The RIT Sentinel

RIT’s Fearless Cleader has not felt it in him to respond to my most recent letter. Now rather than use my RIT access to place my concerns directly into his mail inbox I will stay in the shoes of the “average” student, which is to say I will pay exorbitant sums of money so that administration can ignore me. So since The Banjo-Man doesn’t care about what I have to say, I’ll tell the Internet. So this has become another open letter to the RIT President.

Dr. Destler,

I am responding to the post you made following the flood of email concerning the new RIT DMCA policy. I am sure you’ve gotten even more messages following that response of students who are supremely disappointed by the way RIT has decided to handle this. Our new policy looks like it was written by Joseph McCarthy. How can you possibly believe that the revocation of network access is not a consequence? At an institute like RIT, where professors are often giving their midterm examinations before students have memorized what rooms their classes are in, even a week without access to the network could spell disaster if a class requires online interaction or coursework submission. And why is it suddenly acceptable to do something like this to someone without ANY real investigation or evidence? Are we suddenly guilty until proven innocent? And while it’s true that being forced to denounce an act you may or may not have committed to have the punishment rescinded is NOT an admission of guilt, it is very distasteful.

The RIAA and the MPAA are well-known at this point for blanket or shotgun style threats, hitting people almost at random with threats of legal action and accusations of IP infringement. Are you really going to let these people make RIT an instrument of their witch hunt by taking action against students without proof?

Can ANYONE tell me who thinks this is a good idea?