An interesting and apparently well executed effort. But, to be honest, your arguments reek of ignorance.
> This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech.
No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sense refers only to what governments may not suppress. Holding the copyright to something does not in any way affect ones responsibility to behave ethically.
> If Yale grants students access to data, the university does not have the right to specify exactly how students must view the data.
Under U.S. law they may very well have the right; I wouldn't know. What you may have demonstrated is that they do not have the ability.
May I suggest that you do not couch your arguments in terms of fallacious claims about freedom of speech. Rather, talk about academic freedom, a principle -- though not a legal one -- that Yale ostensibly seeks to uphold.
Freedom of Speech is not a legal right, it is an ethical right. It predates its US First Amendment codification by several hundred years and is also legally expressed in many other countries. To use your words, may I suggest you do not couch your arguments in terms of fallacious claims about freedom of speech?
I don't think commentators who decried Yale's hypocrisy were claiming that Yale violated the first amendment rights of the students. They were saying that the same people who fought vociferously for scores of years to secure their freedom of expression were quite quick to trample it when exercised by non-PhDs. I think this is a valid criticism.
Re: Europe: the European Convention on Human Rights says, in Article 10: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises."
All of the members of the European Union are signatories to the ECHR.
Also, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union says, in Article 11:
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
I'm not European, so my opinion on how closely governments stick to these laws doesn't really apply. I'm just pointing out the laws.
Holocaust denial is illegal in many EU countries, and swastika/Nazi flags are illegal in a few as well. So, obviously, freedom of speech isn't the highest priority.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." (attributed to Aristotle)
Defamation is illegal, so obviously freedom of speech isn't the highest priority in the US.
(I'm just trying to show you that there are limits on what you can say without legal trouble and what you cannot say without legal trouble: it all depends on where you put the cursor and how the limits are enforced. But to point out the existence of limits in order to demonstrate the absence of something is flawed.)
BTW, one comment: Holocaust denial is illegal in France. But to be clear, holocaust denial means refuting the facts established by the international Nuremberg tribunal. So it's not like a completely open category. Now, whether it's efficient is another matter…
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
This is a semantic misunderstanding. When describing freedom of speech in the context of Yale, I meant it in a moral sense rather than a legal sense. Dean Mary Miller also used the term freedom of speech in her open letter to Yale, so I decided to use the same term. You're right though; saying 'academic freedom' would have been more clear.
I agree with this revision. It's important to frame your fight in terms of intellectual freedom within the academy, which is perhaps a conceptual framework your faculty can comprehend. Yale does not have any de facto obligation with regard to your free speech, legally or contractually speaking. Unfortunately, our society generally permits speech to be legal cause for termination/dismissal in private institutions (e.g. employment at a company), except in cases of discrimination and failures to adhere to equal opportunity laws.
The best advice I can give is to ensure you have open-minded faculty members at your back. If you have professors you feel you can talk to, I would try to have a casual conversation with them as soon as you can. Their advice and backing will be invaluable, if and when a formal situation arises.
> legal cause for termination/dismissal in private institutions
In the US, under at-will employment, an employee "can be dismissed by an employer...without having to establish 'just cause' for termination..." [1]
If you'd prefer a different standard because this rule sounds harsh against employees, think for a moment from a company's standpoint: If you know the law won't make it easy for you fire someone, you'll be really picky about who you hire, how you hire them, and how many people you hire.
I think at-will employment helps everyone by making the job market more liquid and reducing the size of the class of "unemployable" people.
I would just like to point out that it can also have a negative affect on job liquidity. For instance why would I move, at expense to myself, for a job if there is a reasonable chance of being fired for something unrelated to my work and with little recourse. It also means I'm less likely to disagree with the boss because something going bad for the company is not as bad as me getting fired from my point of view.
Fair enough to say 'that these show bigger issues with the company and you'd be better off elsewhere' but it doesn't stop companies like these existing and minimising the cost to them isn't something I particularly support.
Sounds good. And sorry for the snarky tone in my original comment. I try to avoid such things, but, alas, the HN edit period is over, and I am now chained to that comment forever.
P.S. I think the reply to your comment by lvs has some good thoughts.
Why do you grant "academic freedom" some sort of special status, while decrying freedom of speech? Yes, Americans tend to confuse the legal principle with the ethical one, but both are equally valid.
Freedom of speech is certainly a valid thing. But as a legal principle, it refers to restrictions on government, and Yale is a private institution. If Mr. Haufler wants his effort to succeed, then I think he is better off using the proper terminology.
