Swarthmore Dean Is Caving to Diebold

[MORTARDUDE]

Swarthmore Dean Is Caving to Diebold
Posted on Wednesday, October 22 @ 19:37:54 CDT by David


The Swarthmore Campus effort lead by SDCDC and Why War? has been dealt a setback thanks to the lack of support from Dean Bob Gross.
Swarthmore College, unfortunately, is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files. ?We can?t get out in front in this fight against Diebold,? Gross said during the meeting with over fifty students, staff, and faculty. Although Why War? accepts this position as final, we had hoped that an institution once praised for allegiance to the pursuit of truth would have taken a more forceful stance. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the college would be under no liability after informing a student that s/he should not be hosting the file. Yet Swarthmore is choosing to act counter to the spirit of both its traditions and rules, the latter of which requires that students be given three days to take down work challenged as an infringement of copyright. There is no provision under either the DMCA or Swarthmore?s own rules to allow for shutting down a student?s network access, in particular when no challenge has been made against that specific student. Why War? is deeply distressed by Swarthmore's inability, or unwillingness, to understand that the magnitude of this situation: a fair presidential election!

The Dean only received about 250 emails. Come on people! We can do better than that. Spread this address around and get the Dean to wake up and smell the democracy.

Email the Dean rgross1@swarthmore.edu and respectfully ask him to reverse his position and live up to the patriotic standard set by his students