So did you select both "Online service" radio buttons?

Oops, I didn't see this, but I backed up your joke as well a bit further down the thread.

I selected Online Service too since it was already backed up as a poll option.

True, but you also dont spend years educating yourself in order to work on a factory line. Even bad office work is a start to an employment history and could lead to better opportunities down the road. Factory jobs just lead to more of the same.*

*That said I can't even pretend I have any full grasp of how employment works in China.

I have a long, detailed reply to this -- hang on

Ah the Internet -- where the men are boys, the women are men, and the teenage girls are FBI agents.

It was a website in French when it was still up :)

Well both ideas are speculation on our part, but I think the kid not telling the news the whole story is still more likely than 14 people failed to take their responsibilities seriously because they are overworked. Would you vote to expel someone based on the kind of evidence you are imagining?

If you are right, I find it very sad that these individuals were given the power of expulsion and did not treat that power with respect.

Also I don't see how it is in the company's interest to have him expelled when they already had an NDA. In order to fault the company and the college, we have to presume too many facts. Now they are overworked, coerced, irresponsible, etc etc. Occam's Razor does not like this theory :)

From NicBenjamin's cbc link

Apparently the school told him not to do this and he persisted? Also they stand by the decision and the software company offered him a scholarship and part time job now that the new broke.

So what's really going on here? I know everyone wants to root for the underdog, but perhaps the kid is just not telling the whole truth.

Ideally a professor on a committee with expulsion power is tenured. (No idea if that is true here)

However, it sounds like you think it's more likely that 14 people were coerced than a 20 year old would omit part of his story. Have you found large scale coercion more common than lies of omission?

So....deceived rather than conspired? I find this also difficult to believe. The professors are (presumably) experts in computer science and had this kid's entire future in their hands. Do you think they would be easily duped?

I wouldn't blame the kid for curiosity either. But I wouldn't vote to kick a kid out of school without compelling evidence of intent *beyond* curiosity (in this case).

So I have a hard time imagining how they could skew evidence so well as to convince so many professors to take this severe an action. Again though, it's hard to imagine since we don't have the logs, nor do we have info on the original vulnerability. What we do have though, is 14 professors who felt there was sufficient evidence to expel him.

http://www.skytech.com/

Care to hazard another guess?

Not that I dispute your assertion of corporations, however the NDA was the corporate threat, getting him expelled would be a dangerous PR move. And none of it is unique to the USA.

Indeed this is the part I find the most telling that there is more to the story. Would all these professors really have conspired to avoid embarrassment for the college? Or, is there something these professors knew that isn't in TFA?

He found a flaw, waited two days, and then proceeded to use a general purpose tool. While this is most likely naivety on his part, it could also be something else we're not aware of.

But we don't have the logs, nor do we have info on the original vulnerability. If I were a professor given the info in TFA, I would not have expelled him. And that is what doesn't add up. If a professor had evidence that his intent was more than to just verify a fix, then the 14/15 vote begins to make much more sense.

That made him sign the NDA

I was wondering this as well. I would imagine the ISP would reverse course in a matter of nanoseconds if their users started seeing a page like

"Your ISP has blocked Google from providing you Gmail. They are demanding we pay for your use of the internet, something which you already pay for. Here's their contact info:...."

It always strikes me as funny too since Cable is the other way around. I'm pretty sure Cable providers pay television stations. And even if a station doesn't have enough clout there is a law (in the US) they can use called "must carry" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry

I'm surprised this analogy isn't used much.

Is it? Or is this article an attempt to paint and shame the prosecutors as privileged? I suspect it's the latter.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit and dropped the charges against him. They offer some articles to individuals for free, and now have opened more articles via the Alumni Access program. What they do isn't evil. Rather, they could do more, provide more access. So why are we sitting debating about what access the prosecutors had to JSTOR? It's irrelevant to the larger conversation.

The discussion we should be having:

1) Should all scientific studies be public domain?

2) If so, how should access be provided? Who pays to maintain upkeep?

3) Should all publicly funded science be made public? (probably and obvious yes here)

4) If so, how should access be provided? Who pays to maintain upkeep?

I'd like to think Scwartz's goal was bigger than these small-minded, egotistical prosecutors. Lets talk about how we can open up the data, not how to engage in a witch hunt. Prosecutorial overreach, to me, is a separate conversation.