MIT Pirate Certificate
physicaleducationandwellness.mit.edu
physicaleducationandwellness.mit.edu
Jeez, what buzzkills.
You’d want a letter of marque for an endorsement of being “allowed” to do pirate-y things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
It's still a thing
Those would only be metaphorical (and even then not a particular apt metaphor) letters of marque and reprisal; a literal letter of marque and reprisal is to a private vessel to attack and seize property from enemy vessels, converting acts which would otherwise be piracy under international law into lawful armed combat.
Cyberhacking groups aren’t vessels, and what they are doing isn’t something that would be piracy under international law without being under the umbrella of government war efforts.
> I can imagine the same has happened in the US.
Not under US law (even if it still wouldn’t make any sense under international law for the reasons described above), since Constitutionally that would require an active of Congress authorizing such letters, which has not occurred. You can imagine what you want, but its simply not a reality.
As we all know, the US defense apparatus, particularly its clandestine branch, has never done anything illegal.
That’s irrelevant: the point of the letter is exactly to make it not illegal. If anything, it proves they didn’t have a (literal) letter of marque.
A letter of marque is a specific legal instrument.
If the US (or Russian) government is recruiting and employing private sector hacking groups as cyberwarfare agents (as both probably are), whehter or not they are doing so legally under domestic and/or international law, they aren’t issuing letters of marque.
It's like how the US hasn't officially been to war since World War II.
No.
A letter of marque makes you not pirates but lawful combatants under international law, where there has long been a norm that pirates (but not lawful combatants) are the common enemy of all humanity (hostis humani generis) and subject to summary punishment by any nation, for piracy against the shipping of any nation, without limit. Whereas privateers are, to other nations, of the same legal status as military forces of the sponsoring power.
A nonprosecution agreement gives you immunity from punishment under the domestic law of the country issuing it.
Not the same thing at all.
> It’s like how the US hasn’t officially been to war since World War II.
So, a popular myth? US Courts have long rejected the notion that any particular magic words are necessary for Congress to exercise its power to declare war, and that a Congressional authorization of military force that does not use terms like “declaration of war” (the earliest of which was issued in 1798, this is not a new practice) nevertheless is an exercise of the power to declare war. There are some statutes to which magic words are relevant, but that’s a choice of Congress to structure other statutes that way, not something inherent it what makes a state of war under US law.
Marque is "we'll take credit for you officially, such that other countries won't be allowed to hang you as pirates".
Big difference.
Well obviously the cyberspace and information superhighway metaphor needs to morph into the cybersea, and information ocean gyres, and...you get the idea.
But committing copyright violations is piracy, according to many legal experts apparently. How can there be much difference between cyberhacking groups and naval vessels, when there's really no difference at all between copying a floppy and attacking a merchant vessel on the high seas?
True, its hard to imagine a situation where privateers would add any measurable capacity to the US Navy.
> The US got a better thing called “sanctions”, which apparently allow US Navy to forcefully detain ships on the high seas and sell their stuff on the grounds of them being engaged in “illegal trade”, despite the ship having nothing to do with the US.
That kind of sanctions, don’t replace letters of marque (letters of marque are a way of getting private ships to perform functions for which you would otherwise need to use a Navy, which can include commerce raiding or, I suppose, enforcing sanctions – though the era of privateering and the kind of sanctions at issue don’t really overlap), enforcing sanctions is something you do with ships you have. If anything, the “new thing” of sanctions would increase, not decrease, the appeal of letters of marque.
What decreases them is having a professional Navy that overmatches the rest of the world combined, making adding private combatant ships, for any purpose, not really attractive.
Congress generally doesn’t seek to separately and redundantly authorize specific attacks once it has generally authorized the President to use military force, whether it was the bill passed in 1941 stating “the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan”, or the bill passed in 2001 stating “the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Tax revenue on another countries brand of cigarettes, sure, hands-off.. agree
Actual piracy with weapons? how about losing a gun battle with US Navy and going to jail, yes.
In other words "it depends" .. a lot
You can't get one from Spain, France, the Netherlands, or Germany – all nations with a tradition of Privateering, but you could get one from the US — maybe in Trumps second term, all it needs is a pirate cryptocoin
Sure, but what about the preceding sentence?
