Slashdot Mirror
Intellectual Property and a Censored Slash Site?
The following is written by former-Slashsite admin, flikx:
Early last fall, I personally created a Slash site called SOS under student government for my University. I did everything myself with no outside help of any sort, and entirely volunteer. I have never been paid for my efforts in any way, and never expected monetary compensation. I did not actually work for the University, but was a student in Mechanical Engineering. I created said site with the ultimate goal of providing an open discussion forum and weblog for all students of the University.
During the course of operation of the site, I fielded numerous complaints about abuse to the site, and took them in a professional manner, though steadfastly refused to censor any content on the site. Remember that many in Utah are very conservative and dislike free speech on some levels...being fairly conservative myself, I never thougtht I'd run afoul of people. The problem is that I continuously ran afoul of politics as people threatened me repeatedly due to my failure to censor the site. The abuse was minimal, especially by Slashdot standards.
Six weeks ago, the administration censored the entire site due to the threat of legal action due to inapropriate content. The site was down for just over a week, and I was forced to implement strict posting guidelines and adopt a censorship policy for the site.
A new administration recently took over, and first on the list was to get rid of me, and the site. There's much more involved here in politics, plus scr1pt k1dd13 threats spoofed from my email and everything, but the bottom line is that the site was censored for good. The server was physically removed by the police, and the disks wiped after 'evidence' was removed. All known backups were destroyed, and they even obtained a protective order from me and banned me from the University property. I'm also suspended indefinately, and face immediate expulsion from the University. (BTW - I'm almost done with my Mechanical Engineering degree .. so this is not light by any means. If expelled, I'm forced to start over as a freshmen if I ever get into another school.)
So here's some of the problems with which I turn to the Slashdot crowd for a solution:
The administration threatened me, and had the legal team tell me that everything on the site is intellectual property of the University of Utah. Everything. That includes all stories, all comments, user accounts, even the graphic design I did. I have off-site backups of the site, and could easily redeploy the site elsewhere provided the time and hosting. I've already put 2000+ unpaid volunteer hours into the University, and they take away my work. It should be my right to operate an open discussion forum, but it seems that it's not.
What does the Slashdot crowd think about this issue? Should [or does] everything belong to my University? The only involvement the university had was hosting the site and buying the server, that's it. Obviously, the site could be moved elsewhere, and I still have a team together that could operate the site independant to the University. But as I am already being expelled and even facing criminal charges for 'computer crimes', this is far beyond your average Ask Slashdot."
Cliff: If you are interested in obtaining some context for this story, you can dig around the cached pages from SOS on Google.
Secondly, take a look at the U of U Student Code. The Students Bill of Rights, section F. It reads:
F. Freedom of Expression. Students have a right to examine and communicate ideas by any lawful means. Students may not be subject to discipline because of their constitutionally protected exercise of freedom of association, assembly, expression and the press.
It would seem to me you were within those rights. Get a lawyer.
Section D of the Students Bill of Rights talks about due process.
D. Due Process. Students have a right to due process in any disciplinary matter involving the possibility of substantial sanctions. This includes a right to be heard, a right to decision and review by impartial persons or bodies, and a right to adequate notice.
Remember, even if you're expelled, that the people who are reviewing your sanctions are people who, given the nature of your site, were not neccessarily impartial. Get a lawyer.
Look at Section IIA, the Student Standards of Behavior. Notice that what you did is not prohibited by these standards. Get a lawyer.
And in conclusion, STOP ASKING SLASHDOT AND GET A LAWYER!
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Of course he couldn't set up anything simliar to SOS. The school has claimed copyright on his work, which means he has no rights to use it unless they are explicity given (unlikly). If he set up anything similar to what he already did, there is a good chance the school will slap him with a copyright infringement charge in addition to whatever else they are apparently doing. I'm surprised he can't get transfer credit anywhere though, certainly there are schools the country that are more liberal and will take his transfer credits instead of making him start over from square one.
If the school had simply said that they wouldn't host his site anymore and make him take it somewhere else, I'd agree with you 100%, but since they took all of his ideas and content and placed them under copyright, then I have to disagree with you. For that matter, what's to prevent ANY isp you host with from taking over your material? I mean the reason the school took it was because they owned the servers (although his tuition paid for those servers), but your ISP owns it's own servers as well. The same logic would seem to apply. I don't know many ISP TOSes that explicity protect your content from this sort of thing (0 actually).
