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A Ban On Napster Becomes A Ban On Education?
Ecliptik asks: "I am currently a buisness student at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. Many of my classmates and I are writing a large paper for a law class we have on Napster's legal battle. Due to the current ban which our university has put on Napster, many resources on Napster's site are blocked. So what do you think? Is this not only a ban on music, or is it also a ban on educational resources as well?" I can see why you'd want to ban the Napster client, which uses resources other than the standard HTTP port, but why do some colleges block access to Napster's Web site as well?
As already stated and guessed, the University of Dayton has blocked a NUMBER of file-sharing services due to ABUSE by people sharing files indiscriminately. We have a partial T3 running at 24MBps... last year we had 15MBps. And we were maxed out the FIRST WEEK the students came back.
The strain on our T3 was so bad, people from off-campus trying to get to our official web server or to check e-mail couldn't. I am the *NIX admin here. When _I_ can't even get 0.5KByte/sec to try and download software to improve the network, it is extremely frustrating... and frustrating for the other 15,000 people here on campus who have a LEGITIMATE need for internet access.
I was just told that the reason all of napster was blocked was that the web server and the service log in server are one in the same. We only have a layer 3 router (i.e. normal router), and not a layer 4 firewall, so separating the services was out of the question. It was all or nothing. Sorry folks: triage.
The University of Dayton is in no way for censorship. This issue is only about bandwidth abuse. A 24Mbps pipe is NOT cheap. I'm sure that students don't want yet ANOTHER tuition hike just to pay for the 20-40 or so students who use about 90% of our bandwidth, robbing the other 15,000 people on campus (students, faculty AND staff) of their right to use the Internet.
If students would learn to be responsible about bandwidth usage, the University of Dayton wouldn't NEED to limit ANY web site or internet service.
=plink=plink=plink=
(Just my $0.03)
-Richard Balint
University of Dayton
-Sir Woody Hackswell, the Arch-Fool
or have they banned search engines too?
Baz
..that the people implementing the ban (the "sysadmins" at your school) don't know what they're doing. I've noticed a *lot* of media coverage referring to Napster as "a website that allows people to [blah blah blah]". I think it's perfectly possible that the facts are just not being checked.
perl -e 'print "zj5GuPW9b.sEiQQVgvL1Tr." ^ pack("H48","000f5c3312353e4a166e12311d363d3905172
Unfortunately I doubt the majority of the users would keep very good track of how much the mp3s they've downloaded takes out of thier allocations, much less keep track of each web page and each image on that page that they view.
of course, you could give them a website they could go to to check on the amount of bandwidth they have used that day, or maybe write a quick little app that shows it in thier taskbar.
People see the world as they are, not as it is.
My computer connects to the internet, wich has illegal things on it. Should I disconnect my computer from the internet...Signed, Perplexed
Dear Perplexed: No, you should destroy your computer, lest you might later succumb to the urge to reconnect it to the internet, where as all upright persons are appalled to know, licentious talk of illegalities freely and shamelessly circulates. While you're at it, you also, just in case, should pluck your eyeballs out, as per Matthew 5:29.
Yours Dr. Laura - WKiernan@concentric.net
what this means to educational institutions in general, but you ought to be able to get to napsters pages through anonymizer.com or rewebber.com, both of which launder your packets.
-mark
It's not just about legal issues. My campus is heavily debating a ban - our sysadmins for the most part hate censoring anything, but our single T1 line simply cannot handle it (we're talking about transfer speeds sustaining 50 - 90 KB/s prior to Napster's release, and not even being able to sustain 1 KB/s after people started using it en masse).
In the past, there was a loosely enforced policy in effect where students could only run Napster in the off-peak hours of 1 - 5 AM so as not to interfere with legitimate academic usage. Now the school has budgeted for a second T1 line, which has been completely dedicated to academic machines (faculty, labs), leaving the other for students to fight over themselves. Needless to say, accessing anything from your dorm room here still runs at about 50 - 500 bytes/sec - aka 0.5 KB/s max. I couldn't care less about people downloading songs and what not, but when it takes minutes on end of waiting to load simple web-pages something needs to be done. It's not denying people of an education to block the Napster website, it's ignorant Napster users who spout "Why do my songs take so long to download on Napster?" while 150 people are simultaneously downloading from their machine that deny us of an education...
I agree that censorship is not in any way an American ideal, and it's anyone's choice to break the law and pirate copyrighted music, but I fail to see what other choice is available when Napster users are robbing others (like myself) of their tuition money that goes towards school-provided Internet access.
I'm open to any suggestions anyone might have as a step to resolve such issues, or any advice on alerting the campus of the obviously rampant problem and steps that can be taken to resolve it... Feel free to drop me a line at cmgroteATthethirdDOTnet. Hopefully there will be enough bandwidth for your message to go through =)
"Try that in Windows!"
This seems like a mutated version of the question about the legality of napster itself (and many other things).
Should something which provides the means to do something illegal itself be illegal?
I haven't been following the napster case very closely, but I gather that the decision in napster's case has been something like, "yes, pending further review".
So, napster's website provides access to napster, which could potentially be used to do something illegal. Therefore, napster's website should be banned.
While we're at it, we should ban networking.
It could very well be that they're trying to avoid being sued for providing direct access to the napster program. They're probably looking at the DECSS case, where it's apparently illegal to post a link to the code. It's just a knee-jerk overreaction attempting to keep them out of legal hot water.
Actuaries - making accountants look interesting since 1949
I go to Georgia Tech (who sent the attorneys a nice b!tchslap of a letter, refusing to filter out napster). Our information technology center is understaffed, and doesn't properly configure much of its software until enough users complain. I don't blame them, I just think that they need more people. I think that your website ban could either be from a few things: 1.There being a miscomunication between your adminstration and your IT department 2.Your IT department is like ours and just didn't configure the filter right 3.The software they use is really simple and just blocks eveything from napster.com. Ask your IT department if it is intentional that they are blocking the web site, and if it is, start bellowing that the schools federal funding should be revoked due to blockage of the free press(the napster site). I suggest the school newspaper as a good place to start, and your local congressman/ state representative too (you'd be surprised how well people like that respond to individual requests that can get them lots of press, like this one). Alumni that work in the technology field or Media are also good people to ask to talk to the school. Your Alumni association will probbably help you find this type of person (if you don't tell them why you want them).
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Banning websites (-websites-, not napster's service ports) is totally and utterly stupid. I can't think of any reason for it, OTHER than attempting to hide information and prevent students from becoming aware and educated about the program.
It's one thing to have a policy banning the -use- of napster, it's a whole other thing to (effectively) ban dissemination of information about it. In fact, i'd even go so far as to say that your school is probably breaking some of its own laws, if not actual U.S. laws; take a look at their by-rules and such, see what you can find.