> Non-MIT courses and life experience are not counted towards completing the certificate. (emphasis added)
YMMV
And that treaty was the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, which came about at the end of a war for…Crimea.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6869
However, this being at MIT, I was never sure whether this was because of humans or bots.
My undergrad university had the sense to let everyone pick their first preferences within 24 hours of enrollment starting. Then for over-selected courses, people were enrolled randomly [1]. This was repeated once more, iirc, and then in the third round enrollment was instantaneous.
This, thankfully, prevented virtual stampedes and allowed for people to select their courses in a non-panic manner.
[1] after required-for-graduation enrollments.
Still a fine university, but the days of 'hacker' culture are definitely dwindling. There are still pockets here and there, but like with old forms of communication (IRC, etc ) it becomes harder and harder to foster that culture when there are less and less spaces for it while simultaneously creating curated spaces that are so much easier to use.
My college just sorted people by GPA and if there were enough of them for an additional group and staff to lead it, an additional timeslot would appear.
This is why I often tell everyone, not just high school students, to consider other marketplaces for information like uDemy or Coursera or any of the dozens of upstarts. They're sooo much better than old school universities because they're not designed to enforce artificial scarcity. There's no bogus song and dance for the admissions department and after that there's no limit on how many people can take the course. This is what the digital world has to offer and we should celebrate the unlimited access to knowledge.
Not to mention, the highest demand courses are always the easiest ones. As someone who has worked as a professor, I refuse to accept that the universities have some administrative imperative to increase the number of sections of easy courses, so students can learn less.
Students should take online courses, but that is besides the point.
The correct answer is to this is to cut that administrative staff and reduce tuition. Not to redirect money towards easy classes.
But there is a larger issue here.
> The students are paying plenty of tuition. Why shouldn't they get the courses they want?
Universities are institutions for providing credentials [1]. Students cannot be the party who should decide what courses are offered, because there is a clear conflict of interest. If you work at a universities, you will see that students naturally and constantly advocate for easier passing requirements and courses. The same way you don't want your trainee electrician at the vocational school to have a say in whether they get to take the safety courses or not,
* you don't want your trainee software engineers at the university to have a say in which math courses they will need, and * you don't want your English majors at the university to decide they would rather take the course on Twilight rather than the one on Shakespeare.
What courses should be offered should be decided by professors in collaboration with industry professionals. Not students who often don't know what is good for them long term. What should be provided to students before enrolling at the university is complete information about what courses are part of the program and why, and the students can decide up front whether the program is for them.
The above is not a blanket defense of universities in any way. I left academia because I think it is broken, but not for the reasons your comments postulate.
[1] Besides the necessary education of society. I also strongly believe there is space in society for educational institutions that don't provide test based credentials, but those cannot replace universities.
As a trivial example, what happens to quadriplegics? Do they not get to go to MIT?
Also, you can fulfill the swim requirement by taking 1 beginner swim class regardless of whether you actually learn to swim during that class or not.
Rather a lot of the history of disabled and otherwise 'unusual' people seems to disprove how 'obvious' and 'commonsense' that idea is in practice.
Furthermore, where is the line between disability, principle and preference? Do religious reasons count? What about cultural ones? A friend of mine who was a Navy officer told me that the Nepalese he trained were absolutely terrified of water - the rivers were so cold in Nepal that they had a deep-rooted cultural association of water with danger. They needed to persevere because they had enlisted as frogmen, but why should a student of astrophysics do so?
The opportunity to justify one's reasons doesn't absolve the issue entirely either, as that effectively makes skills of persuasion, rather than swimming, the requirement. Finally, if you allow arbitrary requirements, which ones are reasonable? Swimming might be as unreasonable to someone brought up in a desert as mountain hiking might be to someone born and bred in Massachusetts.
I have zero issue with forcing prospective astrophysics students outside of their comfort zone.
ADDED: There are also phys ed requirements and humanities distribution requirements. If these are such issues, I have no doubt there are plenty of other schools that don't impose them.
Still technically a "requirement" though.
-- Jack Handey
I tried to register for pistol every single term and never got in; I think this may be the most difficult obstacle in obtaining MIT's pirate cert.
Are there people who are impressed by honorary degrees??
Yes. Yokels who don't know what "honorary" means.
