Slashdot Mirror
University Networks Block Student Project
An anonymous reader writes "A computer science student at University College London put together FitFinder as a bit of a joke — it's been described as a cross between Twitter and personal ads, and it rapidly became very popular. The university took exception to this and started by blocking the site from being accessed on campus. Not content with this, a few weeks later it fined the student £300 and had him take the site down completely. Currently, the site is still offline, although there is a petition with several thousand signatures requesting its return. In the meantime, a site called PhitFinder has appeared, claiming to have no link to the original."
suck it
I am hiding from the Police as I write this.
I am quite certain that there is an All-Points Bulletin all over the entire San Francisco Bay Area for me.
I knew the jig was up when I was damn near flattened by three hospital security guards almost three hours after I was discharged from the Psychiatric ICU in San Mateo, California. I howled with laughter because they almost trampled me to death in their rush to find me.
The wristbands used to identify hospital patients are usually white. Special Patients such as myself wear Day-Glo yellow wristbands so that it is easier to invite us back to our Special Hotel should we wander away.
The PICU only learned that I put the drop on them when I realized I would do well to ask the hospital gift shop to cut mine off with their scissors. The manager explained her great reluctance by pointing out that hospital policy forbid them from cutting off patient wrist bands. I pointed out that I had been discharged after being admitted just the night before, then went into great detail as to why I was admitted. I then cheerfully said that I would be happy to chew my wristband off with my teeth.
Get This:
I was still wearing that wristband fifteen minutes later when only my quick thinking spared my life from the Hospital's Finest's Buffalo Stampede.
I then ambled off in the general direction of El Camino Real in search of a place to lie low while I contemplated my next move. After I was well out of sight of the hospital, I chewed off my wristband then stuffed it in my wallet. If I am so lucky as to be Slashdotted, I'll present a hardcopy of this post to the hospital's legal counsel, then whip out what's left of my wristband and say:
A couple days ago I walked right out of the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit at San Mateo Medical Center in San Mateo, California.
Psychiatric ICUs are very small, secure locked wards where each patient is constantly and carefully observed by two or more Psychiatric Nurses, who take notes about everything us wingnuts ever do. I was admitted to such an ICU back in 1985 for acute Bipolar Mania, but was diagnosed with Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder rather than just Manic Depression because the nurses spotted my constant, desperate but unsuccessful search to find the fellow ICU inpatient who was Hell-Bent on murdering me. My auditory hallucination only called my name, but I was striken with terror whenever She did, because I knew She was coming to kill me.
All I required to escape the San Mateo PICU was a friendly chat with one of the Psychiatric Nurses. I did this on purpose to teach my friends at the PICU a valuable life lesson of the sort we commonly refer to as a "character building experience".
I've been struggling for decades to penetrate the Mental Health Community's thick skull with the simple advice that I have an ability to manipulate the minds of others in ways that put Adolf Hitler, Jim Jones, Pol Pot, Marshall Applewhite and David Koresh completely to shame:
If I weren't such a nice guy, I would have almost instantaneously transformed that PICU into a Suicide Cult whose existence would not have been discovered until the shift change, when the incoming staff flipped out when they found the unit's walls and ceiling completely covered with blood. You would have required a squeegee and dustpan to scoop our remains into our coffins for proper burials.
I'm hoping to get this Slashdotted because I would feel really bad for the people of the San Francisco Bay Area that would have to suffer as a result of all the fallout that would cover the place after my lawsuit for Criminally Negligent Medical Malpractice, Attempted Suicid
Just release the code and let people play with it. The uni won't be able to block every site. Now that's Phat!
Well, I'd say it sounds more like a cross between twitter and a creepy stalker organisation, but maybe I'm over-sensitive.
Sloooooooo nerdnews day.
what has the university to do with the students privat project? is this an american thing? Here in europe, the university has nothing to do with their students privat projects. I would have thought its in america the same thing, as long as its not hosted on uni-servers, its none of their business?
