Before I came to Washington University, I considered myself to be a fairly attractive, desirable young man. Unfortunately, the past year seems to have proven me wrong.
My dry spell rivals that of the Sahara Desert, and the odds in Vegas of me finding female companionship before the Winter Break are worse than the odds my hometown heroes, the Kansas City Chiefs, have of winning the Super Bowl. Even I wouldn’t bet on myself. But I digress. John Donne once said that “No man is an island, entire of itself,” and this line holds true even to the most romantically challenged.
The marvels of modern technology, however, have helped me obtain some relief, as small as it may be. I’m sure almost everyone reading my rant is familiar with Napster and its many variants. You have probably used it to share music and ripped copies of DVDs. Fortunately for you, you’ve never been forced by loneliness and desperation to seek a digital alternative to human companionship.
I have spent many a lonely Friday night swapping “adult” material with the other desperate members of a club of which no one wishes to be a member. Jenna Jameson, my goddess, was suddenly available to me, thanks to WU’s high-speed Internet connection and programs such as Direct Connect and Bearshare. An entire new world had opened up. For once, I was no longer alone on the weekends. While all of you beautiful people were throwing parties on the Row and hooking up, I held my own private parties in the relative comfort of my own room (apologies are due to my roommate, Steve). Much like guys and girls go on the prowl every weekend for someone new, I too enjoyed some variety in my female companionship. Even Jenna Jameson, the queen of the adult cinema, doesn’t always do it for me. After all, variety is the spice of life. I was able to share with my ill-fated brethren many different movies and other “visual aids” and life was good.
But not for long.
In August, when I moved back in, I no longer had the empty feeling in the bottom of my stomach that used to accompany me as I attempted to socially integrate myself with the beautiful people that look down upon me. I knew that I would be able to find companionship in the form of the digital code that brought me my “adult” material. So you can imagine the shock and look of horror upon my face when I discovered what so many people already knew: the goons at ResTech had taken it upon themselves to effectively prevent anyone from making use of the “Peer to Peer” (p2p) file transfer protocol. I cried myself to sleep that night, all alone.
They claim my downloading of companionship and a musical score to accompany my own private parties consumed too much bandwidth and prevented on-campus users from using the Internet. This argument doesn’t hold water. I can’t imagine that there is a huge line in the computer labs for live video-conferencing at 2 a.m., when I want to download erotic material. As empty as that might sound to those of you who have the “mojo” and can experience this in real life, it remains something real to me.
During the day, when the on-campus bandwidth usage is at its peak, no one is in the dorms downloading music, movies, etc., and, therefore, people on-campus should have all of the bandwidth that they want. During the night, when the students return to their dorms and begin to share files, no one is on campus to complain that their Internet connection is too slow. They also need to remember that not all file sharing is illegal. Many indie music groups rely solely on p2p sharing to get their music out.
This egregious violation of our freedom of speech is an outrage, and I suggest that you do something about it. Complain to your RA. E-mail ResTech and complain. We pay for the ability to access the Internet and we should not have arbitrary restrictions placed upon our ability to use what we have purchased. We have just as much right to the bandwidth as these fictitious on-campus users who need so much of it at 2 a.m. on a Friday night. I’m sure we can all reach a compromise. Perhaps something like a time window when p2p file sharing won’t be restricted-maybe during the weekends or after a certain time of day, when on-campus usage is minimal. Besides, winter is quickly approaching, and I hate to be alone during the holidays