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Absolutely. It's even fairly standard practice on some jobs that require heavy brain use that employees take short breaks during which computer games are very accepted for a little wind down. My father used to play Freecell quite a lot.
Yes. As long as it doesn't affect their work, then I think they have the right to install a PlayStation or Xbox if they want to. It is their room, after all. But it could get in the way of their studies.
I personally have nothing against college students having gaming or other things.
But here's the deal. College dormitories are college property (whether private or public). As college property they are subject to just about any rule the college wants to impose in their property. If the rule is you can't paint the wall red, then you can't. And if you don't like the rule then your choices are a) appeal the rule and try to get the college to change it's policy, or b) move off campus to housing the college does not control, or c) change colleges.
Basically, being in a dorm isn't all that different from being a guest in someone's house. You have to play be their rules. And they don't even need a good reason for having the rule.
What a lot of shit. People pay rent to live in dorms. I pay rent, so it's MY home. You want to ban me from having a console in my room? Get the fuck out of here with your shit.
It's a different matter if you want me not to smoke, or not to create a racket, or not to piss all over the floor: that's reasonable. But banning consoles? Really? It wouldn't even register on the scale of things-we-shouldn't-allow-in-dorms if you brought it to a judge.
They'd tell you to mind your own business and stop harassing your tenants.
That's actually a common misconception. If you are paying rent you are paying for the right to live there, not the right to do what you want to the place. If the landlord sets down rules, you have to follow them. Don't like it? Get out and find a place with less rules or rules you can abide by. With some colleges, they have their own wireless/wired connection with only one router per room which usually holds two people. Not all colleges can allow unnecessary gaming systems. (again, most can but not all can) This will always depend on the college/university of course but you are still subject to their rules and if it's written in those rules the Judge will look at you and say, hey you agreed to it when you moved in. As Greneche said, if the rules seem stupid, move off campus or go to a different college.
I pay rent means I can use the property however I wish within the confines of the law. If I want to fuck eight horny cougars in my apartment while I drink a gallon of beer and puke up on the wooden floor the landlord has no say in the matter, providing I stay within the confines of the law while I do it.
As for your argument, unless those routers are made of potatoes, one per two people is more than enough to run a PS4 online game, times many.
No university's internet is so slow that tenants can't plug in a gaming system and play some Call of Duty. It uses about as much memory as streaming in HD, sometimes even less.
When you're paying upwards of 30k a year, that's part of what you get: capable, stable internet.
No matter who you have sex with or what you puke up, it certainly is the landlords say in the matter if you cause enough noise to disturb other residents or/and cause damage to the apartment. You aren't as free as you think you are if you are renting.
I can do WHATEVER I WANT within the confines of the law. Excessive noise past the watershed is against the law. Destruction of property is against the law.
Except it's not always just within the confines of the law. It's within the confines that you agreed with and signed a contract to when you moved in. It's not against the law to paint your walls red, but if your landlord explicitly says you can't paint in the contract, then you do anyways, you are in violation of that contract and can be evicted and made to pay restitution.
Except it's not always just within the confines of the law. It's within the confines that you agreed with and signed a contract to when you moved in. It's not against the law to paint your walls red, but if your landlord explicitly says you can't paint in the contract, then you do anyways, you are in violation of that contract and can be evicted and made to pay restitution.
You may believe you can do just about anything you want based on making your payments but face to face with the authority of the college you will learn that is not true, and trying to escalate it to a court of law will teach you either they won't intervene in how the college manages its property or they will intervene simply for the sake of ruling in favor of the college.
I'm sorry but your anger at the situation does not make your position right. It doesn't.
It's against the law for a landlord to impose unfair conditions on his tenants. What constitutes unfair conditions will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but here: imposing an arbitrary ban on personal entertainment items -- consoles, televisions, laptops, tablets, streaming devices like FireSticks -- is undoubtedly an infringement upon the right of a tenant to furnish his property and use it for whatever PRIVATE PURPOSES he wishes for his lawful and peaceful enjoyment of his home. It's like telling him he isn't allowed to have a computer.
And unless, as I mentioned, there are substantial and justifiable extenuating -- read: exceptional -- circumstances why a landlord seeks to impose a ban on electronic entertainment items which use internet bandwidth, the landlord really has no right.
