>MIT really respects good hacks and good hackers.

Oooof in light of Aaron Swartz. He plugged directly into a network switch that was in an unlocked and unlabelled room at MIT so he could download faster and faced "charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny, and unauthorized access to a computer network".

MIT really didn't lift a finger for this either.

>Swartz's attorneys requested that all pretrial discovery documents be made public, a move which MIT opposed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

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jszymborski 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Agreed, it's hard to see this as some sort of "hacker respect hacker" in light of MIT's other actions.

It's very hard to extract Robert Tappan Morris from the context of his father being an extremely powerful man when trying to figure out how he managed to get away with what he did.

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LukeShu 2 days ago | parent [-]

At the same time, it's easy to believe that MIT of 2013 is very different than MIT of 1988.

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jszymborski 2 days ago | parent [-]

While that's entirely possible, MIT was established in 1861. I think the old boys club was established long before 1988.

	▲	pyuser583 a day ago \| parent [-]
		I’m pretty sure MIT had a “state school” stigma until after WWII. Vandaveer Bush made sure they got lots of war research.

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jacquesm a day ago | parent | prev [-]

They didn't lift a finger and spent a lot of effort on whitewashing their own behavior afterwards in the guise of an independent review.