Quote Originally Posted by BuzzBuzz View Post
But seriously the issue with Birmingham Universities list is that legislation is created on the back of "research" like that. It doesn't take a major leap of the imagination to see this "research" being used as "evidence" in some sort of legislation to limit access to certain things on the internet.

If you don't speak out then you can't complain when bad things happen.

Do nothing, or do something - it's an individual choice.
Couldn't agree more. I wouldn't be too worried about it tho, as I still believe most academics, whatever their field, would sooner sell their souls to the devil.

But it wouldn't be too far to go for them to find a means of using this to scare kids away by defining any demonstrated association as guilt -- eg "there will be no use of forums period, and you will be punished if caught". Which is why a pro-active stance is a good one, because that helps to provide other (potentially opposed) professors with something coherent to clue into "before it is too late". Like, I won't stand for this hogwash.

I didn't do my degree in CS, but I guarantee if this issue involved English or Comparative Literature, I could quickly find some heads of institutes who would remember me, take me seriously, and quite probably weigh in publicly.