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Many Universities Spending $100K/Year Enforcing P2P Rules
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Oct 20, 2008 09:17 AM
from the god-bless-america dept.
from the god-bless-america dept.
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."
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Submission: The cost to colleges of P2P enforcement by Anonymous Coward
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Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
They could use the money and get more bandwidth.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Obligatory quote, I suppose (Score:4, Funny)
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!
Parent
Re:Obligatory quote, I suppose (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that a lot of people aren't taking this issue to heart, and a lot of people agree that relative to the university budget, this isn't a lot of money to be spent. However, people need to stop seeing this as a fraction of a large budget, and start seeing it for what it truly is. It isn't until the economy start to depreciate that people see the value of small numbers, and if they would have seen it earlier, it would be helping them out more in desperate times. Just last year, my university paid for Carlos Mencia to do some stand up. Apart from the fact that he's a terrible comedian that did the exact act that anyone can see on comedy central, I'm sure they spent somewhere in the area of the amount that it would cost to keep our multimillion dollar gymnasium a bit cooler for the rest of the year. When you waste that kind of money on something useless, you're not doing your job of keeping university priorities strait. What my university essentially said, is that it's important for some hack to tell everyone that Mexicans eat burritos, so we have to sacrifice comfort when working out. Hell, the robotics club could have used a fraction of that for a better processor on our land vehicle.
Parent
Re:Obligatory quote, I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
Good post.
Another example on a more-personal level: I have a credit card that gives me 5% off gasoline and food. It's only ~50 cents per fillup or 5 cents per hamburger, which is no big deal, but those pennies quickly accumulate. In just this year alone, I've received $300 in rebates. That's enough money to pay three months worth of electricity bills.
Small amounts add-up to big amounts. Small wastes add-up to huge wastes & internal corruption.
Parent
Re:Obligatory quote, I suppose (Score:4, Funny)
In just this year alone, I've received $300 in rebates.
Then you either filled your car up about 600 times per last year (twice a day) or you ate 6,000 hamburgers (20 per day.) Those are amazing numbers!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I *never* carry a balance. I don't want to pay interest.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do universities spend so much on P2P? Is it just to avoid the legal fees of the RIAA possibly going after them? Couldn't they just allocate a certain amount of bandwidth to each student (maybe like 512k or so) and let them
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They could spend it on Lawyers and tell the RIAA to go screw itself.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Plus, a lot less papers citing Wikipedia as a reference.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony, EMI, Warner Bros, and Universal are stealing from Education, Tax Payers, and Musicians. Feel free to spread that.
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
The college for which I work limits internet bandwidth in the dorms to 384kb/s per port. We still have many port disconnect notices each week due to illegal file sharing.
Access to any other "local" network resources is limited to 100mbit/s (the speed of the majority of our network). This allows them to work on "big data projects like astrophysics", and allows for plenty bandwidth to watch youtube/hulu/etc videos, check email, IM, etc.
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. I don't agree.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When my mother was learning Fortran, she didn't have a personal computer. No one did. She managed. Today, college kids are actually encouraged to bring personal computers to school. Can you believe that? Do you know many punch cards can be bought for the price of one computer? How many typewriter ribbons?
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. And for those who are not stealing, they don't need any more than 128 kbit/s line. That's MORE than enough speed for emailing text or accessing websites. Heck, I access websites using a 50k phoneline, and it works just fine. Why a student "needs" (keyword) more than 128k makes no sense to me.
So, when your OS provider decides to push a 300 Megabyte upgrade at you, what do you do?
128K also isn't enough for live video. Youtube extensively buffers at that speed, and the quality suffers quite a bit. Consider microscopy. Often with even the most well prepared samples, the salient details can be difficult to discern from the background. If bandwidth considerations result in extensive artifacts, those small details all but disappear.
This argument is simply a case of "back in my day, we trudged ten miles in the snow, uphill to and from school."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My college actually does this - MAC addresses of personal devices are registered to your Novell account. (Unregistered devices get no access!) Each user gets 113KB/s (I think they were going for 1000 Kbps) capped across all of their devices.
We have a massive packet shaper. Faculty and lab machines get higher priority, and the "server" subclass operates outside of the shaper. So, your massive astrophysics lab would probably be on a lab machine or a specially purposed machine, or you could ask nicely and
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Or... students could use an academic network for academic purposes only, and get their own bloody network connection if they want to download music? Y'know, just a thought.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
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
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Luxury!! When I started we had 300 baud modems, not your fancy kilobits.
Of course, we were using line editors. Talk about uphill, both ways, in the snow. :-P
Cheers
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When I went to college all I had was a 28 kbit/s line, and I survived all four years.
Presumably that was before the widespread use of Facebook, MSN Messenger, Skype, iTunes, Google Documents, email, flash games, YouTube, video on demand services, online shopping, web forums, etc, etc.
When I was 14 (I'm now 22) I didn't have a mobile phone, but all my friends did and I was left out quite often because of it.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
At my school at least, the dorms are all on the school network and there is no practical way for students to "get their own bloody network".
Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
Or... students could use an academic network for academic purposes only, and get their own bloody network connection if they want to download music? Y'know, just a thought.
I'd honestly like to hear how that is supposed to work when you're living in a dorm room.
When I went to college everything had to go through the school. We paid the school for our cable TV, because outside companies were not allowed to run cables into the dorm rooms. We paid the school for our landline phones, because outside companies were not allowed to run cables into the dorm rooms. And we paid the school for our Internet, because outside companies were not allowed to run cables into the dorm rooms.
I suppose that these days you could probably get a cell phone with a data plan and plug your computer into that... But I doubt it would work very well, either from a cost or performance standpoint.
Additionally you've got a question of where you draw the line between academic purposes and everything else. Is sending an email home to the folks ok? How about emailing your professor? How about emailing another student? What if you're a music student and trying to download something from a P2P network for the sole purpose of writing a report about it?
Colleges are put in the very uncomfortable position of ISP for their residential students. On one side you've got the academic leanings towards free speech and open access... On the other side you've got the same issues ISPs have with providing adequate bandwidth to all their customers...
Parent
Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Personal responsibility?! Not in the USA. Here everything is someone else's fault. You should sue.
--This message brought to you by the Trial Lawyers of America.
Colleges may not have that luxury... (Score:3, Informative)
> 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.
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I suggest that you go to Europe and study here instead. You may drink alcohol before you're 21 too! ;)
Please, no more American students lying in puddles of their own vomit in the student bars! Though it is funny to watch.
Step 3... (Score:4, Funny)
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?
Numbers are fun (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Numbers are fun (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this $100,000 is likely coming out of small campus programs who are lucky to have a budget. If it's being routed out of the overall tech budget, chances are that's the computer lab upgrade budget or other small, but needed programs that could really use that money. Seems a shame that money isn't being used better.
Parent
Re:Numbers are fun (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife has worked for more than one University and let me tell you that the waste across the board is horrendous. This is just a drop in the bucket but yet another example of short sighted wasteful spending. Meanwhile, tuition continues to go up at a rate that greatly outpaces core inflation.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. $100K is still $100K whether it's 10% of $1M or 0.1% of $100M.
That $100K/yr will pay for tuition for how many students? 2 or 3 in proper subjects? (What are US tuition rates, anyway?) IMO, that's much more worth having than some warm body propping up Britney Spears's bottom line.
And if this is "many" colleges, that's a lot of kids who could get college scholarship, who aren't.
Are the US taxpayers happy to have their education tax dollars being spent on this, instead of on educating additional students?
Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
P2P != Music (Score:2)
I would agree that a University could simply subscribe to a service like Ruckus to tempt students away from using P2P. But then what about movies? What about Software?
Corporations with interest in those pieces of IP will still have a complaint. Maybe from a risk P.O.V 100k is cheap. I don't know. I'm not a friggin ichioligist or whatever thinks about profit v. risk.
Oh, what about legitimate P2P uses? I guess screw them. No one has to fear abusing or losing legitimacy.
My university is pro/antibittorrent (Score:5, Funny)
Pennies in Legal Compliance (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Pennies in Legal Compliance (Score:5, Insightful)
the average slashdot reader continues to buy new DVD's and pay absurd monthly video content fees that directly support the RIAA
Those purchases directly support the MPAA. Just as evil, but a different group.
Parent
Who the hell needs P2P... (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
misleading... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
That's only 1 FTE (Score:5, Insightful)
On that basis it's hard to see how they could do a proper job for less.
Re:That's only 1 FTE (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is not whether they could do a proper job for less. The question is whether they should be doing this job at all.
Parent
professors costs $500K (Score:3, Interesting)
Only 100,000 a year? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The scary thing .. (Score:2)
The scary thing is that the **AA would probably offer to police their networks for free, and recoup their costs via lawsuits.
Chop off students' hands (Score:4, Funny)
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?
Real problem is absurdity (Score:5, Insightful)