Publishers see Web sites like Textbook Torrents, which offer free downloads of textbooks without authorization, as part of a growing problem of piracy that could potentially threaten their industry. But the founder of Textbook Torrents calls his actions “civil disobedience” against “the monopolistic business practices” of textbook publishers.
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a Connecticut high-school student could be barred from running for student government after posting a blog entry calling a school official a “douchebag” and encouraging other students to write or call the official to annoy her, the Hartford Courant reports.
At age 15, Lebed had used the Internet to promote stocks from his bedroom in the northern New Jersey suburb of Cedar Grove. Armed only with accounts at A.O.L. and E*Trade, the kid had bought stock and then, "using multiple fictitious names," posted hundreds of messages on Yahoo Finance message boards recommending that stock to others.
Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became well known for urging stressed-out students competing for elite colleges to calm down and stop trying to be perfect. Yesterday she admitted that she had fabricated her own educational credentials, and resigned after nearly three decades at M.I.T. Officials of the institute said she did not have even an undergraduate degree.
Jones falsely bolstered her credentials to get a job with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and over the course of her career claimed to have earned degrees from three schools. MIT officials say now they have no evidence she ever graduated from college at all.
A high-school dean of students and a Roman Catholic archdiocese are suing Facebook over a fake profile created with the dean’s name. They are trying to get Facebook to identify the creators of the phony page, the Indianapolis Star reports.
Over on the blog bavatuesdays, a professor tells of a visit yesterday to the University of Richmond for a lecture that was interrupted by a lockdown following reports of a gunman on the campus. As the audience sat in a dark, locked room awaiting their fates, hoping and praying that tragedy wouldn’t befall another Virginia university, they began communicating and comforting each other via Twitter.
A joke about shooting fellow students, posted to a gossip Web site, led to the arrest of a Colgate University student this month.
A couple of blogs have pointed out that Matt Ivester, creator of the campus gossip blog JuicyCampus.com, has pleaded for a cease-fire among users who have apparently gotten particularly hateful.
"At Hunter College, professors are debating the ethics of a course in which an industry group paid for a class to develop a fake student who would write a fake blog to discourage other students from buying knockoff products. The controversy involves both commercial interference with academic freedom and the ethics of ?guerilla marketing.?"
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Publishers see Web sites like Textbook Torrents, which offer free downloads of textbooks without authorization, as part of a growing problem of piracy that could potentially threaten their industry. But the founder of Textbook Torrents calls his actions “civil disobedience” against “the monopolistic business practices” of textbook publishers.
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