From: Tim McGovern [tjm@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 3:43 PM
To: yegg@MIT.EDU; MIT Stopit; MIT Stopit
Subject: Can you explain these files for us...
To: Gabe Weinberg
From: Tim McGovern for MIT Stopit
Gabe,
MIT Stopit (http://mit.edu/stopit/) has received a complaint about some files
that have been posted to a public non-MIT web site that appears to be associated
with your work here at MIT.
The website/files in question are at:
http://www.etext.org/Zines/Apathy/a.txt through
http://www.etext.org/Zines/Apathy/z.txt.
The Apathy zine page seems to point back to you. Can you explain your reasons
for first creating these compilations of MIT usernames, and then your reasons
for posting these to a world-accessible location?
MIT Directory information -- and the usernames of MIT users are included -- is
MIT copyrighted material, and as such are solely for MIT business. Our other,
more compelling, concern is that these lists might fall into the wrong hands
hands and be used to SPAM thousands of MIT e-mail accounts with unwanted messages.
I look forward to hearing from you very soon.
Tim McGovern for MIT Stopit
From: Tim McGovern [tjm@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 2:57 PM
To: yegg@mindspring.com
Cc: MIT Stopit
Subject: Re: Can you explain these files for us...
Gabe,
Thanks for your quick response. Actually there are substantive differences
between what you have collected and what has been collected at
http://www.mit.edu/Home-byUser.html,.
In the first place, the SIPB-sponsored locater at www.mit.edu is an opt-in
service, whereby users freely choose to have their personal home page listed.
There are certainly risks in having this list online at such a prominent
address, and we have spoken with SIPB in the past about them informing their
clientele of the risks involved. To date, some four thousand members of the MIT
community have elected to have their web page listed there.
In the case of your file collection, none of these users have agreed to
participate in your artistic work, which I have reviewed and respect. We all
know that most any MIT student can write a program to traverse the Athena AFS
directory system, which appears to be the source of your data, to collect all of
this data. At this point, we estimate that you have 25,000 usernames in the
etext.org location. We also agree that www.mit.edu is a much more likely
destination URL for inquiring (and conspiring) minds than www.etext.org/...
Still, all of this doesn't alter the fact that this information is protected,
and no one (or very few) has opted into having their username used in your work,
and that major harm could be done with relative ease if only a single person,
with ill intent, were to discover your collection.
For all of these reasons, we really must insist that you immediately take down
any collection of files in your possession which contain unauthorized subsets,
or more, of the MIT namespace. Further, we ask that you not use any MIT
directory information in the future in a manner that is inconsistent with the
overall purposes of MIT directory information..
Let me know when you have removed these files. Thanks for your cooperation.
Tim McGovern for MIT Stopit
From: Tim McGovern [tjm@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 11:33 AM
To: yegg@mindspring.com
Cc: MIT Stopit
Subject: Re: Can you explain these files for us...
Hi Gabe --
Sure, I'd be glad to share a little of how MIT Stopit works. Stopit acts on
specific complaints, or reported incidents. You could say that we're a reactive
service, since we don't go hunting for policy or other violations, we don't
monitor network traffic, or review the content of web pages, etc. Our procedure
is to investigate all reports to whatever degree possible and necessary.
In your case, we received a report from an MIT Alumnus who found your pages in
the course of looking for something else on the web, and brought it to our
attention. Since we don't actively hunt for infringements or misuse of MIT
copyrighted materials, we may not have known about your collection for a long
time. In a sense, this is what creates the urgency of bringing practices in
line with policy and such.
I hope this is helpful.
Tim McGovern for MIT Stopit
yegg@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> MIT Stopit,
>
> I'll work on removing the files tonight. Could you please tell me how you came across them, and more interestingly why you are contacting me now? The apathy album is from last spring and was sent to a good sized portion of the computer-inclined MIT community.
>
> --Gabe