CEOs, Director-General of the WTO, governors, billionaires, etc
[0] https://alum.mit.edu/slice/brief-history-mit-commencement-sp...
A. Ask them for a probability density from the wavefunction Ψ, and see if they respond by hitting it with psi-stAARRRRRR.
(also useful: reduced Planck's constant or form evaluating to the head of a list)
You might expect the answer to be R…
…but a true pirate’s first love will always be the C.
I feel like the piracy / p2p / scenegroup communities have been aging and being whittled down by brutal relentless lawsuits and lobbying from corps. I get the impression not many younger people are interested and are generally more content to accept the corporate slop they are given.
This is a bad thing. However u feel about piracy, keeping the skills alive to circumvent unfair systems imposed on you is really important for society and egality imo.
MIT should teach a computer piracy course.
However, I feel your perception of the piracy/p2p communities might be dated. I think they took a bit of a nosedive a while back when Netflix reigned supreme, at least for movies, but due to the fragmentation of streaming services and the constant removal of content and increase in prices and now the crackdown on account-sharing, movie/TV piracy seems to be alive and healthy. I'm not so sure about music piracy though; the streaming services there haven't made the huge mistakes the movie/TV services have, so having a single streaming service for music seems to be quite popular these days because it's so convenient. Software piracy appears to be largely dead, thanks to the move to SaaS and online gaming. But my perception could be quite biased too.
I'm not sure it's so much mistakes of the streaming services as the fact that music has a near enough to universal for most people licensing scheme from a handful of major labels that the major services can offer a near-universal essentially interchangeable (other than UX and integration with other services) service to consumers.
Whereas the fragmented (and frequently changing) rights owners in the film/TV business have no equivalent. I'm honestly not sure of the impact on piracy though. A lot of us shrug our shoulders, see all the content that is at there with a few subscriptions, and just ignore all the stuff we can't trivially watch.
It is the mistakes they've made: you're specifying the exact mistake I'm referring to.
>Whereas the fragmented (and frequently changing) rights owners in the film/TV business have no equivalent. I'm honestly not sure of the impact on piracy though.
Well, to listen to all the music you want, you just need one subscription for $10/month or whatever it is. To watch the films and TV you want, you need 10 different subscriptions, and it adds up to a lot of money. Why would this not have an impact on piracy?
>and just ignore all the stuff we can't trivially watch.
Maybe you do, but I imagine a lot of people turn to the high seas when they really want to watch one thing, and it's only available on some service they're not subscribed to, when they're already subscribed to several other services.
Certainly not dead, but the multi decade long DRM arms race and the more insular nature of the scene recently means there isnt many new people joining. On the other hand, I'd say the groups that are already established are doing better in the last few years than they did before. Just to name a few recent breakthroughs:
- WIBU dongles getting fully emulated in software by R2R. Used in higher end software like Propellerhead Reason.
- The first scene proper of Office 365 by BTCR
- Denuvo is still getting cracked after all these years.
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free.
Archery is the odd one here. It is not part of the popular image of a pirate, and historically, I don't think they saw much use in the 1600s and after (so, not during the "golden age").
Not sure what that has to do with a bit of workplace levity at an otherwise famously intense undergraduate institution. Having a bit of fun is a time-honored MIT tradition; e.g., "All Tech Men carry batteries!" [3] and The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery, and Pranks at MIT more generally [4].
[2] http://childcare.mit.edu/tuition-scholarships/mit-childcare-...
[3] http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1990/H-Y/
[4] http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/books/ihtfp_leibowitz/ihtfp_leibo...
And yes, I would characterize fighting peacefully for open access as trying to have fun in a way that MIT should be trying to protect.
Harvey Silverglate wrote a book on the phenomenon, "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent". Federal DAs have the biggest hammers, and so they see nails everywhere. This is also partly why the "nothing to hide" people are foolish, because information can be selectively weaponized by authorities to construct technical crimes. There are nearly infinite and poorly-worded regulations on certain professions with civil and criminal penalties that are all but impossible to commit without intention. That's not the point; the point is that very few prosecutors are uniformly setting out to arrest and convict only the worst of the worst causing legitimate, specific harm.
Unsurprisingly, Oracle killed Zoe Lofgren's CFAA exception bill in committee because the rich and the religious run America.