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Well, this students' aspirations are high, he and his family are devout christians, etc. He feels his life is over.
In the seventies, the Universities turned thier heads and ignored pot smoking; now they are turning in kazza users. RIT turned in a bunch of students recently (ok, i will look for the source).
Now, it is simple to see if an applicant has even been arrested. So this is a huge strike against him. All of his hard work and money for nothing. Now, I know the typical american response is
"Well, thats what he gets. Another one bites the dust. He should not be clicking on those Skype and Messenger and Bitorrent options. Let him rot in jail and dig ditches. People are disposable. "
But, if someone does not want another person to use their bandwidth in that way, block the ports all over campus. You have to build a fence around your pool, dont you? What if you had 2 pools and you built a fence around one and not the other. And then said "well, the kid drowned because he wandered in and he diserves it." Its even easier to block bittorrent ports. But colleges want to entice students to apply and pay tuition by being free and open, and then nail them when they are tempted to use the program. I think the loaded gun analogy applies. They probably treated him differently because he had separated from the university and was no longer paying tuition. But they seem to have the option to nail anyone...
The thing is, using the computers the way he did is not absolutely obviously wrong. It is allowed, perhaps with certian constraints. But step a half a toe over the line, and boom. No warning. (Do you read every letter of your credit card agreement or software install agreements? Or do you just click accept?)
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