MIT's The Weather Oldest and Largest Today: Mostly sunny, 56°F (13°C) Tomorrow: Chance of rain, 62°F (17°C) Newspaper Sunday: Partly cloudy, 55°F (\3°C) Details, Page 2 Volume 119, Number 60 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Friday, November 19, 1999 "BLBCloses Second SAE House Career Fair Sponsors '0 By Dana Levine STAFF REPORTER Squabble OverProfits Wri ti ng the fi na I chapter of " Sigma Alpha Epsilon's history at Dispute May Deter Future Combined Fairs the Institute, the Boston Licensing Board Tuesday suspended the fra- By Karen Robinson The combined fair, held Oct. I, , ternity's dormitory license for their ASSOCIA TE NEWS EDITOR was a good experiment according second house at 480 Beacon Street. Combining the fall's three career Class of 2000 President Hugo Barra. The suspension came after the o fairs into one event this year led to Companies who attend M IT career Dean's Office withdrew recognition unprecdented student and company fairs have been asking for one con- • for SAE last week, "The Boston satisfaction but significant dissent solidated career fair for years. Licensing Board will only recognize between the organizing groups. Behind the scenes, however, things a dormitory license if a fraternity is The fair's organizers, Society of did not go as well. • affiliated with an institute of higher Women Engineers, Graduate education," said Dean for Student Student Council, and Class of 2000 Finances now nearly settled Life Margaret R Bates, have clashed over how to divide the Only this week, distribution of This action comes on the heels more than $200,000 raised by the the funds the career fair collected in ~of the licensing board's revocation event. September is approaching comple- of the housing license for SAE's Because of the various confu- tion, said Class of 2000 Career Fair other house located at 484 Beacon sions and disputes that arose with Chair Mykolas D. Rambus. Street. this year's joint career fair, mem- Before the fair, the groups hardly "There are more than 20 fraterni- bers of the Class of 2000 council talked about the financial side of ties in Boston. Most of them are MIODRAG C1RKOI'IC-TlIE 7ECf! will recommend that there be two arrangements, Rambus said. They well run, but several are out of con- Dean for Student Life Margaret R. Bates testifies before the Boston separate career fairs next year. began negotiations about how to ,trol. They have to shape up or they Licensing Board Tuesday. Members of other groups prefer split the money a few weeks after will be shut down," said Daniel F. that next year's format follow this career week. Pokaski, who heads the licensing again. tion that the chapter was taking." year's closely, and that there be "The Class of 2000 has a greater board, "MIT is getting a bad rap about only one fair, they said. demand for funds," with more fre- The suspension is an "indefinite this" said Pokaski in describing the First eviction effective today Companies also overwhelmingly quent events than the other groups suspension" that will last until MIT reaction of the media to the SAE sit- The closing of the house on 484 approved of MIT's only having one have, Rambus said. "This was the officially reestablishes recognition uation. Beacon Street becQmes effective career fair th is semester, said primary motivation for beginning •of the fraternity, he added, "There clearly is some disap- today. "We have identified spaces Katherine O'Dair, Assistant Dean of negotiations," he said . pointment on our part," said Bates. Residential Life and Student Life The current proposal is for each Alcohol incident spurs suspension "We were encouraged by the direc- SAE, Page 19 Programs. group to receive the same amount of The latest series of actions began money from the career fair as they "after SAE was suspended following have historically from separate an alleged alcohol incident at the Colleges Experience MP3 Crackdown career fairs, based on average earn- fraternity on Sept. 7. SAE was on ings from 1997 and 1998. After this <'C' Institute probation at the time of the By Matthew F. Palmer dent newspaper. In order to regain Internet service providers responsi- the remaining money will be split • incident due to previous alcohol STAFF REPORTER their online access, the students had ble for illegal content on their evenly in three ways. violations. Recent crackdowns against the to attend a lecture on copyright law. servers unless they have been alert- "There has been quite a history illegal distribution of audio files on The sanctions came after a ran- ed of the problem and don't act. Career week spawns confusion ..of actions against SAE," Bates said. college campuses have led to a new dom search of 250 student computers However, when organizations like The