Editor,
The article in Wednesday's Daily Lobo headlined "CIRT blocks access to Facebook.com" reiterates the University's policy of doing whatever it wants and then making up reasons that have no grounding in reality.
The reasons given for blocking the site are all founded on a false correlation between the UNM Facebook and the original Facebook or on untruths about unsolicited e-mail.
The article explains that the original block was put on UNMFacebook.com. I remember when that site came around and I was invited to join. I looked at it and realized that it was a poor and redundant knockoff of the original Facebook. The UNM Facebook was in fact an extension of another online network called CollegeFacebook.com. Both of these entities were banking on the success of Facebook.com and using that name - which is not copyrighted or trademarked - to gain users. Furthermore, while the UNM Facebook may have tricked people by looking like UNM's Web site, Facebook looks absolutely nothing like any official university site, so there could be no confusion when it comes to choosing a password for the account there.
The article also paraphrases Jeff Gassaway saying that Facebook.com sends out large amounts of unsolicited e-mails. The only e-mails I have ever received from Facebook - and I have been a member for more than a year - are e-mails that let me know other people have made a comment on my profile or invited me to join a group on the site. However, these are based on an option I enabled. If I so chose, I could have disabled these options and received no e-mails from Facebook whatsoever.
The bottom line is that the University may have had good reason to block UNM Facebook and its parent, College Facebook. However, they jumped to conclusions based on the similarity of the names without doing any actual research, and have wrongfully denied access to what is a beneficial and enjoyable online social network.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
The dean of students and whoever else is involved in the process to decide Facebook's fate should enable access to the site immediately.
Nathaniel Schneider
UNM student
