From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: EFF and its growing pains...
Organization: The World
	<1993Jan21.172021.5930@netcom.com> <1993Jan21.202037.5393@eff.org>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 01:12:34 GMT


From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
>In article <1993Jan21.172021.5930@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>>If the funds were given to individual institutions, they might not be used
>>for the specific purposes which justified those funds in the first place,
>>just as if "lighthouse money" were given to individual shipowners, they
>>might not produce the "right" lighthouses in the "right" places, considering
>>the public interest at large rather than the private interests of individual
>>shipowners.
>
>You may not have heard this, but the federal government doesn't just hand
>out money saying "We hope you use this for the specific purposes which
>justified those funds in the first place." Thus falls the lighthouse
>argument. 

I would suggest not being so flip on this one. Having spent 15 years
in university computing centers, research and education I am certain
that David's point is a serious and real concern.

If you maintained control of the list of access providers eligible for
the "vouchers", and indeed the support were provided as vouchers
rather than a lump of cash you hope they *might* spend on what you
intended, then perhaps it would work. If you don't provide a very
specific list you will come back a few years later amazed at how many
unlikely individuals and companies have suddenly gone into the
networking business.

The professional goal of the university external funding
administrators, provosts, and their ilk, is to shake loose any and all
encumbered funding restrictions. Resistance would be carefully
orchestrated bringing in everything from "we know best what our
university needs" to "this violates the following anti-discrimination
laws", anything to shake it loose.

And once shook loose you've lost control of it, they'll be dancing in
the streets.

As to the parallel with research monies, they generally don't have to
screw around with such funds. In the first place, they tend to be
relatively minor at any but the largest research institutions, $50K
here and there for summer support and a couple of grad students, a
little lab outfitting, etc. That pales next to the tens if not
hundreds of millions of dollars in general funds, and indeed something
resembling academia has to go on, let those small fundings pay for it.

In the second place, they have the other 60-85% overhead to play with
so are generally appeased.

Finally, in fact they do screw with those funds, and investigations
etc are few and far between, oh, it happens (the recent stink at
Stanford), but such events are rare and surprising, tip of the iceberg
stuff.

There is a big difference between how it should work (what you are
appealing to) and how it does work (what others of us have seen up
close.)

Although many universities, by dint of their own internal dynamics,
operate much as you would hope (it would be ridiculous to try to paint
them all with this same brush), many, many others do not. It is a sad
wish-fulfillment that leads people to believe otherwise. And those who
might serve as watchdogs are generally satisfied with doing anything
(and I mean anything) to avoid public notice. Millions go down the
drain, and in return a few phone calls are made and perhaps a person
is quietly moved to another office, on rare occasion even let go,
generally surfacing shortly at another university, praise be.

Among other things, racketeering (or something very close to it) is
rampant in the university system in the US (defined: the morbid
collusion between people who hold the trust of the institution and
those who would benefit from a betrayal of such trust, on each's own
private behalf and at the expense of the institution.)

A lot of the worst abuse is very hard to put your finger on (what
would you make of an individual who, in their exalted capacity of
trust, spent millions of dollars with a vendor purchasing utterly
absurd technology from them on behalf of the university, and two or
three years later has a fat cat job with that company?)

Until something effective is put in force one would be better off
being a bit more circumspect about any such proposal as you suggest,
for the universities' own sake. Too many do not have the internal
dynamics to avoid the worst aspects of human organizational behavior.
This is a case where an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of
cure.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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