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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.
The first popular peer-to-peer decentralized network, Gnutella, attempted to address the problem of port blocking by allowing any port to be used; this helped in some cases, but because default port numbers were assigned, port blocking was still able to severely disrupt the network. Assigning a random port on installation might solve this problem, but could cause others...
Gnutella also has problems in that it is TOO centralized. Jumpstarting a connection onto the network, when one's host cache is empty, is problematic. Some software writers attempted to solve the problem by providing host caches, nodes that simply share live connection points, but these caches became targets for lawsuits. There are a few alternate methods for looking up live nodes, but any such method is also susceptible to being shut down.
The conclusion? If someone has control over your network connection, it's really difficult keeping them from exerting that control. Anything that succeeds will have to be enormously fluid.
I Am An "IT Geek" And I Blocked Peer-to-Peer
I have taken and am taking mesures to snuff most P2P applications around here, especially Kazaa and other types of sharing for ONLY one reason, BANDWIDTH.
I know you know this but it is a real problem, the students spend all day downloading pr0n and mp3s hogging every available bit per second. Academic usage would grind to a halt when some new CD came out, it was terrible.
Don't worry about censorship, it was just a decision based on some fuggin' tards that can't stop beating off to mp3s and listening to pr0n grinding the network to a halt.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
Current systems don't try hard at all to download files from locations on the local network, which is pretty bad.
One of the coolest things about P2P is the ability to have closer servers with the same file.
Freenet doesn't have the pretty GUI, but it does a better job.
May we never see th
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
I go to a college where we are unable to use p2p programs from the dorms. Nobody complains, however, if we just copy files over the campus network. At Iowa State U (not where I go :-( there is a program that searches ftp and windows shares on their network for available downloads. That's definetly a cool solution. I apologize for the little content in this message, but I'm listening to Off The Hook...
Everyone on the university network here has a full Internet connection, apart from the Windows Networking (NetBIOS/SMB/CIFS) ports, which work locally but are firewalled at the edge of the university. There's no data rate limiting other than the limitations of the hardware (my college was wired up with 10MBit hubs last year, but they've upgraded to 100MBit switches this year; I've had the full 100MBit download rate while ftp'ing Mandrake ISOs from another college's mirror, so there's certainly no artificial cap there).
If anyone uses significant amounts of bandwidth (there's no formal limit, but it seems to be measured in gigabytes a day), they're told to reduce that for the benefit of other users (on a "please stop before we have to force you to" basis).
This is great, because when you want to download something big (a CD image for instance), you get a huge data rate and don't have to wait long, but the network admins can still prevent people from downloading stuff constantly and overloading the network.
I suppose a more automated equivalent would be to give everyone the full 10/100 bandwidth to start with, then automagically reduce priority for people who've used too much in the last week/month/whatever.
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.
I work in a college IT department. The RIAA has sent letters to the boards which grant accreditation to all the U. S. Colleges "asking" them to help control the redistribution of material they own the distribution rights to by "asking" the Presidents of Colleges they accredit to prevent their students from violating their distribution monopoly. The implication is that future accreditation processes may include a "DRM good citizen" check. College presidents and trustees take this very seriously, folks, and this is no longer simply a matter of bandwidth. Without accreditation, its pretty damn hard to get students.
First, have you actually talked to your IT geeks to see how much bandwidth we're talking about?
Second, have them explore options to totally cutting it off. I agree that nuking Kazaa, et al, on an academic network probably isn't a bad thing, but I also agree that it's a bit of a slippery slope, what with things like freenet actually getting a bit of actual content. Bandwidth throttles can be inexpensive if you're lucky. They could also offer "full access" accounts for a premium, and slave those to one part of their bandwidth... then it would be the p2p users fighting over their limited space, and not taking up all the real users bw. My last sysadmin job, we set it up so p2p and anything not p80 was blocked during the day, but after work we'd open it up... perhaps your geeks could open the network on off-peak hours.
And, if all that fails, take a couple older PCs, put them in a room by themselves, share a cable modem or dsl between them, and toss in burners. Students who want stuff not available on the academic network can use those to dl and burn whatever they want. (and yes, there are issues with that... it's a last resort, ok?)