It's like this: we live in the modern age. Everyone owns a smartphone, a laptop, or some form or electronic entertainment device. If you ban consoles, you must be prepared to weather this challenge: a computer is a necessity for modern students, and almost everyone in the Western world utilizes a form of electronic entertainment. A gaming console in and of itself requires no internet connection: many games are playable offline. However, for those games that do: the bandwidth required to run them is negligible, comparable to streaming a Netflix movie. Essentially if you ban gaming consoles due to their potential bandwidth usage, you must in the interest of fairness have a similar policy on any device that uses or has the potential to use comparable bandwidth, which means placing a ban on laptops, phones, smart TVs, streaming sticks, computers, etc etc. If alienating your entire student base and being the most technologically regressive university in the Western world is your aim, then go for it. But for context: six year old smartphones are capable of a more stable, speedy internet connection over the carrier signal, than what's required from a broadband connection to play an online console game.
Such a ban, framed in this context, would never stand up in a housing dispute tribunal. I doubt even the internal board of the university would side with the housing management on this one.
Can't you read? lol how did he run Battlefield 4 in sleep mode???
He didn't:
"All devices connected to the router were in sleep mode or powered down, in order to isolate data usage from the PS4."
This means that the PS4 was on, while all the other devices connected to his router, were off. This was so that he got readings pertaining to ONLY the PS4.
In his summary analysis, he writes, "Streaming to Twitch used approximately 2.66 Mbps at its peak while playing Battlefield 4, therefore having an upload bandwidth of 3 Mbps should suffice for streaming and playing online".
Yea. This is top-end requirements, too. Most people don't bother with Twitch. Playing an online game (Battlefield 4 in this case) requires less bandwidth than streaming an HD Netflix film, which Netflix suggest 5Mbps for. Like I already said.
If you ban gaming consoles due to their potential bandwidth needs, you're gonna have to ban laptops too.
But it’s not a housing dispute tribunal. You preapprove the policies and conditions before you spend day one in the dorm or classroom. They give you a thick stack of a catalogue/handbook up front and multiple other documents. You supposedly read all that and then decided to go anyway.
And like I said in my very first comment, i don’t have an issue with your gaming. But I don’t own or run your college.
I can assure you that there would be no legal basis -- regardless of the fact that a signature resides on the document -- for banning students from having electronic entertainment devices in dorms. There are laws regarding rights that no contract can void or nullify. You can't contractually oblige someone to hand away their inalienable rights, nomatter how much you might want to.
For instance, every person in all forms of rented accommodation have the right to washing facilities, functioning central heating and a property free from structural disrepair. There are a lot of landlords out there who think that because they put maintenance clauses into contracts, that the tenants -- not the landlord -- is responsible for repairing wear-and-tear to plumbing or electric showers. This is incorrect. Nomatter what the contract says, it is always the legal responsibility of the landlord to address structural problems, or plumbing issues pertaining to the esssential utilities of the property.
The same kind of laws apply to restrictions on tenants' belongings. While it's legal to contractually oblige tenants not to own pets (there is a justifiable risk to the health of the property posed by owning an untrained dog, for instance), it is not legally justifiable to bar tenants from owning electronic entertainment devices. It's just not. It's telling a tenant he or she can't have a computer on the premises. It would, if taken to a tribunal, constitute an illegal contract.
I speak as someone in the UK. I'm not sure about America, but I would imagine it would be rubbished as a similarly crazy, unlawful stipulation in contract.
There is a very large difference between having a legal right to clean running water, heat and electricity vs. having a game. Yes, you do have a warrant of habitability that landlords can't cross legally but again, a gaming system is a leisure not a right. If the landlord has it in the contract that you can't have them then you are bound by that when you sign it. Now you can always negotiate the contract BEFORE you sign but they don't even have to supply internet connection.
There is a very large difference between having a legal right to clean running water, heat and electricity vs. having a game. Yes, you do have a warrant of habitability that landlords can't cross legally but again, a gaming system is a leisure not a right.
This is ridiculous. Personal property ownership is a right. If it wasn't, then stealing wouldn't be stealing. And landlords have no legal power to enforce contractual stipulations that restrict a tenant's right to personal property, unless that property fundamentally poses a potential risk to the health of the property: for instance, a dog, a hippopotamus, a blast furnace.