If you are old enough to attend college/university you are old enough to do whatever you want. Stop "babysitting" and let students do whatever they please. Universities and colleges exist to educate people and hand them a piece of paper letting them get a job. Thats all they should do. Let students think for themselves, give them facts and have them make their own opinion and do what they want with them.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
There's a university with far too much power.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
And nothing of value was lost...
That's a zillion buck idea he had up and running! He should have told them to stuff it. That would have made the site even more popular as word of his telling "the man" to f off spread around his users and their friends. Plenty of time later to go get all the degrees ya want once you are rolling in dough.
So, he violated the university's disciplinary code, correct? Well, either he did violate the code, or he didn't. In either case, I hope he fights it. If the former, the code needs to be changed.
Wait, does the UK have free speech like America?
In any situation, it's defaming to his character.
I can see the University taking it down, I wouldn't want to be hosting that either. But as far as the fine goes, what the hell. I really do wonder how that would stand up in court, presumably this is being called some kind of disciplinary measure, but it's a hell of a weird form of academic discipline, and one that I would suspect opens them up to bias accusations (what with limited ability to way and all).
So phitfinder doesn't filter html code, iframe of slashdot works just fine. Thanks.
A university spokesman said: “UCL does not approve of or condone this site. We therefore advised the student to take the site down, but he declined to do this. UCL has no jurisdiction over the site, as it is not UCL-hosted. We have, however, taken disciplinary action against the student for bringing the college into disrepute and he has been fined.”
Another triumph for Slashdot accuracy...
Sounds an awful lot like breach of contract -- he agreed to pay a certain amount of money in exchange for the university's services, but now the university is refusing to deliver those services unless he pays more than originally agreed upon.
The solution for every censorship problem of websites and software. =)
From TFA:
Dean of Welfare (Students), wrote: “Following the serious complaints brought to this institution regarding the contents of the site and your association with it, I find myself having to bring a charge under UCL’s Disciplinary Code of Bringing the College into Disrepute. Therefore I am fining you £300.”
IANAL but AFAIK private organisations in the UK cannot enforce fines - that's a privilege open exclusively to the government. And the nation's universities are essentially private institutions (albeit receiving heavy state funding).
Having said that, if the university I went to was any guide they'll probably have something in their rules which states that if you owe them so much as a penny on graduation day, you don't graduate. And though they may not be able to get a judge to force him to pay, I have no idea if he'd be able to get a judge to force them to write off the £300 "fine".
I was playing around with PhitFinder and I totally accidentally made it forward to slashdot.
Sorry.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Even calling this thing a "project" in the headline and "a bit of a joke" once it's suckered in the readership reeks of the kind of deceitful tactics we don't expect (or want) on /. It would be nice to see better judgment and control over the stories - even on the weekend. Better no news than stuff like this.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Today is not one of those days.
degree may be put in jeopardy? just shows what joke schools have become.
Just Stand for your rights and who cares if if you list you have a degree but just they are holding it over some non course work stuff. What if you got a job and they later found out you failed the swim test and did not fully get the degree over that?
Yes, but universities aren't private institutions. And UK law can be quite specific when it comes to legal status of universities. Not sure whether this affects anything, but you can't draw conclusions based on the legal status of a typical privately owned establishment.
BTW, take a stroll through NYC, Chicago, SF, LA or any other major US city and behold the stupid, ignorant tourist. They're not just American, although you'll see plenty of them too.
They can't enforce fines in the sense of sending men with guns to take it from his house if he doesn't pay up, but I don't see what prevents them from just adding $300 to his tuition.
go to any average canadian or american city and you will see people walking around with many more pounds on their beltline than your average european
additionally, ukians don't even use pounds, they use a fascist communist terrorist socialist system called kilograms. luckily here in the usa we are still a free country and we use pounds for measurement, as god intended
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We did overcome this and EW-TOO based talkers are STILL alive!
