May 20, 2004

Another Educational Institution Surrenders to Fear

Ed Felton reports on the Educause Policy Conference in Washington,

Freedom to Tinker: Penn State: No Servers in Dorms: One of the most interesting parts of the day was a brief presentation by Russ Vaught, the Associate Vice Provost for IT at Penn State. He said that Penn State has a policy banning server software of all kinds from dormitory computers. No email servers; no web servers; no DNS servers; no chat servers; no servers of any kind. The policy is motivated by a fear that server software might be used to infringe copyrights.

Having banned things like student-served blogs and wikis, I hear that they are planning to ban typewriters and pens next. Never know what mischief they might get in to.


Posted by Michael : May 20, 2004 10:41 AM | Law: Copyright and DMCA | TechnoLinks
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Comments

I'd hate to think this sort of thing will be cited as a precedent for government licensing and oversight requirements for running servers.

Posted by: s.m. koppelman at May 20, 2004 10:50 AM


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