main source of confusion Pokaski said that the suspension emphasis on MP3 files, a popular that were publicly served files on the the RIAA tell a college that they've was career week and how it related of the two housing licenses were compressed audio format. campus network or had easily discovered illegal MP3s, the college to the career fair, O'Dair said. "base~ on complaints by neighbors Seventy-three students at guessed passwords, The Tartan is legally required to look into it. During career week, several • and based on MIT's actions." Carnegie Mellon University lost their reported. Also, the Record Industry The Act also requires that an companies ran workshops for stu- Pokaski added, however, that the in room connections to the Internet Association of America reportedly organization be set up to receive and dents, Wu said. Additionally, the licensing board would reestablish for illegally sharing copyrighted MP3 alerted CMU officials to student sites act on these complaints. stopit took three sponsor groups each had activ- • the dormitory licenses of both hous- files over the university's network, with pirated recordings. on that responsibility for MIT. ities for meml-~rs, such as the SWE es if MIT were to recognize SAE according to The Tartan, CMU's stu- The RIAA also recently threat- "We've been pretty vigorous banquet and '=lass of 2000 casino ened to bring a lawsuit against the about enforcing copyrights even night. University of South Carolina and one before the act came into place," There were eight corporate spon- of its students who was allegedly seil- McGovern said. sors of career week, Barra said. ing copyrighted MP3s, "Wired Richard J. Barbalace of the "We had more companies wanting News" reported. The suit was Student Information Processing to sponsor, but we just asked the dropped after the university installed Board declined to comment, saying ones whose help we could use in a system to track IP addresses with that SIPB would need at least a week putting together career week activi- high online traffic, possibly caused by to formulate an official statement on ties," Barra said. the exchange of pirated music. MP3 issues. Barra and Vice President Sean Fabre made the fall career fair a MIT responds to piracy RIAA launches piracy campaign major part of their campaign last MIT has not had to issue sanc- The RIAA's actions with CMU spring, and the ideas for career tions for MP3 piracy according to and USCS are part of its week were originally theirs, Barra Information Systems' Project SoundByting Campaign, whose pur- said. Manager and [email protected] coordi- pose "is to raise awareness that repro- The Class of 2000 thought that nator Timothy J. McGovern. ducing and distributing music illegal- the career week was class-spon- However, complaints have been ly is akin to stealing, and such actions sored, and sponsors in fact paid the made regarding copyright infringe- have serious ethical and legal conse- class of 2000 directly. After negoti- ments and, following an investiga- quences," according to its web site. ations this week, this money was tion, students have been asked to It claims to be protecting free transferred to the career fair group remove the illegal files. speech, though many students worry account, Rambus said. "When we get complaints from a that the crackdowns are an unfair vio- The money collected for career copyright holder or agent like the lation of their rights. The RIAA is a week was fairly minor compared to RIAA, we are required by law to non-profit group who represents 350 the sum collected at the rest of the investigate and take some action," recording companies. fair, O'Dair said. McGovern said. CMU had been a target of the According to Barra, this money The investigations are not like the RIAA for three years according to was approximately $40,000, and surprise searches at CM U, The Tartan. Without commenting on will be split exactly three ways. McGovern said. "The law requires the CMU case, McGovern said that KRzrSZTOF GAlOS-TlfE TECf! that complaints from copyright hold- stopit is not afraid if the same type of Reasons for separate fairs cited Teresa Raine '99 as the title character in the Musical Theatre ers are specific and have an address. scrutiny were placed on MIT. "We Working with "three distinct Guild's production of Evlta playing Nov. 18-21 in La Sala de We then go and look at the sites." have no concern that we'd be singled organizations who run things very Puerto Rico. The 1998 Digital Millennium out because we've been following the Copyright Act does not hold laws," he said. C.areer Fair, Page 17 Professor John W.Dower Comics Author James Gleick wraps up World & Nation 2 receives tJ1eNational Book his national book tour for Faster Opinion .4 Award.