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Entertainment Industry Gets In The Way Of Education At Penn State
from the what-we-teach-our-children dept
Penn State University has a cozy relationship with the RIAA - and it shows in a variety of policies they've put in place which seem designed more to appease their RIAA friends than to encourage education or a real analysis of issues. They were one of the first universities to kick students off the university network when it was discovered they had set up a local area system for exchanging files. Then, of course, they put in place the somewhat useless (and mostly unwanted) plan to take student funds to pay Napster so that students can get streaming music which they don't get to keep and which only works on campus. Now, Ed Felten reports that the university has forbidden any student from operating any kind of server from a dorm. Despite the fact that it seems clear that whoever came up with this policy doesn't seem to know what a server is, Felten points out just how terrible this is from an education standpoint. They're preventing students from learning about important and useful technologies just because there's a chance that students may use a server to infringe on copyrights. In other words the risk of infringement outweighs the benefits of education to the administration at Penn State.
Reader Comments
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But seriously
Would giving server rights to dorm freshmen with their body piercings really improve their education? Or will they just use it for illegitimate purposes? It makes sense that such resources would only be granted to more advanced students who really need them.
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Re: But seriously
Good point. At my company the people with body piercings aren't allowed in the server closet.
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Re: But seriously
Servers includes database servers. I would say banning people from running mysql could have an impact on some students.
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No Subject Given
I know when I lived on campus the resnet didn't allow servers and I think most schools around here are the same. It wasn't really for illegal purposes it was to save resources for those who were using the network for academic purposes.
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Re: No Subject Given
There are plenty of "academic purposes" for servers. Electronic publishing comes to mind. Most modern universities couldn't even run without them.
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