Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

As correctly pointed out by another comment posted overnight in Minnesota's time zone, this blog post is just blogspam of the earlier Chronicle of Higher Education blog post, which was discussed on Hacker News beginning yesterday.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4671196

The title of the Slate blogspam piece is even more exaggerated and link-baiting than the title of the Chronicle piece; both titles are factually wrong. Both blog posts overstate the impact of the Minnesota notice to higher education institutions, which has resulted only in a fig-leaf change to Coursera's ToS directed to Minnesota residents, and has had NO effect on Coursera's operation in Minnesota. As noted in my comment on the first thread,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672038

I am a Minnesota resident, I am enrolled in multiple Coursera courses (and two of my children are enrolled in Coursera courses), and I will be speaking to my state legislators about this as a precaution after first speaking to the Minnesota Department of Education about this when business hours begin here. The sun will rise in the east here in Minnesota just like everywhere else today, and all is well with the world. Well, maybe not quite everything is well with the world, as two of the top eleven most active posts on HN just now

http://news.ycombinator.com/active

are both discussions of this very exaggerated story about Minnesota, neither checked with actual on-the-ground reporting on students currently enrolled in Coursera courses in Minnesota.

ONE MORE EDIT: Thanks to the several commenters (at various comment levels in various subthreads) who suggested policy considerations to bring up with the offices of my state senator and state representative today during the campaign season, and to the commenters who pointed to various possible interpretations of the relevant statutes and possible partisan political considerations related to this issue. I'll digest all that after giving blood today, and send an email to the state Office of Higher Education

https://www.ohe.state.mn.us/

and to my legislators. Over the weekend, I'll be doing homework in my Coursera courses [smile].

Your post contradicts the actual TOS that Coursera now has.

https://www.coursera.org/about/terms

> Notice for Minnesota Users

> Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

You have stated that this "has had NO effect on Coursera's operation in Minnesota" and "I am a Minnesota resident, I am enrolled in multiple Coursera courses". Your continued enrollment is clearly in violation of the new TOS unless you are taking the classes from outside your state of residence.

So is Coursera a university? I don't know the exact conditions for an institution to be considered a university but this seems like a bit of a stretch.

The state of Minnesota believes this law applies to Coursera. The Minnesota Office of Higher Education sent a letter to Coursera stating so, so it is reasonable for Coursera to conclude that Minnesota believes this applies to Coursera. Tricia Grimes of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education has publicly stated that letters were sent to "all postsecondary institutions known to be offering courses in Minnesota". She said (http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/minnesota-gives-cours...), "This has been a longtime requirement in Minnesota (at least 20 years) and applies to online and brick-and-mortar postsecondary institutions that offer instruction to Minnesota residents as part of our overall responsibility to provide consumer protection for students."

Do consumers need protection from something that is free?

Try this pill. It's free.

No. Wow, that was easy!

Not if you've been lied to and believe that pill is the only way to prevent a horrible death.

It would behoove anyone to research that information using more than one source.

Maybe someday lawmakers will regard the Internet the same way its native residents do: as a separate place. The right way to look at this problem from a native netizen's perspective: Coursera offers classes "online", and Minnesota residents travel to "online" (not Minnesota) while taking the class.

No.

First of all, just because someone spends 18 hours a day on a computer does not mean they're a "native netizen." That's not a real thing.

Secondly, you're still in [State/Country of residence] when you're online. Just because someone is checking Twitter in a bathroom in Minnesota does not mean they're no longer subject to laws and regulations in Minnesota.

Yes, that is the traditional view of jurisdiction, and the one that legacy territorial institutions prefer.

But it could someday soon seem very quaint and wrongheaded.

The Catholic Church used to claim universal jurisdiction, and some religions still see their laws as perpetually applying to all born to their faith. To the contrary of such claims, richer communities have moved to primarily territorial, largely secular, slightly voluntary (through the ability to choose your residence) sovereign jurisdictional authorities.

This evolution could continue to reach primarily membership/networked, mostly-voluntary, often-overlapping and situationally-contingent sovereign jurisdictional authorities. These might fall back to territorial governance only when the issues involved (property lines, effluents, etc) are themselves territorial.

Educating yourself via the network could be seen as something in a totally non-territorial realm, and thus of no proper interest to territorial authorities. That would leave networked-sovereignty citizens as free to ignore the dictates of overreaching territorial authorities as many today feel free to ignore the Pope or Sharia Law.

First of all, just because someone spends 18 hours a day on a computer does not mean they're a "native netizen." That's not a real thing.

"Native netizen" is a real thing because I said it is. An existence proof only requires the existence of a single instance.

Secondly, it's not about the amount of time spent using a computer (18 hours a day?!), but a state of mind. The corner of my mind responsible for identifying locations perceives "online" as a distinct physical location. If you asked me where I'm from, I could say City A, but if you asked me where I grew up, I would say "the Internet." Answering anything else would feel like lying.

The location of one's body is independent of the perceived location of one's mind. When it comes to the Internet, the second is more important.

Maybe not, but Stanford, Princeton, Berkeley, and the other institutions offering courses via Coursera grant degrees. From the update:

State law prohibits degree-granting institutions from offering instruction in Minnesota without obtaining permission from the office and paying a registration fee. (The fee can range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, plus a $1,200 annual renewal.)

So this amounts to a relatively small money grab for all practical purposes.

I agree with most of what you say (and thank you also for the link), but not "all is well".

Quite possibly the importance of this law should not be overstated, and I agree with you and your children carrying on with your Coursera courses. But apparently you will be doing so in violation of the law.

