This is in response to yesterday's editorial "Decision to block Kazaa limits student choice, responsibility" and letters to the editor regarding the article "Firewall will block Kazaa use." I'll be the first to admit that despite what Penn State has said, the implementation of the firewall and Napster was done to prevent us from illegal file sharing. The university failed to consult the student body before making this move. It is true that programs like Kazaa could be used for valid educational purposes, but the fact is, of the thousands of files transferred through Penn State's servers very few, if any, are legal. While the courts recognize that Kazaa is legal, they also recognize that most of the content on Kazaa is not. Is this move going to take away some of our freedoms? Possibly; but Penn State has a legitimate interest in preventing students from committing illegal acts.

The university has the same authority to implement a firewall as it has to create campus police patrols, resident assistants on each floor and electronic locks on every door. All these measure erode our freedoms, but are necessary to prevent illegal acts. We are indeed "adults" here, and we brought this problem on ourselves by clogging Penn State's bandwidth with thousands of copyrighted files.