This has been long time coming.
These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.<p>It is up to Universities like MIT to aggressively intervene in these cases and ensure that young people are free to (some extent) break systems and exploit system weaknesses in the interest of learning.<p>MIT did the opposite in the Aaron Shwartz case, their conduct was in large part responsible for Ortiz & Heyman getting Aaron over a barrel of 30 years in the pokey.
They miserably failed in their moral obligations in that case - and the time is long past for changes to this policy.
Headline: MIT faulted over its support for students<p>Caption under picture: Critics say MIT also should have intervened in the case of Aaron Swartz.<p>Swartz was never a student at MIT.
Old news. MIT administration has responded in a pretty reasonable manner.<p><a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html" rel="nofollow">http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html</a>
Really out of date.
<a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html" rel="nofollow">http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html</a>
So this story is from February 14, 2014, and contains a bit of "he said, MIT said"...there must be an update by now?<p>> <i>“Students are being threatened with legal action for doing exactly what we encourage them to do: explore and create innovative new technologies,” wrote Hal Abelson, a computer science professor; Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT; and Media Lab graduate student Nathan Matias.</i><p>The school says it's a misunderstanding:<p>> <i>MIT provost Martin A. Schmidt said Thursday evening that there had been a misunderstanding. MIT advised the students to get their own lawyer who would be solely focused on their best interest, he said.</i><p><i>“It was never our intent to say we can’t support you,” he said in an interview. “Now that they have that counsel, the Institute stands by its students and we are prepared to support them and their counsel in whatever way we can to help them in this defense.”</i>
There are any number of alternative headlines for this story that would not only be less misleading, but also more succinct.<p>It doesn't surprise me that the Boston Globe would want to stay on good terms with a major local power, but there are limits.<p>Consider instead: MIT Faulted for Lack of Support; Student Support Faulted at MIT; Students to MIT: Support Please!....