This morning, Sean Haufler ’14 published a blogpost in which he asked Yale to publicly apologize for blocking CourseTable and wrote a Google Chrome extension called Banned Bluebook which gives similar functionality to the official Yale Bluebook online many students use to arrange their schedules.

“I hope I don’t get kicked out of Yale for this,” Haufler stated.

On January 10th, Yale blocked YalePlus, also known as CourseTable, created by Harry Yu and Peter Xu citing it as breaking university copyright policy. As a result, Xu and Yu renamed YalePlus to CourseTable and re-uploaded the site. Yale then blocked the IP address of CourseTable and Xu and Yu published a blog post speaking against the decision and asking the university to reconsider.

Haufler’s letter addresses Yale decision to ban CourseTable and the Letter Mary Miller wrote supporting Yale’s decision to block CourseTable.

He states his intent in creating Banned Bluebook is twofold. First, to assert that if Yale grants access to data to students, it does not have the right to control how the students view the data. Second, to decry the use of Deep Packet Inspection, or scanning data packets for information and blocking based on that information, and IP Blocking as a means of censorship stating that it is both “unethical” and “futile.”

“Dean Miller, I humbly request that you, on behalf of Yale, either uphold or deny students’ right, under school policy, to build software like Banned Bluebook,” he concluded.

Haufler’s letter reached the front page and second position on Reddit as of 2:30 pm today.