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."

Comments

Re:what has the university to do with it?

[maxume]

It are happen in Europe.

Stop having control

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Stop having control

[Bjorn_Redtail]

He is hosting it on a proper server. From TFA:

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.”

Re:what has the university to do with it?

[Pedersen]

Ya know, I really don't reply much, but the whole "anti-american" thing has gone too far when the damned summary includes something that tells anybody that knows anything about currency that this is not US thing. Here, allow me to quote it:

they fined the student £300

You might be especially interested in the currency indicator. That "£" symbol is used to denote the UK currency unit called the "pound". Over in the actual article (I know, nobody ever reads it, but I still did), they say this:

Rich Martell, 21, a final-year computer sciences student at University College London, has taken the site down under pressure from university authorities, who were concerned that it was distracting students from their studies.

So, at least in this case, no, it is not an "american thing". It is, most definitely, a "London thing". As London is considerably closer to Europe (and, being part of the UK, is considered to be part of Europe) than any part of the USA, I would have to venture that your assertion

Here in europe, the university has nothing to do with their students privat projects.

is now verified to be false. In fact, it might be so far false that this could be considered to be a "European thing", though I'm not sure I'd take it that far myself.

Re:what has the university to do with it?

[Mitchell314]

Because we don't call our schools "University College"?

ta heck with the degree

[zogger]

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.

UCL brings it's self into disrepute

[Martin Spamer]

By stifling a creative and enterprising endeavour the UCL brings it's self into disrepute.