Ohio University Bans File Sharing

Following the spirit of colleges such as UCI, Ohio University will be banning p2p file sharing. This debate essentially boils down to two issues:
1. Is the network (with file sharing) too slow to use for other purposes?
2. Are the students willing to pay for extended internet service?
I wrote about UCI's Resnet censoring p2p earlier this year, but once I talked to a ResNet representative, I found that #1 is the true point of contention. While survey after survey says the student body is unwilling to pay extra for any extra services (and the equipment required to offer different service types is prohibitively expensive), the one point that the two sides of the debate conflict on is whether or not the network was bogged down prior to the network ban. The "slow network" argument has been used before, and what I notice is all the students who I ask from around then say that the network was never slow, and all the network administrators insist it was unusable.

Clearly one side is exaggerating, but if nothing is done, network censorship will continue to spread around college campuses.

If students want to protect their network's speed, they would be wise to build a support base of students willing to sign a petition that they would pay extra. But until students aren't poor, we will probably be subject to whatever internet cutbacks the administrators deem cost-effective.