Should not unjust laws be protested, if perhaps also disobeyed? I would not exactly be afraid to continue using Coursera in Minnesota, but experience has taught me that law enforcement should never be trusted 100% to be reasonable.

That said, you mentioned that you will be speaking with your state legislators -- you are doing as much to fight this as anyone reasonably could, and for that you have my gratitude. If 10,000 other Minnesotans took the same action as you, this would die as it deserves to.

>Should not unjust laws be protested, if perhaps also disobeyed?

I, and millions of people around the world, have been disobeying the draconian drug laws for years and it's getting us nowhere. What advice do you have?

There's a difference between publicly disobeying an unjust law and privately disobeying an unjust law.

Oh right, that's why it's not working. So if we all take drugs on the streets then the law will change. Will try this weekend and report back, assuming that I won't be in jail for the next 5-10 years.

The point is to overwhelm the system. Public civil disobedience brings the issue to the public. Ghandi didn't protest in private.

What you would want to do are:

1) Bring the issue to the public. Make sure that it ends up on the evening news more often than not.

2) Dispel most of the myths associated with drugs (e.g. all drug users are out-of-control crazed lunatics on a homicidal rampage to kill you and your kids!).

3) Get more people on-board. If more and more and more people are getting arrested very publicly for using drugs, then at some point, the government will have to do something, because they can't afford to have a significant portion of the population in jail.

These are the end-goals. Mostly to change public perception and to get the majority of the population on your side. Then you want to bring the issue to a head.

I don't think you're getting above DH3 here (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html).

Aside from that: I wonder what would happen if all the people in the country who are using marijuana at least semi-regularly were to go to some very public place at the same time and light up a joint.

I think it's pretty obvious what happens when you light up a joint in public (in the US anyway). You may not get arrested every time, but keep it up and you will.

That obviousness surely elevates their response to DH4.

Yes, it is obvious. So obvious that assuming that that's what the grand-grandparent is proposing is either disingenuous or extremely uncharitable.

Instead of a posting a glib response, a reasonable thing to do would be to read the wikipedia article on civil disobedience and realize that a single person randomly disobeying a law in public is not how it works.

Well gee, sorry I didn't refute your argument in the form of a DH6 retort in the form of refuting the central point. What most people on the internet seem to miss is an incredibly profound insight.

We are on the internet. Most of these conversations will go nowhere beyond where the people reading them will take them, which is nowhere. I am not interested in writing essay after essay debating things with people who have no power to change them in the first place. This is a waste of time. The internet primarily exists as a form of entertainment. This may be against the spirit of HN but I would argue that HN is against the spirit of the internet. My proof of this is that the vast majority (99%+) of the internet is nothing like HN.

Anyway, to address your point - numerous people take drugs publically at events like music festivals. The result of this action is a lack of arrests and a lack of policy change.

I don't think it's getting you nowhere.

For example, I am about to vote to legalize marijuana in Colorado. I don't know whether it will pass, but you can bet that measure would never have been on the ballot were it not for the decades of data--on the medical and social effects of the drug and its criminalization--provided by people breaking the law.

In my experience it has nothing to do with evidence. People are emotional creatures and said emotion pervades every choice they make, whether they think themselves to be rational or not. Incidentally, the rational ones have the most trouble accepting their emotions which in the grand scheme of things makes them among the most ignorant of society.

I think that the changing attitudes are simply due to the old guard dying from old age and disease. When there are sufficiently few people who grew up in the era of hardcore anti-drug propaganda then there will be a policy change.

If people protest laws they dislike, but not protest against the whole democratically elected dictatorship board with all their laws and regulations, it won't you get anywhere. But once people realise it's not legitimate to aggress against people based purely on "majority rule" with disregard to basic property rights, the government will dissolve.

Representative democracy's like the US are not based on "majority rule". The most obvious example being all the presidents that lost the election while winning the popular vote.

Property "rights" are a construct that is meaningless without government. In the state of nature, you have no rights as against someone who is stronger who can take from you what he wants.

The creation of property rights is an imposition of the dictatorship of the majority. It tells the strong that they cannot use their natural gifts to further their own interests under the penalty of collective force. If the will of the majority dissolves, property rights are meaningless.

> But apparently you will be doing so in violation of the law.

Clearly not. According to the article, the law deals specifically with institutions provide education, not individuals soliciting the courses.

This is much like poker laws that made it illegal for banks to process financial transactions, but never made it illegal for players to participate.

Marginal Revolution University has stated they plan to ignore the law and continue offering their course in Minnesota. They claim they'll fight to the point of going to jail for it.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/10/mar...

Good for them, but I seriously doubt Tyler Cowen would give up his life of leisure for prison.

I will be speaking to my state legislators about this as a precaution after first speaking to the Minnesota Department of Education

It's worth noting the perp is the Office of Higher Education, not the Department of Education: they are separate, cabinet-level bureaucracies. One is not a sub-department of the other.

https://mn.gov/governor/dayton/governors-cabinet.jsp

While I understand that you do not believe this is a big deal, I do not agree. I think this is a major problem. I too am a Minnesota resident and have always felt our state was very educated and progressive. This makes me ashamed to be a Minnesotan.

If you're an employee of the OHE, and you somehow think it's a good idea to go on record defending this silly statute, then you need to be fired. Period. No one at that organization should possibly think applying a decades old statute to a non-degree granting institution is the right thing to do.

Edit: I have contacted the source at the OHE and am waiting for a response. I'm hopeful this was all a misunderstanding, but one can never hope too much for the right outcome when dealing with bureaucracy.

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