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Originally Posted by robbdn
This is really debatable, and one of the most frustrating things about campus IT departments. Just imagine if campus libraries started sticking their noses into how many books you copy, and whether or not you're actually following fair use copyright laws? Just imagine if they suddenly decided they had the right to know what you were reading and restrict your access to it because you "read too much."
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Our campus library does both of these things, and I think it entirely appropriate. They have legal guidelines posted in the photocopy room in the library, and if they catch you breaking them, there will be consequences. And they also limit our "bandwidth" by limiting the number of some kinds of items (CD's) that we can have at a time and by limiting the length of time we can have them. They do this for the same reason IT departments restrict bandwidth - so everyone has access to a limited resource. You could certainly argue about whether the placement of the limit is reasonable, but I doubt you'd get far arguing against the placement of the limit at all, especially using the library analogy.
Not to mention my opinion as a student, which is that I don't appreciate my internet connection crawling along because some asshole who didn't pay anymore than I did is running a P2P program that is hogging the bandwidth. That used to happen here all the time and now they've put a stop to it - it's much better now.