No they cannot enforce it in terms of sending in the bailiffs. But they can withhold the degree, which is substantially more threatening. Maybe you could get it back via the courts, but I wouldn't bet on it and it really will not do you any favours when your next potential boss calls for a reference.
Universities (the good ones anyway) in the UK are about the research and the students are a pest they tolerate for the funding. Departments are ran on egos and committee politics. Bow to the egos and pay the fine, or appeal if you think you can manipulate the committee politics (highly unlikely unless you are at least phd student who knows the committees, or are friends with somebody who donated a building recently).
Thank god there is awesomeproxy.com
That would mean students are old enough to know that they should buy an account at an ISP for their site. This means the students can enjoy freedom from University policy/control, own the domain name and site code, and keep the site up after the student is no longer affiliated with the University. In the US one can get this level of service for under $10/month; it's hard for some university organizations to economically justify competing with that low price.
I don't know UCL's complete logic here, and I don't represent them. But in the US many public universities are facing hard financial times right now. Given fiscal realities tough choices have to be made about how to prioritize dwindling resources including staff time. It's not reasonable to expect that some for-fun project is going to get the attention and resources of staff and faculty work (which is rapidly being homogenized into whatever services can be delivered campus-wide, not custom setups for a particular person/group).
Digital Citizen
The Timesonline server took too long to respond for me (now it works) and I missed the quote at the end of that article where the unnamed Univ. spokesman said that "UCL has no jurisdiction over the site, as it is not UCL-hosted.". Now I see that that aspect of the issue isn't the center of this debate. It's good that Martell hosted his site elsewhere.
Digital Citizen
Standing up for your rights is one thing, but I'd also argue: Choose your battles wisely.
In any situation where there is a huge imbalance of power (which there is in this case - the student has paid his tuition fees for the year and there's no obligation for the university to actually hand over the degree certificate), the one thing you do not do if you're in the less-powerful position is piss off the person in the more-powerful position - unless you want to wind up being thoroughly crushed. You make sure the balance of power is restored and then you start pissing them off.
I'm wondering - if you were to pay under protest and then sue for the money back at a later date (which is quite possible to do in the UK if you're over a barrel), the statute of limitations is six years. Hypothetically (and IANAL), he could pay up under protest now and sue once he's graduated.
1) Because tuition isnt set by the university
2) Because, even if it was, it would be breach of contract
Now what you have instead is the archaic "we withold your results unless you pay up" - however a FoIA request should clear that up, if pressed.
TimesOnline says FitFinder was started a month ago. Almost a month ago today, the webcomic "Doomed to Obscurity" posted this strip launching a story arc about a character joining a "Twitter dating pool." Later strips even imply that somebody used it to post a NSFW image. The timing is eerily close, so either the app inspired the strip or the strip inspired the app.
By stifling a creative and enterprising endeavour the UCL brings it's self into disrepute.
Every week you hear about football clubs fining players for bad behaviour. This guy accepted the University's terms and conditions when he signed up for his course. So if that makes provision for this sort of punishment for this sort of activity he can either pay up or get out.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
They are "taking actions to seriously discourage the project", which is certainly not "blocking" in an IT sense, but is arguably MORE significant.
and then sue the UK government under the human rights act (\the convention if he has to go to strasbourg) for not protecting him from it in the first place.
FGD 135
No they cannot enforce it in terms of sending in the bailiffs. But they can withhold the degree, which is substantially more threatening. Maybe you could get it back via the courts, but I wouldn't bet on it and it really will not do you any favours when your next potential boss calls for a reference.
And the Queen can declare war on the U.S. That's highly theoretical, though.
In reality this seems bound to earn them public ridicule and the scorn of their students. I'd guess the other students won't be too thrilled if they perceive that the university is withholding degrees for frivolous reasons.
CMU had a similar site pop up entitled "Before We Leave", which to my knowledge has not garnered any scorn from the administration.
