On Tue, May 12, 2009 13:37, Steven Fischer wrote:
> This is a poor analogy on a lot of levels...
>
> The problem with P2P software on the college campus
>
> 1. legal concern - the transfer of copyrighted works across the college's
> infrastructure without the college being able to track/police it.  P2P has
> legitimate purposes, but the risk of illegitimate use appear to outweigh
> the
> benefits of legitimate use in the eyes of the administrators and regents.
>
> 2. "fair" use concern - ensuring the resource is available to all students
> for the purpose intended.  I think we can all agree that the intended
> purpose is NOT to provide lower-layer transport for P2P
> software/protocols.
> Some of these applications can act as denial of service agents, as the
> bandwidth they consume is not trivial, and can deny use of the resource
> for
> the purpose for which it was intended.
>
> The resource belongs to the college, not to the students.  As such, it is
> up
> to the perogative of the college (administrators, regents, etc) to
> determine
> the conditions under which students can use that resource.  It appears
> that
> a student is taking issue with a specific set of rules and regulations
> governing the use of the college's network resource.  I appreciate that
> indivuals concern, and would invite him, after the current semister,  to
> find a college where the rules and regulations governing the use of the
> network resource provided by the college are more to his liking.

Yes, that all applies to the _use_ of the network resources. "My network,
my rules."
But again, merely having a particular software installed on a computer not
owned by the organization without actually using it does not fall under
the rules that govern the _use_ of network resources.

So, again, I differentiate clearly between possession of a particular
piece of software and the use of that software.

-Joe