Anybody who feels this is censorship is really REALLY not paying attention.
From what I gather, this is nothing more than something to protect network resources. If you visit their web site, the name S&T stands for Science and Technology. Therefore, one can assume high tech research on the campus may require protection of the internet resources and bandwidth. This would be the reason for packet shaping. Prioritizing the importance of the traffic and sending the important stuff through first.
As for the quiz. If I were an IT security officer, I would think this was a smart move, not only for liability purposes, but also from a standpoint of enforcement and protection. If you have signed off on this, stating you understand the law, and still violate it, you can't come back to me and say "I had no idea this was a problem. Please don't restrict my access."
Taking a look further into their site, they have tools which allow for class collaboration without having to use P2P sharing directly from the student's system.
Therefore, the policy likely doesn't keep the student from doing their work, it probably actually frees up network traffic to allow that work related traffic to flow faster. The university is State Funded, meaning they can't just increase fees to accommodate additional bandwidth needs, so they have to work within certain constraints. These constraiints pose a challenge to all Universities to ballance the need for an open network and making sure research and educational traffic gets priority.
The University isn't censoring. Furthermore, if the student feels he has a God Given right to break the law, there is nothing stopping the student from obtaining a broadband card and stealing the works on his own dime.
I pay taxes too and don't feel I should be paying for students to break the law. It is encouraging to see my hard earned $$ going towards at least being sure the student is aware they are breaking the law, as opposed to being blissfully ingnorant and pretending it doesn't happen.
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Anybody who feels this is censorship is really REALLY not paying attention. From what I gather, this is nothing more than something to protect network resources. If you visit their web site, the name S&T stands for Science and Technology. Therefore, one can assume high tech research on the campus may require protection of the internet resources and bandwidth. This would be the reason for packet shaping. Prioritizing the importance of the traffic and sending the important stuff through first. As for the quiz. If I were an IT security officer, I would think this was a smart move, not only for liability purposes, but also from a standpoint of enforcement and protection. If you have signed off on this, stating you understand the law, and still violate it, you can't come back to me and say "I had no idea this was a problem. Please don't restrict my access." Taking a look further into their site, they have tools which allow for class collaboration without having to use P2P sharing directly from the student's system. Therefore, the policy likely doesn't keep the student from doing their work, it probably actually frees up network traffic to allow that work related traffic to flow faster. The university is State Funded, meaning they can't just increase fees to accommodate additional bandwidth needs, so they have to work within certain constraints. These constraiints pose a challenge to all Universities to ballance the need for an open network and making sure research and educational traffic gets priority. The University isn't censoring. Furthermore, if the student feels he has a God Given right to break the law, there is nothing stopping the student from obtaining a broadband card and stealing the works on his own dime. I pay taxes too and don't feel I should be paying for students to break the law. It is encouraging to see my hard earned $$ going towards at least being sure the student is aware they are breaking the law, as opposed to being blissfully ingnorant and pretending it doesn't happen.