From their FAQ page:
Life should be lived with no regrets. Undoubtedly there are people that you know (or know of) that you've always wanted to 'encounter' physically. With graduation right around the corner, these final weeks are your last chance. This site is devoted to facilitating those encounters.
So... you enter the andrew IDs of the top five people you have always wanted to get with. If they also list you in their top five, we will email both of you-- the rest is up to you. If nobody matches with you, c'est la vie-- at least you tried. It's as simple as that.
Your top five are safe: your desires will only be revealed if the other person also desires you. Otherwise they will be kept secret forever.
At least they are copying Facebook's business model:
Sot don't worry. Think of the fine, as an ante. It put you on the front page of Slashdot. If you can turn this into a partial success, then all will be forgiven. They'll quickly turn from threats of fines to requests for donations and departmental funding.
how can the just arbitrarily withhold a degree. they should be murdered or put in jail at best.
Talking to my Dad the other day, he describe a cousin of mine as "a good kid"... the problem? He's 31 years old! See, anybody who's had kids will always see the friends of their kids as kids. Which wouldn't be much of a problem except for the increasing longevity of people.
See, the average age of people has been climbing for a long time, and is currently about 55. So, more and more, college students are "college kids". And the "legal age" of 18 becomes increasingly irrelevant as more power is wielded by an increasingly aging population who think of 31 year olds as kids.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
FoIA request should clear that up, if pressed.
Those reports won't work for getting into grad school and such. You need an official sealed transcript, and nothing else will work.
Learn to love Alaska
it is common for UK universities to withhold you degree until you have paid any outstanding library fines, so i guess this would be similar. They have no legal force to make him pay, but he will probably pay £300 rather than loose his degree.
That's basically correct. This will come as a surprise to Americans but British universities can and do fine students. The way it works is simply that if you don't pay you get kicked out of the university and the agreement you sign up to when you start the course allows them to do this. You are always free to just leave the university and forget the fine.
" We have, however, taken disciplinary action against the student for bringing the college into disrepute and he has been fined.”
A similar line has been used by our local university recently. They can catch you any way they like using this. Its much like a bad EULA - you just agree because you are progressing thru university after high school. Next thing its biting you in the ass for that slightly too raucous 1st year party, or that thesis that, while your are not a Holocaust denier, your thesis questioned a tiny part of the operational detail.
Whether it be the local city council complaining about vomit in local shop doorways, or the local Jewish Church, "Bringing the college into desrepute" appeases the complainers without mobilizing academic stalwarts.
And in an age where its all about funding and conveyor belt course, this EULA catches the ne'er do wells. And stepping outside the academic square costs resources. Thats not desirable.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
The WHOIS database entry shows the domain name was registered on 02 June, about a month after the Uni started blocking fitfinder
Well, I'd say it sounds more like a cross between twitter and a creepy stalker organisation, but maybe I'm over-sensitive.
That's not a cross, that's just redundant.
I agree with your point, but note that many companies will give a charge to customers, which basically feels like a fine - most notably for late charges, e.g., to credit card companies.
I assume the point is that in these cases, they could theoretically sue you, so a fine is something a customer chooses as a cheaper option. But the problem is that customers may be scared into paying a fine, even if it's not clear if they'd have to pay any damages.
Another problem is how one sided it is. I've had cases where companies have overcharged me, and then not immediately refunded money - in some cases, they don't at all, and merely credit it against your next bill. Do they pay a fine? Of course not.
Similarly, some companies charge you if they send someone round for a repair, and you're not in. Yet if you stay in, and then they don't turn up, you don't get to fine them.
Having said all that, I don't see how this logic applies to this case. I don't see any grounds why the University could sue the student.
FitFinder was a social networking website primarily based in the United Kingdom. FitFinder is described by its creators as localised anonymous microblogging. FitFinder is based on the concept of anonymously posting both a location and description of an attractive person who one has spotted; this post is then immediately placed on the FitFeed, where it can be viewed by anyone.