Re: [TCLUG:14628] RE: Napster

["Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.mn.org>]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 09:06:31AM -0600, Troy Johnson wrote:
> 
> Tim,
> 
> I think you are doing the right thing.  If it somehow becomes easy to
> throttle Napster bandwidth, then maybe it is time to _consider_ it,
> but as it is now, cut it off at the knees.  Don't make routing packets
> your full time job, and make the network fulfill it's mission.  Keep
> up the good work and have a fabulous day,

	And what is the mission?  Presumably, for a school network, I
would assume that it's ensuring that students have access to the things
they need to to learn.  Doesn't that include Napster?

	It is hard to see how downloading songs all day is really a
learning experience, but setting up Napster and getting your first few
songs is.  Blocking prevents even that.

	IMHO, Napster is just as deserving as a distribution download.
If you caught someone downloading ten different distributions of Linux
and burning them onto CDs, would you block their access to sites that
had ISO images?

	I'm going a little overboard (but not much) to try to make you
think, and to prove a point.

	The comments about downloading 200Ms of Linux being somehow more
valid and deserving of bandwidth than downloading 200Ms of songs
requires sysadmins to make a value judgement about the traffic.  Of
course a sysadmin type is going to place a higher value on downloading
Linux because they understand why it's useful.

	Perhaps a budding musician is downloading the collected works of
Jim Morrison for study.  *shrug* Making blanket value judgements is
dangerous and wrong.

	I don't know.  You are sometimes forced into that position.
Value judgements are hard, and shouldn't be treated lightly.  Blocking
all Napster traffic is making a blanket value judgement that most likely
isn't correct.

It's a difficult problem,
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --

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