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Academic Network Censorship?

Posted by Cliff on from the balancing-student-rights-and-network-usability dept.

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"

4 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This isn't "censorship" by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Couldn't some type of priority system be set up? That seems like a better tatic than banning a P2P networks.

  2. Re:This isn't "censorship" by foistboinder · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's their network, not yours.

    True, but the students' tuition is in part financing at least some of the network. Can't it be argued that network access is something the students are paying for?. It's not exectly like a corporate internet connection.

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  3. Re:This isn't "censorship" by foistboinder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately this argument can be abused. "Since tuition can't possibly pay for X, students can't complain about how X is run."

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  4. Re:This isn't "censorship" by gentlewizard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, but every vendor is allowed to define what services it offers to its customers. Just because I pay you $x for product Y, does not mean I have the right to demand you also give me product Z.

    By the same token, universities are able to compete with one another for students by advertising less restrictive policies on net usage, if they want to. Thing is, the legal risk from the MPAA and RIAA make them not want to.