From: "Jean-Claude Guédon" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 21:15:09 -0400 Of course, Todd, purpose is at the heart of the matter. No quarrel here. The problem is that attributing purpose to some one is always tricky. So, let us agree that the purpose is not university related, the act is not performed on U. time, and it is performed outside the U. network on a non-university computer. And if some people still want to harass a university while knowing that it is innocent, as Todd Puccio hypothesizes, then similar kinds of people may well want to harass a university (or any institution) on any ground, just for the heck of it, and simply to annoy this institution. The nature of the action is no longer relevant so long as it is a potentially illegal action. Example: you drive too fast to go to a U. meeting and hurt someone. Will the wounded person attack the university because it is the end cause of the fast driving? In the case of the downloads, the link is even more tenuous. The illegal gesture can be connected to the university only because the person downloading a scholarly article is also a researcher at the university. While it is true that people acting as researchers will download articles, it is not true that people downloading articles, even if they researchers, act as researchers. For U. time, I suspect that even US universities do not claim time over their employees during weekends, official festivals and vacations. If they do, I am lucky to be working in Canada... Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal