We live in a world filled with technology. It seems that every day we discover more and more about the wonders of the Internet and its possible uses to benefit society. The Internet can be used as a tool for research, education and entertainment just about anywhere, including locations such as school, work and the local public library.

Of course, I say school in jest, because my concerns over the availability of bandwidth in the past have since been reinforced by the confirmation of the restriction of bandwidth available to students living in dorms.

This restriction is a problem. I don't care about the actual number of people who are using however much bandwidth for whatever, wherever and whenever. I really don't even care about what the actual amount of bandwidth is that the students are limited to using.

What I do care about is that the current amount of bandwidth available to students in dorms (although justified in someone's mind) is not realistic.

When there are times that it takes 20 full minutes to load www.cnn.com -- this is a problem.

I am disappointed that the students who have necessitated this cut in bandwidth (by incessant, obscene consumption of it caused by downloading song after song and movie after movie) have indeed let the rest of us down. These students used the resources available for the good of us all for their own personal pleasure and enjoyment, and now we all pay. Yes, I really feel that some of this is okay, but there is a point at which you overdo it.

If this is a problem with the physical configuration or layout of the network, it is up to whoever is in charge of that to implement a proper solution. That person must have determined that file-sharing applications indeed contribute to a significant bulk of the problem. Cutting the bandwidth of the students during this last part of the semester while we are vigorously researching information for various papers and projects was not necessarily the wisest decision that could have been made. I know that is not what the people in charge want to hear, but that's my opinion and I am sticking to it.

Other methods exist to fix the problem of bandwidth consumption. If they are not to this person's liking, then I am sure the person is sufficiently competent to develop and implement the "Penn State" solution.

In response to bandwidth concerns, several students have reported that the various groups in charge of technology on campus tell them to utilize CAC computer labs to use to get their work completed.

My response to that is that it is much more convenient to work on projects on one's own computer because one can save all the information in one location -- and one doesn't have to worry about it all being erased when logging off or if the computer crashes. If the project's too big to fit on a floppy disk, one has no worries.

But none of the above even approaches the root cause of my personal concern with the bandwidth problem. Even though this is not occurring intentionally, the content of the Internet is being effectively censored (in this case defined as made unavailable).

The founding basis of the Internet itself was to provide a way for scientists and the military (and later businesses, education facilities, individuals, pretty much everyone) to freely share any data or information. The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, purposefully created the Internet as a decentralized public domain of information. In fact, in one of his essays, he states about the World Wide Web, "There is very little structure. There is the idea that society can run without a hierarchical bureaucratic government being involved at every step, if only we can hit on the right set of rules for peer-peer interaction." Go to www.w3.org for more information.

Censorship contributes to the "dumbing down" of society. It is most important to provide uncensored access to all content of the vast storage of data on the Internet, since the progress of civilization is indeed the advancement and utilization of human knowledge by society. Human progress depends on the accessibility of information, and it is vital that we have access to the data that we already have if we are to contribute to this progress.

And there you have it: frustration with bandwidth, a plea for a better solution and a theory on how censorship affects society. Visit the homepages of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.epic.org) and Peacefire (www.peacefire.org) for more information. I leave you with a quote from Voltaire: "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."