Brooklyn Law School No Fan Of Due Process; Apparently Handing Names Over To MPAA [Updated]

from the what-are-they-teaching-students dept

You have to wonder what the Brooklyn Law School is teaching its students about due process, since it recently sent an email to all students saying that after receiving complaints from copyright holders about file sharing movies and TV shows, it was going to associate the IP addresses with names and hand them over to the copyright holders. Of course, this is based solely on an IP address, which is not particularly accurate or reliable as a unique identifier of an individual, so what Brooklyn Law School is basically telling its students is that it doesn't care if they falsely accuse them of file sharing, and the students should work it out with someone else. Not exactly the sort of lesson that you would think a law school wants to teach its students. Update: Ah, the power of a little attention. Apparently the school has already backed down and said that it will only do what is legally required by the DMCA, which does not include simply handing over names.

35 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Overhype

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Apr 21st 2008 7:21am

Turning Off Internet In The Classroom Won't Make Lectures Any More Interesting

from the competing-for-attention dept

Just about two years ago, we wrote about some law professors who were threatening to ban computers in their classrooms because students just weren't paying attention. While some apparently did so, perhaps it wasn't enough, because as Slashdot points out, the University of Chicago's law school has now decided to pull the plug on classroom internet connections entirely, as a dean was upset at how many students were surfing the web during class. However, as we noted two years ago, this seems to say a lot more about the lecture quality than the internet access in the classroom. Especially when it comes to a graduate school-level class, where students are supposedly actually interested in the subject, if the professor can't keep the attention of the class, that should be a problem for the professor to deal with, rather than by cutting off internet access. Either way, with 3G wireless access (and eventually 4G) schools simply won't have control over internet access anyway. So, if these schools are really concerned about it, rather than cutting off the connection they do have control over, perhaps they should focus on making the lecture experience more worthwhile.

56 Comments | Leave a Comment..

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Brooklyn Law School No Fan Of Due Process; Apparently Handing Names Over To MPAA [Updated]

from the what-are-they-teaching-students dept

Turning Off Internet In The Classroom Won't Make Lectures Any More Interesting

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