, you mean by that? Two countries -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- is hardly "across the Middle East," and neither of them is in Africa.

> in the name of profit, power, and greed

I thought our activities in the Middle East were in the name of preventing future terrorist attacks.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#167

Post by csense »

pmorici wrote: post #9
smtddr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data will stop being presented in a form that's easily parsed. Instead, it'll be in PDFs rather than within text+HTML that this guy's extension can move around. (And the counter to this is a server somewhere that the extension can send the PDF to, that runs pdftotext on linux... so he should prepare for that ...or just prepare to be expelled).

With the rise of javascript in the browser to a first world programming language it's hard to imagine anything they could do that would put the information out of reach.

There's an early xkcd with an answer for that: http://xkcd.com/129/

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#168

Post by daeken »

Shish2k wrote: post #128
username223 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about highly upvoted/downvoted comments that are then edited to reverse or change the sentiment. This is why it pays to quote context in Internet discussions.

> I am a monkey As a side note, it would be really useful if there was some way of quoting context that didn't trivially lend itself to forging context... (though admittedly that's a much smaller problem).

Simple solution: store the comment revisions, and when you go to a reply, allow the user to see the revision that was active when the reply was posted.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#169

Post by dnautics »

the_af wrote: post #66
lionhearted wrote: post #12

When I first left America, I disliked and felt disillusioned with the country. I've now spent more of my adult life outside the States than in the U.S., and I've also come to the opinion that the U.S. is one of the most amazing places in the world. Sometimes it's hard to point to exactly why America is so amazing. And the answer, maybe, is on display here. An undergraduate student at an elite university just innovati…

Without diminishing what you say, it happens in other democratic countries as well. In many Latin American universities (and even lower education) the students are a force to be reckoned with. For example, in recent years a student coalition demonstrated against the education policies of former president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, and it was a major crisis. Similar demonstrations can happen against, for example, the…

Not to say that group action is bad, part of the point of the top comment is that this is an individual action, and it would be relatively easy to bring the hammer of authority down on this one person, which is a distinguishing factor here. Moreover, (and possibly easier because it's a single indvidual) the ethical rationale are listed in a declaratory form, which is not always the case in mass student actions.

Re: Yale censored a student's course catalog site. I made an unblockable replacement

#170

Post by dnautics »

eropple wrote: post #158
jcc80 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Sean Haufler's "advantages of birth". If you are familiar with him and his family, and feel it would be appropriate to this discussion, then have at it I guess.

He got into Yale and you're wondering what advantages he has? Let's set aside for a second the high-end schools' tendency towards legacy admissions, which clearly isn't going to be biased towards the children of the upper class who are certainly not predominantly white and loaded (that smell is not the dog, folks, it's sarcasm). Have you seen the demographics of Yale[1]? Even just racial demographics put WTFs to this…

Nobody issues this diatribe about Sonia Sotomayor, and she went to Yale. I would welcome it if you started doing this.
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