Sean+Agustin+on+Downloading+Issue

The internet presents treasures of accessible and useful information to people, excelling beyond the expectations of the many. With the continuous growth of the Internet, communication is better than ever, information availability has grown tremendously, and services such as banking, job searching, movie ticket reservations and the like can now be offered to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Although the access to internet presents us with advantages, the ‘unlimited’ access to the internet poses disadvantages as well. Probably the most known concerns are that of “copyright issues”, piracy, and similar legal issues.

Access of materials such as video or audio streams, online journals and the like is not in itself an issue. The issue on this matter is the downloading of these content within the university campus. I believe that it is only right for the university to block torrents and websites for downloading content because of 2 reasons:

1. The university is a formal institution that may be held liable if it provides the students and educators to download illegal content (say for example music that is shared through peer to peer, cracked software and the like. I believe that it is unfair for the part of institutions to be “dragged into” legal concerns due to  a sole person’s illegal doings). Allowing the students to illegally download these kinds of materials is similar to allowing piracy within the walls of the institution. As much as the students need certain softwares, digital materials and the like, they can access their MSDNAA to legally download Microsoft products conducive for learning and equally access the online journals provided by the library.

2. Since the university caters to a relatively large number of students, the issue on downloading large content on the internet becomes an issue of “concern” and consideration for the thousands of students who may want to access the internet. Downloading large files on the internet (games, videos and softwares) will definitely consume a higher bandwidth and may even cause data limit, which will make the already slow internet connection speed slower. I believe that it is only justifiable to block certain websites (gaming sites, torrent sites).

Although I am not in favor of allowing downloads within the campus, I am not against downloading of these contents outside the school. The difference between downloading in the campus and outside the campus is that the materials that are often downloaded in campus is used, not only for personal use, but for business (youtube videos may even be used as part of a student’s project, which may be considered as copyright infringement) and teaching. If these materials are to be used as resources for classes or to be distributed to people, they better be paid for, just so the creators get what they deserve, as in the first place, the creators gave their time and effort to earn the pay and credits for their work. Contents that are downloaded in our homes or outside formal institutions are more often than not downloaded for personal use only, and are usually not shared with a hundred other people. As I subscribe to a decent internet connection at home, I believe that it is only right for me to be able to access whatever website I want, be it educational or for entertainment purposes only. If I access or download content in my own home, no other person or formal institution will be held liable. Although I am for downloading content at home, I want to remind that as responsible people, we must know for ourselves that we must not distribute in any way the content that we have downloaded from the internet, give due credit if publishing content that is not your own, and respect the creative rights of the owner of the content.

** Is DOWNLOAD or ACCESS of materials in the net still an ISSUE? ** Yes, if downloading is done within the walls of a formal institution.

** Does it RESTRICT or ENHANCE learning? **  It definitely enhances learning! Given the trove of information in various forms, from different sources, and updated as often, students and educators definitely can easily get and learn from the information presented on the internet. It enhances learning in a way that it makes useful and timely information accessible to   anyone, in any form, which also increases the opportunity for "self-education/self-learning".