MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
in coordination with
Harvard Law School: Internet and Society
Fall Semester, 1999

Writing assignment due before class on Sept. 28:
Legal Analysis

Background

The Beaver's Teeth (www.beavers-teeth.mit.edu) is a widely-read source of product reviews of computer software and systems, maintained by the by the MIT Student Clueful Information Processing Board (SCIPB) which is an approved MIT student organization. On September 6, the Teeth posted a highly critical review of a web commerce server produced by the Boston startup e-Hack, Inc., which had just been selected to support the Massachusetts on-line state lottery web site.

According to the Teeth's review, the e-Hack server has severe bugs, including a synchronization problem that could destroy all transaction information. The review also disparages the quality of the system as "utterly brain-dead".

The Teeth review goes on to criticize Alyssa P. Hacker, president and CEO of e-Hack, claiming that most of the e-Hack implementation is "a trivial modification of problem set from 6.001" which Ms. Hacker, an MIT alumna, had taken during her sophomore year.

Finally, the review claims that the only reason e-Hack's server was selected to support the state lottery is that Ms. Hacker bribed the Governor of Massachusetts, paying him $50,000 to award the contract to e-Hack.

The Teeth web site also includes a public bulletin board. On the board are several anonymous postings (relayed through the anonymous remailer at nym.alias.net) making derogatory assertions about about Ms. Hacker's personal life. One of the postings claims that she "cheated her way through most of her mediocre MIT career". Another posting claims that "she was almost thrown out of MIT", and includes what is purportedly the transcript of her grades as an MIT undergraduate, indicating that she had been placed on academic warning several times.

On September 10th, MIT President Vest received a letter from a law firm representing Ms. Hacker and e-Hack. According to the letter:

The material that you are distributing from the MIT network has resulted in severe financial damage to e-Hack, causing the company to lose potential sales in excess of $10 million. The characterizations of the quality of e-Hack's software are malicious and groundless, as are the defamatory personal statements about Ms. Hacker. Moreover, the egregious accusations of bribery are utterly without substance and have no basis in fact.
The letter goes on to demand that MIT immediately remove the review and the postings from the Teeth web site and publish a retraction. It also informs President Vest that the law firm is preparing to file suit for damages against MIT and members of SCIPB.

On top of this, the Governor's office phoned this morning, threatening to sue MIT for libel if the accusations of bribery aren't removed.

The assignment

Write a three- to five-page memo (2500-4000 words) advising the MIT administration what the Institute's likely liability is here, both with respect to the e-Hack letter and with respect to the Governor's office. Does it matter whether the assertions in the review are true? What about the material that was posted anonymously? And how about the SCIPB members who wrote the review -- what is their potential liability here?

What actions should MIT take in dealing with this situation?

Back up your analysis with references to relevant Court rulings.

Mechanics

You should turn in your paper on-line. Send copies to Hal by email. Your paper must be received before class on September 27. Send your paper as ordinary ASCII text. Do not send documents formatted as HTML or Microsoft Word attachments: these will be returned unread.

Please note that your papers will be graded on the quality of your writing as well as the quality of your analysis. Mechanical errors in spelling or grammar will lead to low grades, or in some cases, refusal to accept the paper until the writing quality has been improved.

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Hal Abelson (hal@mit.edu)
Mike Fischer (mfischer@mit.edu)
Danny Weitzner (djweitzner@w3.org)
Jonathan Zittrain (zittrain@law.harvard.edu)

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Last modified: September 17 1999, 10:53 AM