PSU: Proudly Saving Us from Ourselves

I was browsing digg not too long ago, and came upon an article about Bittorrent. When attempting to read further, I was greeted with bright white text proclaiming “Blocked Website!” on a dark blue background. Now, I live in an apartment for students at Portland State University, and am, therefore, no stranger to this screen. It typically appears when attempting to access certain known spyware sites, and – yes – torrent sites. However, this wasn’t a torrent site I was visiting – I was specifically visiting the digg comment section about the particular story. The story was blocked anyway.

Interested, I decided to try something. I googled “bittorrent,” and was (un)surprised to see this:

blocked website

Heh, apparently googling for Bittorrent information is prohibited.

Google for torrent? Blocked. Google for torrential downpour ? Blocked as well. Geez…overzealous much?

Do I agree with PSU blocking P2P traffic? Not really, but due to our limited bandwidth, I can see why they do it (even though this must have unintended consequences: doesn’t World of Warcraft contain a bittorrent client for its update process, for example?) Regardless, blocking the traffic itself is one thing…but doing keyword blocks on the URL string? Wow. What else is going to set off the great Cymphonix Network shaper? Pornography? Current events?

Thanks for saving me from myself, PSU.