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‘Massive downloading of music files from NAPSTER and other similar services,’ claims the IT Task Force, is what’s impairing our life, liberty and pursuit of streaming video.
BROCKLESBY
THE WISE FOOL
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‘Downloading illegal files is bad, mmmkay, but as long as you’re doing it, avoid doing it during peak hours.’
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COMMENTS ON THE PASSING PARADE
ITS Alive!
By Michael J. Ballway
CRUSADER FEATURES STAFF
R
emember the Information Superhighway? There was a time, once -- some point in time after Al Gore invented it and before Bill Gates tried to monopolize it -- when the Information Superhighway was quite the "site" to behold. It will change the way we live, they told us. Anyone can be a surfer on any given server. It was a full-access undivided highway. It'll knock you off your asphalt. Well, lacking any other explanation, this reporter finds it likely that the government's favor of the Information Superhighway has fallen into the breakdown lane. It's as if our routers' route has become clogged and potholed, neglected like so many of Massachusetts' urban byways in the Commonwealth's laughably overbudget attempt to run a highway through a large tunnel in downtown Boston. Take, for example, the recent slowdowns on the campus ethernet. The ethernet, our connection that vast and wondrous World-Wide Web, has been doing a better job at imitating the Queens-Midtown Tunnel than the Autobahn in recent weeks, and the info-jam is causing problems on campus. There exist some vital data that are simply not published in the local newspapers, such as the remaining home schedule of the NFL's Oakland -- or wherever they are this year -- Raiders (I will save until next month the rant about how the Worcester Telegram & Gazette is just one more pawn in a massive conspiracy against Sebastian Janikowski fans). Only the Web, and only a quick and speedy Web, can satisfy Holy Cross students' overwhelming need for up-to-date Andre Rison receiving stats. With the ethernet seemingly backed up past Route 128, life here on the Hill has ground to a halt as intrepid Crusaders spend more and more time staring at that stupid animated "N" moonscape. Which brings us to the recent revelation by ITS -- an occult sect which lives in the basement of Fenwick and emerges from time to time to issue new computers to the Freshmen -- that the problem with the Internet is not that we don't love it, it's that we love it too much. Time to back off a bit there, guys. "Massive downloading of music files from NAPSTER and other similar services," claims the Information Technology Task Force, is what's impairing our life, liberty, and pursuit of streaming video. Being unfamiliar with this so-called Napster software, I contacted my pop-culture informant in Loyola, the foremost "Baha Men" authority in aught-three, Joey Brocklesby. Joey has been known to trade an MP3 or two, or three, or four dozen, in his day. He swears, however, that he has quit the Napster habit and is strictly a Kimball larcenist now. He told me that Napster users, with their J. Crew sweaters and SUVs, represented a dangerous lot and could turn violent if given a stern lecture, but nonetheless he agreed with the College's policy. The College's ruling on Napster, of course, is the same as its position on every issue of importance. "Downloading illegal pirated files is bad, mmmkay?" says the policy, "but as long as you're doing it, avoid doing it during peak hours." As a side note, the College has a strange definition of peak hours. The afternoon hours during which classes are scheduled are considered "peak," yet the evening hours during which students are in their rooms and free to use the Internet for research, communication, and study are considered "non-peak." This writer realizes that these "non-peak" hours which the Administration is willing to concede to the ravaging hordes of Napster pirates precisely coincide with the at-home (i.e., not-on-the-College-network) hours of the school Administrators, but let's not belabor that point. So we the students have a yellow, if not green, light for non-peak lawbreaking. Sound familiar? Twice each year -- in late November and late May -- the loveable RAs of Holy Cross tell us that "playing your stereo at aircraft-engine decibel levels is bad, mmmkay, but as long as you're doing it, avoid doing it during our three-day Study Week." And who can forget our enlightened alcohol policy? "State law prohibits consumption of alcohol by minors, mmmkay, but as long as you're doing it, avoid doing it in Loyola." I suppose the next legal gem to emerge from Fenwick will be a modification of the euphemistic "Academic Honesty" (in English we call it "Plagiarism") policy: "Don't copy your term papers straight out of published books, mmmkay, but as long as you're doing it, avoid using your professor's own doctoral thesis." The moral ambivalence of ITS is not what bothers my sophomore companion, however. His endorsement of last Wednesday's "Internet Performance and Utilization" edict comes with one caveat. "It is against College IT policy to do anything that intentionally degrades the performance of the network," the mass-email proclaims, placing Jesuit-educated Joey in an ethical quandary even greater than the piracy questions facing otherwise-lawful Napster addicts. "The network exists for the use of the students, right?" he asked me. Sure, I told him, sure it does. "Yet the College says that using the network for trading MP3s constitutes 'intentionally degrading' the network's performance. Or at least it implies this. Now bear with me here. Doesn't all usage of the network degrade it? If nobody used the network, then the hypothetical first person to use the network in such a pristine state would enjoy 100% performance of it, and each subsequent user added would take away a certain amount of bandwidth, until you reached the present situation of molasses-in-January loading times, which the College seems to blame on Napster and Napster alone." I saw where he was going with this, and mentioned that Napster gets the blame because it's such a resource-intensive program, sucking up kilobyte-seconds like so many sprinkles on scoop-your-own sundae night at Kimball, far more damaging to the network's efficiency than some penny-ante Website. "Fine, that's a fine point for a person like you," he said, "who paints with a wide moral brush. But if it's true that Napster users are guilty of a cardinal sin by 'intentionally degrading' the College network, aren't we all guilty of lesser sins, but sins nonetheless, by 'intentionally degrading' the network ourselves?" Joey started to get that look in his eyes, the look of a hunted deer who was afraid that he'd violated ITS policies once again. "What exactly is 'intentional degrading'?" he asked. "Any Website, or online broadcast, or file-trading scheme, 'degrades' the network. And after this email from the IT Task Force, every student is fully aware of the 'degrading' nature of Internet usage. Thus whenever we access a Web site -- whenever we listen to a music file online -- whenever we write Email or use Instant Messenger -- we are 'intentionally degrading' the College network!" I told Joey to sit down and not worry about it too much. I reminded him of the loud-music and alcohol policies of the school, which don't make much sense either. The kid was clearly shaken up, and claimed that he wouldn't use the Internet ever again, but I know him -- he won't pay 50 cents every day just to check his horoscope in the Telegram & Gazette; he'll come crawling back to the Information Superhighway within a week. And the Information Superhighway, thanks to Napster users, will come crawling back -- or just plain crawling. This article ran in the 6 November 2000 edition of The Crusader, on pages 11 (front page of Features section) and 13, below the title "IT'S Alive!" The inside headline was "Brocklesby vs. ITS." |