When it boils down to it, the most important thing is "Is this network for academic, or general, use?". If the U is giving you access to do your work with, then it's academic and they're right, but if it's general use, then it should be open. IMHO.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
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.
Realistically, what you should be after is a completely open Network Acceptible Use Policy decision process. All users should be able to involve themselves in this process (students, faculty, administration, IT staff). During this process, the different groups will bring different desires to the table, and then be able to hash out an acceptible solution for everyone.
Realistically, there will always be some restrictions on what is considered "proper" network usage, since network bandwidth is a limited commodity. By having an open NAUP process, everyone has the chance to fully understand the limitations required, and contribute to the policy.
My suggestion it to propose an NAUP "board" with a representative from the above groups responsible for writing and approving such a policy. They should have the power to create and enforce such a policy, and the power to deal with any reprocussions thereof (e.g. if more bandwidth is needed to support the desired features, levy a fee on the appropriate user base).
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
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...
Here at Carleton, they recently killed all IRC connections in residence. I complained to Campus Computing Services and the Residence Association, but to no avail. From their point of view, IRC was taking up too much bandwidth from download hogs, so they killed everything. Now the only way I can connect with people back home is to use my shell provided by the good folks at The Engsoc Project. Monitor your situation, and don't let them end up like us.
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.
God damn, I wish I had some modpoints. Short, sour and absolutely spot on. Too bad you're going to get nuked Karma wise.
There are legitamate views on both sides here, but it's important to remember that it's not JUST an academic network. It's also a production business network for the university -- academics like to thumb their nose at that, but without the business side, paper doesn't get ordered, paychecks don't happen, etc. It's also a network serving the resident student population. Porn is a legitimate recreational activity on your own PC in the privacy of your own home. MP3 swapping gets a little stickier, but shouldn't be the university's problem in dorms any more than it's comcast's problem if I do it from home. I'd like to see more universities have different connections to serve the different populations. Likewise, charge appropriately. No reason the cost for the dorm connectivity should come from non-resident student tuition. Maor effort should go into making sure everyone pays for what they're using.
Prock see.
Find an open HTTP proxy out there on the net, and Kazaa away...
(+10, redundant)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I work at a large university in an IT department (but no the one that manages the network).
Over 70% of our traffic is from Kazaa an other P2P clients. The university has had to triple it's available bandwith on the campus uplink costing mucho dinero. They have tried very hard to allow all traffic without restricting certain protocols or ports, but this year it was just too much. If I'm not mistaken, they are now rate limiting access to the dorms.
Why not use taffic shaping? Becuase we are currently handling over a gigabit traffic for most of the day...buying hardware to support that much traffic would be quite expensive. Second, P2P applications are a moving target, so new applications or savy users will be able to bypass the filters quite easily.
So now, the students will have to deal with slow access in the dorms if they are going to keep using P2P applications. At least the rest of us, with legitimate internet uses, have bandwidth available.
ÕÕ
give me one thing you can do on a p2p network that you can't do anouther way.
Make content scalable to any arbitrary level of demand, on the fly. That is what FreeNet can do, by replicating data on demand to more and more nodes the more it is requested. P2P is the first and to my knowledge only architecture on the net that has this capability, a capability that could well revolutionize the usefulness of the net. And I'm not talking about serving up pr0n or mp3s, I'm talking about making popular webcasts and websites more available and more accessible, rather than less. I'm talking about an approach that solves many of the scalability issues inherent in the net today.
The reverse of the slashdot effect: popular data becomes more available rather than less, with the cost shared by those requesting the data, thereby lowering the bar for those who wish to provide said data (a much nicer alternative to being forced to upgrade your web service when your site gets linked to by slashdot).
this is not about censorship, this is about the uni taking away your access to steal[sic] shit really easy.
First, what you just described is a form of censorship, it just happens to be a form you agree with.
Second, if they were serious about preventing copyright violations they would have to remove all means by which students can share files, which must include scp, ftp, http, irc, IM, and email, to name just a few.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy