Many Universities Spending $100K/Year Enforcing P2P Rules 323
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."
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.
Re:Or... (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:Step 3... (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is that even after you do all this, do you actually make more money?
When the [MP|RI]AA make the Network Appliances being Licensed [audiblemagic.com]
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...
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.
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.