Currently studying in Munich, Germany. A dormmate here was a bit peeved
when he found out that upon matriculating and logging onto the VPN, he
couldn't bridge the connection to use his internet phone. He bought
many months worth of the service at a flatrate before coming here, and
would have saved a good deal of money over getting a prepaid cell phone.
Connection bridging itself is obviously something universities would
keep a close eye on, but c'mon, it's an internet phone!
Also, "net neutrality" issues are I think somewhat different than the
"network freedom" issues you were talking about. You mentioned closing
ports, but what about slightly more sophisticated data strangling (god
I love that I can phrase things here with such obvious bias!), like
throttling all BitTorrent traffic, for example? I remember a
year or two back, there was a university in California that imposed a
campus-wide ban against Skype because of its tendency to appropriate
dorm computers for use as supernodes, to take advantage of the massive
bandwidth. Within days, Skype reps were at the college, and what do you
know, the ban was lifted....
Conor
Asheesh Laroia wrote:
On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Fred Benenson wrote:
1) Student copyright policy
What rights do students have to their work? Moreover, are they allowed to
freely license it?
2) p2p filesharing policy
How willing is the university to play ball with RIAA's extortionist
tactics? Do they readily give up student information, or ban the student
from the network? 3 strikes? 1 strike? Do they offer services to students
who are sued? What is the party line about the copious amounts of file
sharing that is obviously going on on their campuses?
3) Privacy / Free Speech stuff
Is running Tor legal? Can you protest easily?
4) Open Access
How receptive are the librarians / academics to open access publishing?
This is a hard thing to quantify, but perhaps you guys have some better
ideas.
5) Network freedom
How possible is it for students to run their own servers on their
computers attached to the institutional net? Is the network designed to
block that? Is there policy against it?
Do the networks block some IP addresses or some ports from inbound or
outbound access? (e.g., Johns Hopkins blocks any access to the IP address
of some major bittorrent trackers.)
I believe it is a Free Culture issue because so many of the major
innovations (especially those that have come at odds with the copyright
industry) have emerged from college dorms. Furthermore, this is a crucial
part of a participatory Internet rather than a network that lets you
download but not offer content for download by others. By all means, you
don't have to do all of this big, difficult question (although hopefully
with help, we can map this), so consider this my suggestion.
By no means do I think that, if I contribute no work to what is already
set to be a useful, exciting project, I get to pick what questions you
guys ask. (-:
-- Asheesh.
--
"Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance,
science fiction..."
-- Art Spiegelman
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