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
SOS is based in Utah, and we have different legal and cultural norms here. The first amendment (ratified by the same idiots who brought us the secon amendment) may prevail in the Federal courts, but that doesn't mean we enforce it to the same extent in the state courts.
And even if we did, it'd be irrelevant here. The first amendment exists to protect political speech, but SOS wasn't at all about political speech. It was about student life on campus, hardly the sort of important cultural discussion governments have historically suppressed and without which American democracy cannot exist. What's more, the "speech" in question was mere anonymous insults: the lowest form of speech you can get (excluding pornography and flag burning, which aren't even speech).
When the Founding Fathers broke away from England and enacted the bill of rights, they didn't intend for it to apply to this sort of situation. Heck, judging from their own passage of the "Alien and Sedition Act", they didn't even intend to protect actual political speech within their own time. And yet you come whining to slashdot to pretend that your own personal website, hosted with the bandwidth of a private university, is somehow more important?
Dan, you need to learn to distinguish between personal discomfort and political outrage. The university is well within its rights (and upholding its duty to instill good moral character within its students) when they treat your site this way. And since you could get your site hosted for $30/mo at any number of non-Utah hosting companies, I have no sympathy for you.
This is not about speech. This is not about freedom. This is just a student bitching about the "fascist administration". Nothing to see here; please move along.
Geez. Where have you been for the last, oh, 10-15 years? Free speech hasn't existed on college campuses since the onset of the political correctness movement. I've a lot of people tell me about:
A lot of college campuses are, IMHO, a scary place nowadays. I'm extremely glad to be out of school.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Well, let's take a look at some of the google cached headlines, shall we?:
"Should the "U" limit its administrative terms?
(I imagine some deans were more than a little irritated by this)
Jason V. Morgan writes "According to The Utah Daily Chronicle, several deans are irked by the U's 10-year rule, an informal limit on the length an administrator can hold an appointment. Apparently, Machen's own career has followed this philosophy.
My own opinion is somewhat similar to The Chrony's: while promoting administrative turnover has its benefits, it is unwise to blindly follow an unofficial rule such as this. It contributes to the "us vs. them" mentality shared by the faculty and administration when the administration arbitrarily refuses to reappoint a dean that may be doing an effective job.
"Utah could be hurting its economoc potential"
(Mormons are notoriously ill-humored about even innocuous subjects
Oxymoronic writes "On Monday, the Los Angeles Times published this article. Apparently, many former "dot com" programmers, as well as many movie technichians, have entered into the pornography industry or at least spent some time looking into it. Unlike other industries that have tried to make it on the Internet, pornography has turned out to be very profitable. Utah's very conservative stance, embodied in the appointment of a "Porn Czar," could limit the potential for Utahns to profit from this lucrative, stable industry."
"U" School of Medicine Accused of Discrimination
(The University can't be happy about this one either)
The Utah Daily Chronicle recently ran this article reporting that an audit of the School of Computing admissions process is being pushed by Rep. Carl Saunders, R-Ogden. He has cited cases where students have been denied admission by the University of Utah School of Medicine, but have been accepted into other top-notch universities.
"Is the U insensitive to the Native American Heritage?"
(Another criticism that probably hits a little too close to home)
Today's The Chronicle View contends that the University of Utah still has some steps in order to stop degrading the Native American Heritage. While the University of Utah does much to recognize and highlight Native Americans, there are apparantly many who feel that the University of Utah's efforts are not enough. What do University of Utah students think? Log in and click on Read More... to add your thoughts to this issue.
"What do U of U students think of the war on drugs?"
(Another topic likely to deeply offend and confuse the dominant religion of the region)
Jason V. Morgan writes "A recent slashdot.org article highlighted a New York Times article (free registration required) which says that Amtrack shares information about its passengers with the DEA. This seems to be an unnecessary violation of privacy; one that weakens our fourth amendment rights. Do University of Utah students think that the war on drugs is worth these kinds of compromises and its incredible cost?"
Given the subjet matter at hand, and my own personal experience with the authoritarian nature of Mormon society (my mother and sister are Mormons, so I've seen this first hand on many occasions), it is very possible that we do in fact have the entire story and the extreme (over)reaction of the university is in fact all it has been described as. Other universities, including my own alma matar of the University of Illinois, have frequently reacted in very heavy handed fashion which, while remaining technically within the rather wide bounds granted to them by law, were nevertheless indefensible on an ethical level.
