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Academic Network Censorship?
Mark asks: "I'm the President of the Brock University Students' Union, and recently our IT geeks completely cut off access to the Kazaa network for the entire school. It concerns me, while I understand the need to save bandwidth.. what's next? File sharing bandwidth has been throttled for quite some time here, this is the first all out "restriction" we have seen. As a Students' Union we advocate on behalf of the 13,000+ students here, and we need to develop policy around network 'censorship.' I'd love to hear your experiences and suggestions. Our website is here"
I was a student and and "IT geek" for the university I attended. As soon as Napster got big, every file trading network was we could find got banned. Why? Because it was eating ALL the bandwith. People with legitimate uses for the network (ie: not downloading music and pr0n) couldn't get anything done.
We ended up telling everyone they weren't allowed to trade MP3s, and shutting off accounts that did anyway. Didn't take that long before people stopped trying.
The school network is just that, the schools network. It's being used for academic purposes. Lack of access to a file trading network that eats enormous amounts of bandwith is in no way censorship. If you really want to trade files, then move off campus and get a broadband connection. It's their network, not yours.
give me one thing you can do on a p2p network that you can't do anouther way.
this is not about censorship, this is about the uni taking away your access to steal shit really easy.
If your not bright enough to figure out how to steal anouther way, well you just don't deserve to steal.
Grow up move on.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Stop Whining and go study!
The school network exists to enhance your educational experience not for your personal enjoyment.
Also check the Acceptable Use Agreement that you signed (in that big pile of forms they gave you during registration), unless swapping mp3s and trafficing pr0n is acceptable, I don't think you have a case. You could always contact the Chair, Senate Committee on Computing and Communications Policy, in care of the University Secretary, and tell them that not being able to steal music is bumming you out.
How about all the students who want to use Kazaa go to the dean and offer pay $500 or $1000 more per year to cover the bandwidth costs. I'm sure if you got 50 or so students willing to do this the school might reconsider. Bandwidth rates are only around $700-$1000 per megabit per month, at least they were back in January when I got hosting.
Oh, what's that? You don't want to pay for everybody to use Kazaa? Well I'm sure other students don't want to pay for you to use kazaa, nor do the alumni, nor do the taxpayers (if you or your school receive any financial aid, which is almost a certainty).
If you want to saturate a network connection downloading movies and mp3 files, how about you move off campus and get DSL/Cable rather than ruining the network for people trying to get real stuff done?
rooooar
Honestly this stuff is a bandwidth hog, and its not your network...a college, or corporate network has but one purpose to get work done...thats why its there...if this were your cable modem or DSL line I might see a reason to complain...
My suggestion, build an FTP or Web site and let people download what they want from that...
Or get really intelligent and build a gateway server of some sort, that uses a web interface to submit requests to a machine on the otherside of the University firewall...that machine can do the search and download, and then offer the files up through web or ftp to download...
but na that to much work, you want your stealing to be easy...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Maybe in the States...
SU's in Canada are actually quite powerful.
University of Western Ontario's SU has a budget of about $25 million dollars. Queens $8 million, Waterloo is probably around $15 mil.
Money isn't everything though. We are also very politically active and influential. Student's here gave $5 million to help the university with expansion. That kind of cash doesn't come without some benefits.
Don't get me wrong, they abuse us a lot.. and we bend over every once 'n a while -- but we aren't little and insignificant as you may think.
you, sir, have no idea what censorship is. Are they blocking ports to prevent free speech, divergent thought, student demonstrations, or criticism of the university?
No. They're blocking ports to reduce bandwidth consumption by people downloading w@r3z and mp3s. blocking frees up bandwidth for real acedemic pursuits, and is, in fact, anti-censorship, as the available bandwidth can be used for emailing your complaints to the student newspaper, putting up a "these teachers suck" homepage, etc.
Setting up a P2P Network within the LAN? That way, bandwith costs aren't an issue and the student union can still trade files amongst themselves.
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
I present the following analogy:
Suppose there's a lecture hall in some building on campus, and it has a nice multimedia projection screen setup. Now suppose that some local club (lets say, oh, the Anime Club) had arranged to show movies in this room during the evenings or weekends when it wasn't being used for academic purposes. Now imagine that this club became fairly popular, and started holding movie marathons every Friday night -- and that this use of the facility resulted in people spilling drinks in the seats, leaving trash all over the floor, causing extra wear on the seats from having their feet up, trashing the bathrooms in between movies out of boredom, having to replace the (expensive) bulb in the projector much more often, and perhaps having to leave the lights and building AC/heat on during weekends where before they were not needed.
The result is that somebody has to clean up their mess (janitors, building maintenance folks), legitimate users of the room begin to be affected (trash left in seats, projector breaking during lecture, etc), and in general an academic resource becomes overwhelmed with a non-academic use.
The fact is, if the above scenario ever happened at a university, the club would eventually be denied access. I don't think any resonable person would see this as somehow taking away a right or privilege of those students. Their use of the resource became too great. In the case of internet access, if you must download off Kazaa, live off campus and get a cable modem -- just like this hypothetical Anime club is free to use somebody's private home or rent some other facility for thier showings. No one is saying that you can't use Kazaa, they're saying you can't overwhelm an academic resource with a bunch of unrelated spooge.
I happen to work as one of the monsters who busts you on your ass when you deserve it. This includes things like: trying to break into the registrar's office, forging emails, plagiarizing, and general illegal behaviour (like trading of copyrighted material).
First off, a round of applause for those smart enough to realize that this could be illegal. You will save yourself some trouble by avoiding the file trading networks.
Second, I've sat on the panel and voted to suspend or expell students after numerous warnings. Most of the hamsters are too stupid/shortsighted to get
it. We are protecting them - when I show the offending hamster the registered letter from Big Media that we just got, most of them seem happy enough to take the local restrictions and know that we'll fend of the lawyers. You probably suspect it, but there are admins out there who do get a kick out of banning you. Repeat after me: BOFH.
Third: I'm as much for academic freedom as the next university IT geek, but I don't believe that this freedom extends to illegal acts. What's next: I should let you surf for bestiality because it's part of a biology paper? Get real. You are expendable: if you expose your university to too much liability, they will drop you like the proverbial hot potato. I'm more than happy to make CDs full of evidence and hand them out to the cops and lawyers like AOL hands out free trials.
Four: It costs money. Lots of money. While we try to peer with as many places as we can, we're still looking at paying over half a million dollars this year for bandwidth as an operating expense. *Operating Expense*. Just like heat and water and power. Your tuition doesn't go anywhere near that bill. Neither do your residence fees. If I were to actually start charging the residence for what they use, their bill would probably double. Traffic analysis shows that over 85% of the packets bound for rez are not academic in nature.
Last year, by shooting down file trading, I reduced our bill over a hundred thousand dollars. Tell me again why the board/ president/ provost/ chancellor/ dean/ whoever cares about you being able to commit mass copyright infringement?
Five: speaking of traffic analysis, go right ahead and change the port. I know what the client looks like in operation. I do content inspection, so I'll still see what you're up to. I know if it's mp3s or divxs, and I know when you're over the limit.
Six: "What about libraries?" you cry. "We can copy stuff there!" hm. Well, you do copy things there for two reasons. Either because the library has paid a license fee or because you're too stupid to realize that you're breaking the law.
So. If you don't want me telling you what to do with my network (It's mine because the university hired me to maintain and secure it, and has given me authority over it) then go buy your own network. I bet it won't be long before your ISP gets DMCA letters and suspends you there too...