In Europe we have database rights (see eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive) that can be used to prevent others from using your data - under quite narrowly defined conditions AFAIR.
Copyright doesn't protect from reuse of data, it's there to protect a particular artistic expression, a particular form if you like. I don't think the USA have anything akin to the European database rights?
the EU database directive only protects databases that are the result of a "substantial investment". That means that in practice only databases that are not a side effect of the core activities of the creator are protected. A course database would not qualify for protection under the database directive since the core activity is teaching, and not publishing courses online.
>in practice only databases that are not a side effect of the core activities of the creator are protected //
Presumably that assertion is based on caselaw as I see nothing in the Directive itself that says that. A substantial investment - but note that can be qualitative and/or quantative - is in Art7(1)¹ however.
If your assertion is true then databases could be simply compiled by an offshoot company in order to meet the requirements.
Edit: http://www.out-law.com/page-5698 gives a run-down including some caselaw (as does http://www.out-law.com/page-392 with more caselaw detail). It doesn't tally with what you're saying exactly but suggests that the investment needs to be in the compilation of the data, not the production. It might well be argued that this [theoretical] case would be akin to the "Judgments on the Fixtures Marketing lawsuits" and so like the football league match listings not warrant protection. However it seems it's rather difficult to be generic in judgement. Any part of law that says "substantial" appears to be well-placed to let lawyers earn their keep.
I think the only place where you'll find actual case law in Europe is the UK. The other countries don't let judges make law (except in some cases, at their supreme court equivalent).
For the record, I found that memo to be very significant and also quite reassuring. However, it exhibits the same kind of terminological muddled-ness that I was talking about in my earlier comment.
Or maybe it does. Yale is a private organization. The University of Alaska (whose president wrote the memo you linked to) is an avatar of sorts of the government of the state of Alaska. In what sense is such an institution restrained by constitutional limitations on government? This seems to be a surprisingly poorly settled question in U.S. law.
Ignorance, egotism, entitlement, etc.
"Hey reddit, watch me fight the (wo)man!!"
Maybe you could have inquired about or offered to help Yale's tool/product? Nah, I'll just jack it and cry foul because my little mash-up thing gets turned off.
It sure sounds like there is nearly a contractual obligation by Yale to provide data a certain way. Whatever agreement made this possible could get undermined. Then NO data will be made available and poor Yale students can go back to just lists of courses.
Thanks, but I'm not motivated either way by popularity. What all these kids at Yale are doing is misguided and a waste of their youth and skills. They could have stepped up to try to make a name for themselves by understanding more than just the technical bits. They could have spent just a little time to understand their non-technical landscape prior to showing off technically and crying to reddit Kony 2012-style.
They could have created a business around it. They could have attained departmental, IT, and/or administrative backing... along with all the improvements to access, support, and coverage that can bring.
What looks better? We got shut down right out of the gate for having no idea how to go about securing our venture or...
We brought our technical acumen to the right eyes and ears and sold ourselves to the king-makers in our little world.
This is a dress-rehearsal for investors. What these kids proved was they want to be more Pirate Bay than Facebook. More pejorative hacker than Hacker News hacker.
Bah. I had a similar idea at my university to provide instant-feedback course guides for all degree plans, class descriptions and online resources, etc.
The university went from "awful system implemented 20 years ago by Sungard" to "awful system implemented 1 year ago by Sungard". Don't pretend this YBB+ app, created by students, had any chance of being accepted by the university. Furthermore, it is a joke to claim futility and waste of talent for these men who built this website, created out of a real-world (first-world) problem and proven to serve user demands.
This is entirely wrong. Why would they wait to climb the through the bullshit bureaucracy when they can build something that helps all the students now? What they proved is that Yale's administration is woefully out of touch.
> This is an unfortunate outcome, since Yale’s copyright assertion muddles the argument that Yale’s actions violate Peter and Harry’s freedom of speech.
No it doesn't. Whatever Yale's responsibilities in the freedom-of-speech realm may be, they are entirely ethical in nature, as freedom of speech in the legal sense refers only to what governments may not suppress. Holding the copyright to something does not in any way affect ones responsibility to behave ethically.
> If Yale grants students access to data, the university does not have the right to specify exactly how students must view the data.
Under U.S. law they may very well have the right; I wouldn't know. What you may have demonstrated is that they do not have the ability.
May I suggest that you do not couch your arguments in terms of fallacious claims about freedom of speech. Rather, talk about academic freedom, a principle -- though not a legal one -- that Yale ostensibly seeks to uphold.