As an aside (not related to your post, but to others I have read here), the arguments that the poster should shut up and stop bitching because he has no constitutional rights on private property are particularly disturbing, and the main reason I ultimately rejected the Libertarian stance on social issues. A nation in which one's rights end at the edge of the public sidewalk, in a country as privatized is this, is not a very free nation at all. How much of your life do you spend on private property vs. public property, and how many rights do you assume you have that, according to such an argument, you in fact do not? I type this message right now, sitting on private property. I excersize my freedom of speech on my lunch hour, yet these people would argue that firing my sorry ass would be just fine (if I were to offend my employer), simply because although it is my time, it is my employer's network to which my laptop is connected and across which the bytestream passes.
If this is the kind of world they wish to advocate, then I want nothing of it. And, I suspect, our founding fathers would feel similarly.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Find like-minded Alumni. Organize them. Then have them complain to both the Alumni Association and the University itself. And have them threaten to cut off all future donations.
It's the advice of the late Robert A. Heinlein...:
It's dirty pool, but VERY effective. . . .
I once ran a similar site at RumorsDaily.com (it's since been disbanded due to my graduation). It started as a sort of underground news source, mainly focusing on Student Government and later on expanded to all sorts of student opinion and online discussion at Tufts University.
I was personally threatened with lawsuits from students twice, and was personally visited by the Secret Service once (someone threatened Al Gore's life). The school was very unhappy about the whole concept of open student opinion and once or twice made veiled criticisms. The school's Daily paper made some low level threats at a lawsuit as well.
Basically, what I'm saying is that it's a very treacherous ground you tread upon when you start giving people in real world community the ability to attack each other anonymously in an online community. I eventually set up a list of posting guidelines which is very loosely enforced... my rule eventually became, if the person is not a public figure, don't talk about them. If they are a public figure, you can talk about whatever you like, just don't threaten or impersonate them. (I always felt dirty the few times that I removed posts, but I just didn't want to deal with the hassle of a lawsuit that I assumed I would lose).
I'm not really sure why I chimed in, but I wanted to support anyone else who's tried to run this sort of site. You get a lot of flak and you spend a lot of time to make something that people enjoy using, and then you get beaten upon, criticized and eventually shut down, all because people fail to get along. It's really a shame. My site grew to about 1000 hits a day before I removed it from the public discourse, I know what it's like.
I however, early on made the decision to get my site OFF the University's equipment and onto my own server offsite. This way the school had no grounds for officially shutting down the site, or making off with the server. They had no control over a site operating off school grounds, Acceptable Use Policy or no.
So I guess that's my ultimate suggestion, if you're going to do something like this
Good luck in the future to anyone who tries this... I personally found it very rewarding, but it took a lot of suffering.
--
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RumorsDaily
First thing: get a lawyer if you can. Most Universities (esp those with a law program) have some kind of legal aid for students. There is a certain amount of irony in using University resources against them. You might even find a law prof that is sympathetic and would enjoy sticking it to the University. Your student society would probably provide a laywer if you were a volunteer for them while doing this stuff.
I don't see any reasonable way that the University can claim to own your content. Even University employees have pretty liberal contracts about ownership of the results of "Outside activities". If you're just a student, there should be even less of a connection.
You should be able to find somebody inside the school that will be on your side. If there's one thing that academics hate, it's being told what to think. You'll find someone sympathetic to champion your cause somewhere.
Start with the administration. Your student society should have a good idea of who would be sympathetic. If there's a Dean of Students or something, try that person.
Talk to your school's Faculty association (or union, whatever). Usually, these groups are quite good at realizing "If it's a student now, it could be us next." and might be willing to say a few words on your behalf.
Student newspapers usually tend to swing to the left and will probably adopt a favourable editorial stance if you sound like a reasonable student who just got smoked by the admin.
Keep up the good fight. University administrators, especially those who like to beat up on "academic freedom" (two words you should say every chance you get) tend to learn quickly how much power they actually have, which isn't much. It's too bad you're the one on the receiving end, though.
Greg
"I'm also suspended indefinately, and face immediate expulsion from the University."
I'm confused by the fact that you seem to be putting ownership of the site and your possible expulsion in the same bag. To me, the two issues are very different. Graduating is way more important. And as long as they've got that paper over you, they are God. Don't ever think the law comes into play. My advice is to suck it up, write an apology, secretly get what legal & PR advice you can afford, and do whatever it takes to get your degree.
