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Many Universities Spending $100K/Year Enforcing P2P Rules
Scott Jaschik writes "A new study documents just how much money colleges are spending on enforcing P2P rules through software license fees, hardware, and other costs. Many private universities are spending more than $100,000 a year — a major allocation of funds. An article in Inside Higher Ed explains the study and its findings."
They could use the money and get more bandwidth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1) Scare congress into passing tough new regulations on colleges.
2) Get colleges to pay for your copyright enforcement.
3) Profit! Maybe...
The problem is that even after you do all this, do you actually make more money?
After RTFA it didn't actually mention percentage of total budget that univ. are spending on this. If its 50% of their total budget it is an issue, if its .000000001 how much of an issue is it really? If they are looking to save money there are probably a lot easier ways to do so with much bigger savings.
Sorry, I don't believe this. I do the exact same thing for large networks and it doesn't cost anywhere near that much, what I think they did was *any* software or hardware which was used in the process was added to the total cost.
Ordinary IDS/IPS which just happens to also be used to detect/stop P2P? Add full cost of the solution.
These stats are shady.
My university both supports and is against bittorrent. There are posters that say we shouldn't use it, while at the same time there are instructions on how to securely use bittorrent on a university website. Guess it's because we have one of the co-creators of bittorrent on campus.
Reality check: this is peanuts.
How much does the university pay for all kinds of other legal compliance? How many lawyers on staff?
There's no doubt this is a ridiculous compliance issue. But the average slashdot reader continues to buy new DVD's and pay absurd monthly video content fees that directly support the RIAA. Dog forbid I mention watching less television or consuming fewer media conglomerate products.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Went into the campus computer lab to find that the entire room was sitting on live IPs. No NAT, and when I shut off the XP firewall, I was able to ping the machine from the Internet. Naturally, I was logged in with local admin rights.
Fire up Apache and plug in your external HD chock full o' goodies and away you go...
Speed tests showed 80Mb down and 90Mb up. Yes, life must be nice sitting on a phat backbone with a class-B to waste. And we have to wonder why we're running out of IPv4 space?
It's a bit misleading in my experience.
I would say that the services and equipment which are used to fight or support or enforce P2P issues are easily at the $100k level in larger universities.
However, the equipment and services are also used for other purposes such as regulating bandwidth usage, fighting viruses and worms, and limiting network access to only members of the University community.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
On that basis it's hard to see how they could do a proper job for less.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Chris: BOOBIES!!
Lois: Chris, That's enough! Well I'm sure glad to be out of there
Peter: You said it Lois, what those people are doing just ain't natural.
Chris: BOOBIES!
Lois: Did you hear me young man?
Meg: I don't know what the big deal was? I thought they were nice.
Chris: BOOBIES!!
Lois: Peter?
Peter: Do it.
(Everybody besides Chris puts on sunglasses and Lois reveals the Neuralizer from Men in Black, and uses it on Chris)
Lois: Did you have fun at the circus today Chris?
Chris: Elephants are bigger in person!
Seriously, you want ruthless compliance then mutilate people who violate it. And while we're at it let's execute pornographers in the town square. In fact let's make all crimes capital crimes. What about all the GOOD things they do in North Korea?
In as much as I suspect that few here will want to hear your opinion (modding should indicate whether I'm right about that), I was hoping to find something along those lines.
My first thought when I read the headline was "big deal". When you consider the cost of a private education, $100k at a private institution is trivial. The government takes that much from me every year, and I figure the same people up in arms about the P2P cost wouldn't shed a single tear over my tax bill. Although at least the institutions can do it by choice, whereas my options all involve shedding myself of income.
Just enroll 2.5 more students and you'll have an extra 100K
Colleges are put in the very uncomfortable position of ISP for their residential students.
and they should behave like an ISP and stop filtering crap for unrelated corporate interests.
Just follow the law and provide information if served with proper papers, and let the students *gasp*, make their own choices and take responsibility for them.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
$200K salary and $300K office, staff overhead. The prof is expected to pul in that much in grants.
I recently graduated from Penn State and the real problem lies with the fact that the people in charge of discipline action have no idea what they are doing. They are not special tech administrators but instead send you to the Judicial affairs office for violations. I had my internet turned off for 2 weeks and could have gotten a disciplinary action from the school (such as suspension, expulsion, etc) because someone had apparently downloaded the shareware version of Dreamweaver from me. Yes I am talking about the 30 day trial. Until you get administrators that understand technology, you cannot be effective in this fight against student rights.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Didn't Google start up as a dorm room project?
At one point, Google was using half the college's bandwidth running their search bot. Something people should think about next time they say "limit bandwidth" or "6mbs" is not needed for anything other than downloading MP3s from P2P.
In Soviet Russia ^H^H^H America, The bank finances YOU!
> and they should behave like an ISP and stop filtering crap for unrelated corporate interests.
The RIAA then sponsored a bill trying to get their federal funding cut off if they didn't do something about P2P. That provision was watered down, but they've still been told to, in effect, "do something" about the RIAA's problems.
Whether they want to or not.