Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!bradley.bradley.edu!pwh
From: pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Georgia Tech's Restriction on Internet Access
Message-ID: <1991Mar10.175557.4595@bradley.bradley.edu>
Date: 10 Mar 91 17:55:57 GMT
References: <23808@hydra.gatech.EDU> <23963@hydra.gatech.EDU> <23988@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Bradley University
Lines: 51

In <23988@hydra.gatech.EDU> qseclrb@prism.gatech.EDU (BOB BAGGERMAN) writes:
>As an ACADEMIC institution, students (and researchers) need to be able to
>have and use these resources with as much freedom and openness as possible.
>Only in that way will we learn and be creative with this wonderful technology.
>The issue of academic freedom is one that I couldn't feel stronger about.  I
>think we as a major technical institute should be fostering free and creative
>thinking and not saddle us with artificial restrictions.  What if only the
>blessed few could have access to all the library books?

There's a point of difference.  The potential cost to the net at large is
much greater (at least it seems to be to me) if someone gets out of hand
than it is if someone succeeds in stealing/damaging library books.  Just
look at the projected costs from the Internet Worm (of course a fair amount
of the blame rests on the holes in the system, but my point is the cost,
not the means).  Not only that, but being new technology, it's a more
interesting place to vandalize than the local library.

>I could support a more restrictive atmosphere if I felt it addressed a real
>problem and it was the only means to address that problem.  But so far no one
>has demonstrated that a real problem exists, just a lot of what ifs.  

At our site, we have a long history of concrete examples of how some
students (all of whom are given an account for the asking on one of
our Unix systems or on our Cyber 932, depending on what they ask for)
will abuse every break you give them.  It becomes a serious drain on
the time of the system administrators (there are two of us for the whole
campus--it's a smallish campus, but there are quite a number of machines
that we are responsible for) to have to find, verify, and shut down every
single one of these people.

>									I
>strongly feel that I great disservice will be done to the overwhelming number
>of creative, inquisitive minds become someone on the hill perceives that one
>or a small number of trouble makers may do something regrettable and IT will
>powerless to do anything about it when it happens.  Seems to me there are too
>many starched shirt and tie types running the show and not enough pasty skinned
>pencil necked geeks.  I'd hate to see us go back to the days when only a few
>could use all the resources we have all helped to pay for.

There's a balance to be struck, I think.  Free access, damn the consequences,
seems pretty irresponsible to me, because it fails to protect the users
who AREN'T a problem.  And while there are a fair number of those capable
of protecting themselves by way of their technical sophistication, at our
site at least, the vast majority of users are very technically naive and
appear to have no desire to change.  As a sysadmin, I don't see it as my
mission to force them to change.
-- 
-----
Pete Hartman		  Bradley University		pwh@bradley.bradley.edu
    One final word to the young people who listen to this record.  Be cool.
 The retina of the eye quivers to the dance of soundwaves.  Turn on.  Tune in.