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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."
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.
You try living at college for 4 years without using the internet for anything personal.
And they could hold on to their precious, precious virginity until they're married, stay off those evil reefers and goofballs, turn their darn hippity-hop music down, and get off your lawn.
None of the above will happen in the few remaining years of your lifetime, nor even in theirs.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When I went to college all I had was a 28 kbit/s line, and I survived all four years. You could survive too on slower access.
I also had to walk uphill, through snow, to get to class.
No, really, I'm serious!
Penn State's snow removal team was not very good.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
And they'd move the snow while you were in class so you'd have to walk up hill through snow going home as well :D
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.
this is not true with universities. They have massive internet throughput, and if they apply DSL speed policies to each residence hall connection, there would be no issue with bandwidth hogs.
As for the other ISP's used in your rationalization, they need to INCREASE.. THEIR... CAPACITY. You don't see any other manufacturer engage in rationing when they reach plant capacity. They add wings to their plant or build a new one.
Not to mention that we have to respond to p2p notices. At our school, we get so many notices that one full-time staffer (at $40k/year salary--with benefits, the cost goes up to around $55-60k/year) devoted to working with issues related to the DMCA. That's not insignificant.
100k a year to censor student lines and deny them the right to civil disobedience (and to face the possible consequences thereof) against abusive corporate interests, or a couple more staff members. Hmm..
Did your university also refuse to provide computer networks because that would require you hire IT staff?
How about sports fields because you'd have to increase grounds keeping budgets?
What makes the MAFIAA so special. Welcome to the real world where costs increase occasionally.
If we didn't discourage p2p using technological means, it may well require more staff, as I assume that the notifications would increase.
Oh NO!! you'd have to do your jobs instead of screwing the students on the MAFIAA's behest!!!
And most of the people who have to do the grunt work of the DMCA enforcement at the university level (again, at least here) really hate every aspect of dealing with it, and really wish that the RIAA/MPAA would just go away.
So instead, you subject your students to the great firewall of china at their behest, inconveniencing them much more (especially wow players) than your staff, who should be doing their jobs. (the jobs people like me paid 30k/yr after aid to do)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!