News arrived last week via the Electronic Frontier Foundation that Michigan State University had dropped disciplinary action against a student who had been accused of spamming and network abuse because she sent e-mail about a controversial campus matter to 391 faculty members. That justice prevailed seems obvious from afar, but it had.me wondering if the situation would have been far stickier in a slightly differ- ent setting. I'll get to that in a moment. The university initially argued that the student,Kara Spencer, had violated acceptable-use policy by failing to gain prior permission for her e-mail, which reached about 8% of the MSU faculty (any amount above 30 messages triggered the provision). EFF called that restriction unconstitutional and was preparing to file legal action.
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