College threatens to sue students over personal email addresses

Even if I try to see their point of view, there are some logical flaws here.

One, "_SRJC" could mean anything, and they can't claim a right to every imaginable use of the acronym.

Two, they seem to think that E-mail is a heck of a lot more secure than it is. They're worried that a sender's address could "look like" something from their University. The reality, apparently not known to them, is that an entire E-mail can be forged, up to the point of appearing to originate from one of their own "legitimate" addresses. So if true E-mail security is their problem, they should first consider not doing important things through E-mail, before filing lawsuits.

Good idea, sue your current students, alumni, and faculty for promoting your half ass college. How does this make any business sense in this economy?

"The possibility exists that it could happen" is justification for many stupid things.

What of people using those 4 letters who have no affiliation with the university, or who may have never heard of it? I hope this goes nowhere. It could open a pandora's box of lawsuits that might never be closed.

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The story was covered on Slashdot though, so you can get a summary here: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/08/1438221&...

I'm hoping it gets to a lawsuit so that it can either be shot down to give precedent to keep this kind of ridiculousness at bay or actually seen through so that I can start making SRJC email addresses to see exactly how they expect to enforce this rule.

“I could see how misuse of the SRJC name might be used ... to misrepresent the college or worse yet solicit funds, fees, or money,” he said in an e-mail Thursday."

I think if they really wanted to do that they would just spoof the email address, no?

“Unless they have been given permission to use that, we are asking them not to use it,” said Ken Fiori, director of computing services at the college. Fiori created the policy to make it easy for people to distinguish between official college e-mails and ones from people who were simply using its acronym. While he has not received any complaints about people trying to use the acronym maliciously to trick people, the possibility existed for that to happen, Fiori said.

Looks like someone has too much time on his hands.

So, should we get something coordinated where many of us get free email accounts with SRJC as part of the address and then email the college telling them to kiss off?

Their claim is pathetic, based on hypothetical misrepresentation. I hope they save face and drop it, and maybe rethink how how many lawyers a community college needs.

So who is going to setup the Senior-Junior Communities of Canada (srjc.ca) free email service?