Once you're gone, you can worry about starting up the site again, and who owns it, and whatnot. Once you're out of the state's jurisdiction, have a lawyer, and anonymous hosting in, say, Sealand, you can be as big a pain in the ass to them as you want. Right now you're a bug they can crush. The only chance you've got is to apologize and make them look bad in the public eye for expelling an innocent student.
You need that degree, man. You don't want to start over, trust me.
P.S. some more detail on the actual charges, any acceptable use policies you may or may not have violated, etc., would be useful to us readers.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
For those of you who are wondering what the administration is all upset about, I give you what I believe to be my first clue about that.
Follow their Network Connection Acceptable Use Policy to their Information Resources Policy to their Student Rights Section and read this:
E. Freedom from Discrimination and Sexual Harassment. Students have a right to be free from illegal discrimination and sexual harassment. University policy prohibits discrimination, harassment or prejudicial treatment of a student because of his/her race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, or status as an individual with a disability, disabled veteran, or veteran of the Vietnam era.
If I were a university administrator, taking down this site would be like shooting fish in a barrel. They don't have to be troubled by the fact that the administrator didn't write the offending posts, that's just an administrative detail to them.
The question is whether they're living up to part D of the student rights in expelling him:
D. Due Process. Students have a right to due process in any disciplinary matter involving the possibility of substantial sanctions. This includes a right to be heard, a right to decision and review by impartial persons or bodies, and a right to adequate notice.
But since we haven't been provided any of the details as to the charges he's facing, we can't really speak to that.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
at the very least you'll get some free legal advice, at the best maybe free representation.
1) Did he say that he created it for the University? This point is a bit of a vague one, but here's my argument. Note the following from flikx's original writeup sent to ask slashdot:
Early last fall, I personally created a Slash site called SOS under student government for my University.
It seems pretty clear that the specific organization that flikx was working for was the Student Government of the University. Does that then entail that he was working for the University itself, or moreover, that the University can claim IP rights for the work he produced? I think that there is a definite line between student government and University Administration in many regards. Student government is in a gray area between the individual student and the university administration, and I certainly believe that this question is not as clear cut as you'd make it seem. Legally, there may not be a distinction, but that point, in and of itself is troubling, to some extent.
2). The analogy between flikx and some MS Web-jockey falls apart in some very problematic ways. First there is clear compensation given to the MS designer. Second, there is a clearly understood agreement (I bet good money that it's even a written one, beyond any codification in statute or law) stating that any work done by that designer, for MS is MS's property. There does not seem to be the same clear agreement in flikx's case.
3) The IP rights in this case go well beyond the University vs. flikx. There is also the question of the IP rights of all of the people who posted to that site. By claiming all content from flikx's slashcode site as its own, the University is also denying the IP rights of anyone who authored a post on that slashcode site, are they not?
zpengo, I totally appreciate and agree with your points regarding the University's right and ability to remove their support (via "lending him their servers, bandwidth, domain name, etc.")
The point that is being made, however, seems to extend further than what you're arguing. From your original post in this thread: "Flikx is not being oppressed, he simply lost the support of those sponsoring him "
I think that the problem that's got most people a little worried or upset is not the University pulling it's support, via servers, bandwidth, etc. but rather the disciplinary and intellectual property rights issues that are being (possibly) abused in this case. The fact that the university is now claiming all content from the slashcode site that Flikx put together is a troubling move, in many people's eyes. Does the University of Utah have a right to claim all of that content as its own intellectual property? There may well be some sort of clause in their usage agreement to that effect, but if there is not, it seems very questionable as to whether or not UofU may claim it as their property.
I did a quick search of the University's website, hoping to find their network and computing acceptable usage policy statement, but I found something else that seems to speak to this issue even more strongly. At the bottom of many (if not all) pages on the UofU website, there is this link to a "Content Disclaimer". Of particular interest was the second point in this disclaimer:
Clearly, when it suits them, the University is more than willing to draw a clear distinction between what is their doing and what is the doing of another party, whom they are not responsible for, even though the content in question may be under their domain name. That point seems to really call into question whether or not the University may claim the work of Flikx, for which he was not compensated nor (as far as I understand it) was he under any sort of agreement regarding the rights to the site which he created. Clearly, the content disclaimer makes it clear that the University doesn't always claim any/all content accessible under its domain name as its property, so what is it about this case that makes them able to do so?
