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> Particularly, innocence until proven guilty. This is how courts work. This is not how humans work. Are you suggesting that no action can be taken against a

> Particularly, innocence until proven guilty. This is how courts work. This is not how humans work. Are you suggesting that no action can be taken against anyone by anyone for any reason until a court proves the charge? That's nuts. I am allowed to conclude that someone is guilty or not in my own estimation. Unless I'm a juror it has no force of law, but I can assume someone's guilty without trial NO PROBLEM. Obama's guilty of suppressing evidence of torture. Bush's cronies are guilty of torture. Neither will be tried for any crime. How exactly is my opinion a problem? Should I wait for a court to validate it, or what? Courts can be completely, hilariously, 100% in the wrong. Plessy v Ferguson. Citizens United (arguably, anyway). As a person, I have freedom of association. If I think someone's a rapey asshole because someone came to me with an accusation, it is -well- within my rights to sever ties. Likewise, OpenCourseWare has no particular obligation to host this guy's stuff. Nobody is stopping him hosting it himself if it's so useful, or CC licensing it, or handing it to Archive.org. MIT isn't stifling anyone. There is no persecution here. I say this as someone who 1) probably wouldn't want to watch his lectures due to this but 2) think they should still be available for people who would find them useful. It's too bad MIT decided to take it down. But they're big boys and can make the decision on their own.

Karunamon 12y ago
Are you suggesting that no action can be taken against anyone by anyone for any reason until a court proves the charge? I'd settle for "proven by anyone, anywhere", honestly. (In general, obviously not relevant to this instance!) Society is way too trigger-happy about believing any amount of muck about a person regardless of how flimsy the accusations may be, especially given the current media climate. Not judging someone badly until whatever attack on their character is reasonably proven (empirically, not legally) is the only decent thing to do. All that said, even if there was photographic evidence, timestamped logs released to the public so that there was no doubt he did what he was accused of, pulling down educational content because of that strikes me as a terribly backwards thing to do.

Karunamon 12y ago

Are you suggesting that no action can be taken against anyone by anyone for any reason until a court proves the charge? I'd settle for "proven by anyone, anywhere", honestly. (In general, obviously not relevant to this instance!) Society is way too trigger-happy about believing any amount of muck about a person regardless of how flimsy the accusations may be, especially given the current media climate. Not judging someone badly until whatever attack on their character is reasonably proven (empirically, not legally) is the only decent thing to do. All that said, even if there was photographic evidence, timestamped logs released to the public so that there was no doubt he did what he was accused of, pulling down educational content because of that strikes me as a terribly backwards thing to do.