While I do not disagree, one point I would like to add regarding the notion of "breaking into a computer closet, etc.". Someone, a Harvard student, recently posted to HN a "love letter" to MIT. The letter went into detail about how liberal MIT is with its resources for students. And how that really has benefitted her studies. It seems MIT is somewhat unique, at least vis-a-vis other universities in the region, in their approach to making resources available to "almost anyone" (i.e. you do not need to be an MIT student) for academic purposes.
Is it possible that if he were to have tried this stunt at another institution he would not have so easily succeeded? Was he simply taking advantage of MIT's liberal policies with respect to computer resources? Or is MIT's "do whatever you need to do" environment irrelevant... as we ponder thoughts of "breaking and entering". Just a thought. Maybe it's irrelevant. What do you think?
MIT alum here. Lots of MIT resources are accessible to almost anyone. That doesn't mean they all are -- it's easy to get into our computer labs, but the network closets are actually off-limits to anyone other than network admins. Some things are more liberal, but that's not a free license to do whatever you want.
Nor does it mean it's acceptable to abuse MIT's trust. In particular, presumably as a result of this case, JSTOR now requires strong authentication from the individual MIT account holder, instead of permitting access from MIT's IP address space as they used to.
Finally, yes, MIT does have an "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" culture. But that very clearly only applies to legitimate MIT affiliates. I know of at least one other legal case (of perhaps equivalent importance) where MIT's lawyers said, if this guy were an MIT student or staff member, we'd go to bat for him, but since he's not, take the content down.
Thanks for this. I was just curious. "Abusing trust" is exactly the type of thought I had when I first read about this case. It sounded to me like MIT is very generous with letting people use the computer labs and he really took these privileges a little too far. But being far from MIT I can only form a picture from what I read. Thanks for the color.
Is it possible that if he were to have tried this stunt at another institution he would not have so easily succeeded? Was he simply taking advantage of MIT's liberal policies with respect to computer resources? Or is MIT's "do whatever you need to do" environment irrelevant... as we ponder thoughts of "breaking and entering". Just a thought. Maybe it's irrelevant. What do you think?