It is that point, in my opinion, that does make what the University of Utah is doing very scary, and if not censorship (which I am not arguing it is), it seems like it might be theft of intellectual property rights (both Flikx's AND all of the users who ever posted to that slashcode site.)
See here. If the content now belongs to a state institution, you might be able to make them release it by asking to see it under FOIA. IANAL, but there are references on the page above to Utah locals who are lawyers and who know the local FOIA.
Once you get the stuff legally viewable again, you can host it somewhere other than University-owned equipment.
Also, your university no doubt has some boiler-plate in its mission statement about freedom of intellectual inquiry or something similar. Look it up and be ready to quote it to the media if/when they talk to you.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
OK, I can see them yanking your site if they didn't like it. Their servers, their right to what's on them. However, pressing criminal charges and having you banned from campus seems a little harsh. They could at least have slapped your wrist first and talked to you about it. Obviously, it seems to me like the university was hiding something that your site was bringing out. Do they want you gone because you know something that they don't want you to? I'm sorry, but expulsion and criminal charges just seem a little harsh to me.
This would be completely true if they were a private entity, but since they're not, it's more complicated. As far as I understand it, if a government entity offers a public forum for speech, they cannot in any way, shape, or form, revoke that right based on what a user says without violating the First Amendment. They can't offer a public forum and then say "but you can't say x, y, and z" if x, y, and z are constitutionally protected forms of speech.
I believe that in order for UU to be in the right here, they have to prove that there was abuse of an unconstitutional nature going on (threats, fighting words, etc.). Otherwise, they're engaging in content discrimination, it's probably unconstitutional, and hopefully it'll be pursued. It doesn't sound like there was any speech on his page that would be unprotected; rather, it just sounds like the administration didn't like it. Of course, we're only getting one side of the story, so there may well have been threats or something.
The "supported speech" argument is well-suited to disputes with private organizations, but a government-run organization is a whole 'nother ball of wax, I think. I mean, since the entire internet is at its core a government project, couldn't you argue by this logic that *any* website is "supported speech", which support the government can revoke at any time?
-brennan
I get the feeling that some critical details are missing from flicx's account.
In particular, police involvement, threat of criminal charges, confiscation of equipment as evidence, suspension, and expulsion seem like they're probably completely independent from the issue of an administration-critical site. I doubt that a judge would grant a protective order if the only issue were that you failed to censor somebody else's political comments.
What seems more likely is that the "threats" allegedly spoofed from your e-mail address are being considered as actual threats from you. That would explain why the police would confiscate equipment, why a judge would grant a protective order, why you would be suspended, and why you would face expulsion. These actions could happen to anyone based on spoofed threats, particularly when technically uninformed people are making the decisions. (For example, administrators assuming a "reply to" address must be authentic, police believing administrators, and a judge believing police). I've had a Secret Service visit due to a spoofed threat as well, based solely on a reply-to address. I'm not saying the extent of their actions are correct, justified, or defensible, but they could at least be largely explained under this scenario of ignorance.
If I'm correct that spoofed threats are what set most of these actions in motion, then you have to do some legwork and wait for the slow wheels of justice to turn. But if you didn't send the threats, then there's no way to prove you did, and so some of your bigger problems will be resolved. (Assuming the System works, which it usually seems to for these types of situations).
Some of the other issues, such as intellectual property ownership and data ownership on a university-owned machine, are still arguable. But they seem largely separate from the criminal issues which make the case seem so dramatic.
It is U of U's intellectual property. Flikx did not create this on his own server for his own reasons. He said himself that he had created it for student government. The notion that he has IP rights because he did some coding and administration is like saying that the SlashCode team has IP rights over the site because they wrote the software.
When it comes down to it, the site was designed for U of U, run on U of U servers, with U of U's name on it. Flikx put in a lot of time and effort, but that doesn't mean that he gets the IP rights to it.
(Ooooh, challenging the open source underdog instead of big brother. See how fast this gets modded down.)
Got Rhinos?
His academic status is irrelevant. It's a shame, yes, but the fact that we pity him doesn't make him correct. He used U of U resources in a way that apparently violated their code of conduct.
I'm not saying "Flikx sucks, U of U rules." I can see it from the university's perspective, though. If JonKatz started posting Slashdot articles about how stupid Linux is, you can be that he wouldn't be around for long. He has a right to say those things, on his own time, on his own server.
Got Rhinos?
