MIT Students and New Jersey Courts

Wired has an interesting piece on the New Jersey AG attempting to intimidate a set of MIT students for some software they developed in prototype form which the AG seems to believe on some yet to be defined basis as in violation of New Jersey law even thought the software has never been sold and resides in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The article states:


Four MIT students behind an award-winning Bitcoin mining tool will face off against New Jersey state authorities in court today when they attempt to fight back against a subpoena demanding their source code. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing 19-year-old MIT student Jeremy Rubin and three classmates in a remarkable case that stands out for the measure of aggression the state is using to obtain the code and identify anyone who might have tested the mining tool.

 Now perhaps this is one way to get some talent back to New Jersey but seems a bit heavy handed. The article continues:

“It’s a very broad subpoena that hints at criminal liability and civil liability,” he says. “For a bunch of college kids who put something together for a hackathon—they didn’t make any money, the project never got off the ground and now is completely disbanded—there are some very serious implications.”

 There is always the mens rea part of criminality which seems to be missing here as well as the act of doing something covered by and withing the State of New Jersey. Perhaps the Sopranos managed to survive because they did nothing with computers!