Web Censorship on the University Campus?

Censored Prof asks: "I teach at a private university in San Antonio, TX. Besides some horrendous bandwidth issues, we have lately been subjected to Lightspeed and/or Websense blocking. This means that suddenly, university students are unable to see content that the rest of the (free) world sees; and more importantly are often blocked from very legitimate information crucial to their area of study. Papers like Village Voice are blocked. Anatomy sites are blocked. Electronic Art sites are blocked. Anything with ".mp3" is blocked. Our CIO has assured us that this is not uncommon and that there are good reasons to do this on a university campus. It strikes me as odd that students must leave campus to learn, and smacks of censorship in horrible ways. So my question: Is this unique to our university? Who else at what other universities are subject to similar web-content blocking? Are we alone, or part of a disturbing trend?"

Comments

Sounds Like...

[eldavojohn]

Sounds like this isn't so much censorship (which is the blocking objectional material) as it is a concentration on reducing bandwidth. If your school's primary interest is to serve HTML & e-mail to the students, then can you really blame them for blocking high bandwidth items?

For what it's worth, I am a masters student at George Mason University and regularly take advantage of free wireless on campus. I have had no problems accessing any sites although there are times when it just runs slow in general. Maybe this is because there are people streaming large media? I'm not sure.

Are we alone, or part of a disturbing trend?

If this is a trend, the only thing disturbing is that a new football stadium is probably a higher priority for a University than better network equipment and bandwidth. My undergrad was at the U of MN and they constantly wanted their own football stadium--they would spend any amount of money and create any parking problems necessary to get it.