He himself said that he created the site for the university. That means that they actually do have IP rights over the site. He can create a similar site elsewhere, but that site belongs to the university. He doesn't own it any more than the guy who wrote the HTML for Microsoft's website owns the site itself.
Got Rhinos?
When will people get this through their heads? There is a significant difference between "free speech" and "supported speech." Flikx is not being oppressed, he simply lost the support of those sponsoring him (through use of their equipment), and he must find another sponsor.
Got Rhinos?
1) Demand a copy of the agreement
2) Was this agreement signed by you and by them ?
3) Were you 18 when you signed it ?
Do they HAVE any policy about student run sites (ownership/copyright/etc. ), then demand to see them.
You DO have some recourses. You SHOULD get a lawyer though as protection. You may be able to prove harassment by the school (maybe not)..
UPS Sucks
Get a lawyer first. No question. Only they can really work out all the details.
More than likely they can kick you out (although they may not have followed their own due process giving you ample opportunity to remedy) and they can certainly choose not to host it.
They might even own whatever you did because it was on their server. Maybe. But I'd guess probably not. And even if they own whatever you did, they might not own all the posts.
If they give you an option to stay in school, I'd take it, personally.
Now, if someone who wasn't a student and didn't use your code were to restart it, well, that wouldn't be a problem. _IF_ they actually expel you, I would probably let someone else start it back up. And I'm not convinced a more liberal school wouldn't accept you, possibly even some with transfer value.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
what is most interesting is this:
D. Due Process. Students have a right to due process in any disciplinary matter involving the possibility of substantial sanctions. This includes a right to be heard, a right to decision and review by impartial persons or bodies, and a right to adequate notice.
The person who submitted this story either left all of that process out, or has never gone through any due process procedures, including appealing to the Student Disciplinary Commitees.
F. Freedom of Expression. Students have a right to examine and communicate ideas by any lawful means. Students may not be subject to discipline because of their constitutionally protected exercise of freedom of association, assembly, expression and the press.
That was interesting
In order to promote personal development, to protect the University community, and to maintain order and stability on campus, students who engage in any of the following acts of misconduct may be subject to disciplinary action in accordance with Section B below: 5. Unauthorized or improper use of any University property, equipment, facilities, or resources including unauthorized entry into any University room, building or premises.
Is this what he actually violated?
Some people have called this story fake. We could verify with a phone call or email to the VP for Student Affairs.
Records of disciplinary action taken by the Student Behavior Committee or by any authorized official of the university shall be maintained in the office of the Vice President for Student Affairs
I'll keep digging with some phone calls.
... get the word about the Mormon fascists out there...
You're thinking of BYU. The University of Utah is a state run school. I doubt the administration's possible religious following makes a difference anyway - would you have include a comment about the Drunken Irish Catholics if this had happened at Duke?
I hate intollerant people.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
and not one of his posts have been modded up. Read his side of the story in his uid... moderators take note.
sulli
RTFJ.
A. If everything has been destroyed except the 'evidence,' how is the university going to press its claim that this is their intellectual property? Seems like they'll have a hard time proving that.
B. Never, ever host something controversial on a server that belongs to someone else. ISPs, universities, businesses, etc. contain spineless weasels who'll likely succumb to the first pressure.
C. Forget about asking questions on SlashDot. Get a lawyer. Fast.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Item F of the 'Student Bill of Rights' section covers the free speech issue just as one would expect: There is no suprise here. Unfortunately, we don't know under what provisions he's being expelled. Items A2 and A5 of section III of the code seem potentially pertinent: More likely A5 though: Also, he might be expelled under terms of the Computer/Network acceptable use Policy, governing the use of the university IT Infastructure. This document as well, is pretty standard as these sorts of things go. It states that they can do pretty much whatever they please: It conveniently doesn't say anything about what 'other inappropriate uses' are.
As for computer crimes, I'd love to know what computer crimes have been comitted. Presumable, if and when charges are filed, all of this will become a matter of public record, and the university can expel the student for merely having charges broght against him, but the million dollar question is What charges could be filed in this case?
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Well...I was a year old when this happened, but...
This is a cyberspace parallel to the situation at Berkeley in '64 that created the Free Speech Movement and made Mario Savio an international leader.
--Blair
P.S. Of course, because of the novel and creative nature of the first Free Speech Movement protests, people decided that such things were a lot of fun, and started looking for reasons to have "happening" protests --sometimes just to mock their own herd-like sociology-- and you know how the '60s ended up. In the '70s.