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Comment by ZoFreX | Hacker News Reader

I'm British and I did things like this constantly throughout school and university.

Then again, people do keep asking if I am American...

"Student protest" is such a common phrase in the UK (or at least it used to be) that I'm surprised it doesn't auto-complete on Google.

I did find myself wondering about what students protest about these days, and found this example (from 2009):

"Students who occupied their university for three days to save its cleaners from being deported claimed victory today. Up to 60 students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London took over the principal's office on Monday."

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/jun/17/soas-occupa...

Students protesting to try and protect some of the least powerful people in our society - now that's a student protest.

Edit: Here is a recent example from France where students protest against a deportation of someone to Kosovo:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24575182

here in the UK the Education Act 1986 makes it a duty of a University to safeguard its members freedom of speech (within the law), and makes it unlawful for a University to do what Yale did here.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/61/section/43

I'm sure the Yale bureaucracy likewise has reams of paper scribbled with words like "academic freedom" and "free discourse". What's interesting is that people are actively defending these principles at personal cost -- not idly hoping for some high hallowed office to dole them out. That's the observation.

if you wish to be pedantic they seem to be working around the university using clever technical hacks, rather than fighting the underlying issue.

(note that it's the law in the UK, not some worthless university document)

This is an active and vibrant defense of freedom, not some worthless British law.

(Oh I'm sorry, did I just libel Her Majesty's judicial system? How careless of me. I should watch what I write).

> This is an active and vibrant defense of freedom, not some worthless British law.

> (Oh I'm sorry, did I just libel Her Majesty's judicial system? How careless of me. I should watch what I write).

guess I missed the bit of the US constitution where other people's databases were considered protected speech.

Wait, why is the British law worthless? I'm assuming I'm mistaken, but your claim seems to be solely on the fact you can commit libel from what seems to be the USA on a website not hosted in the UK. That would seem to imply our entire legal system is broken because we don't censor other countries publications, and it'd obviously be interesting to hear the justification behind that.

"but your claim seems to be solely on the fact you can commit libel from what seems to be the USA on a website not hosted in the UK."

We're sidetracked, but that's pretty much the definition of libel tourism, and the UK is notorious for it:

http://www.economist.com/node/12903058

The UK routinely finds libel judgements against non-Britons, outside of Britain, having essentially no connection with the UK. It's an extremely broken system responsible for widespread legal harassment outside of Britain (examples in article).

It's not enforceable in the US obviously. There's a US law that explicitly prohibits that, provoked by a particularly egregious case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act

Nitpick: You're talking about England and Wales, not the UK. In this part of the UK it's not even called "libel".

Thanks, didn't know this!

It's OK - I believe the French used to have saying along the lines of "As touchy as a Scot"... :-)

> (Oh I'm sorry, did I just libel Her Majesty's judicial system? How careless of me. I should watch what I write).

Look, this is getting old. We had a massive libel reform which, while not as revolutionary as many people wanted, still made significant changes, and you are doing the thousands of people that worked hard to make that happen a giant disservice. Please read up on the status quo before making cheap jabs.

Yale seems to be claiming that this website uses Yale's data in violation of their terms of service or their copyrights, that is to say, that such use was not within the law. I don't see how this law would prevent a UK university from acting in exactly the same way.

(This section of the 1986 act, BTW, was introduced in response to anti-apartheid protesters disrupting speeches by members of the South African government, in order to require universities to stop such protests. It's not at all a pro-free-speech law.)

Although it's less applicable to folks not at the university who are talking about it.

Over 10 years ago, I ran a site which collected community anecdotes of the interview process at various universities, mostly focusing on Oxbridge colleges. The aim was to open up information that was often passed down between alumni of private schools where there was a tradition of attending those colleges -- leaving people like me, with no alumni to talk to, in the dark about what the interview process would be like.

I got several threatening letters from deans at the various colleges, and had a long process of trying to decide what to do. I didn't make any money off the site and couldn't afford legal help, so I ended up taking down a couple of the anecdotes when one college was particularly nasty, but for the most part ignored the threats. Ended up handing the site over to someone else as I was focusing on my university work and less involved in the admissions phase of things, and I'm happy to see it's still alive :)

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