If I were to sign a contract tomorrow that banned me from having a TV in my house, I would go out, I'd buy a TV, I'd use it, and the Landlord would be powerless to enforce the stipulation. If he or she attempted to evict me, I only have to present a court with a copy of the contract and the claimed justification for the eviction process. And I can tell you that no court is going to evict a tenant for having a television in their home, regardless of the Landlord's will. They're going to laugh the case right out of court and tell the Landlord to catch a grip. Because a Landlord recieves payment for the legal letting of a property to a tenant whose right to peaceful enjoyment extends entirely to the boundaries of its definitions, providing he continues to pay rent to the Landlord in a timely manner.
In otherwords, I can do whatever I like where I live, providing it's within the law, and doesn't pose a risk to the health of the property.
You show me one single case of a Landlord successfully actioning a ban on electrical entertainment items, anywhere in the UK.
You won't be able to find one, because the idea is absolutely ludicrous. Ridiculous. Would never happen in real life.
The argument isn't that you can't physically have the device, the argument is if you can use the device. IF it's part of the contract that you can't use gaming device then you have a very nice paperweight if you signed that contract.
This is what you aren't getting. You can't enforce something like that. You might as well have written in the contract that your tenant can't eat eggs and isn't allowed to masturbate. Try enforcing that in court.
They'll laugh you all the way to mental health therapy, and your tenant will be having a twenty four egg omelette and a Pornhub marathon by the end of the day.
It might be your property, but as soon as that tenant moves in, it's no longer your home: it's theirs. For the duration of that contract, they get to treat it like it's theirs. They get to eat what they want, watch what they want, and own what they want. And there's nothing you can do about it, regardless of how much you want to.
The law looks at property letting like this: you are a provider of space and basic utilities, for a price. The person you provide with that space, is the rightful occupant and determiner of his own private life, and his home is a central part of his self-determination. You can't infringe on that. HIs private life is none of your business. The only rights of restriction you can enforce on a tenant are:
But see, I am getting it. Now perhaps it is different in your county but here, you are given rights of habitability, they do NOT include the right to have a gaming system. IF you sign a contract saying that you agree to the terms and conditions put forth by the landlord and those terms and conditions specifically state that you can not use a gaming device then you have no rights to use it. IF you do, and the landlord catches it and can prove it, the courts will look at you and say "welp, you signed it. I wouldn't have but you did so you are legally bound by what you signed."
Yeah I'm thinking it is a country difference, like I said earlier. In America people can sell what they want, contract what they want, it's up to the buyer to beware.
No, you can dictate what color walls they have by not allowing them to change the color. You can dictate if they can or can't drive nails into the wall to hang pictures. Any alteration to the structure is subject to the contract you sign. If the landlord also says they don't want dogs, you can't have dogs. Some even have age restrictions but they are few and far between. Others have income restrictions. You are subject to the whims of the landlord and the contract you sign. If you don't like it, find a new place to live and run for the hills because the landlord is crazy but if you agree and sign then you are bound.
"Poses a fundamental risk to the structure of the property".
Yes, painting is legally a structural practice. I think I covered that already.
But look, you justify to me, how having a gaming console poses any inherent and imminent risk to; the structure of the property; the resale value of the property; the safety of the property; the state of repair of the property?
It doesn't. Contractual and property law applies regardless of the Landlord or tenant's personal wishes. Law is law regardless of what we want it to be. Contractually, you have to be able to JUSTIFY stipulations juxtaposed to the tenant's rights, where the tenant's rights form the central bases for the legal obligations of the Landlord. You CAN'T justify a stipulation that bans a tenant from having a gaming console, any more than you can justify a stipulation that bans him having a laptop, a TV, a computer, a mobile phone or a tablet.
It is legally unjustifiable. Ergo, it is legally unenforceable. If anything, a UK tenant could sue YOU for trying to enforce that nonsense in the first place. Because there are regulated legal standards here that Landlords have to abide by. They can't enter the property without notice; they can't carry out surprise inspections; they can't call, text or send correspondence tot he tenant without good legal reason (otherwise its harassment); they can't ban the tenant from having property of his own; they can't enforce arbitrary rules on tenants; they can't touch or move tenant's belongings inside the home unless they pose a risk of fire or other serious damage.
There's a lot that Landlords can't do, and it's because a tenant should be able to enjoy his home without a Landlord acting as Schoolmaster.
Lol my argument is you are bound by the contract you sign. That's it. I'm not signing anything that says I can't have a gaming console or play computer games but a landlord CAN put it in the contract that you can't and if someone is stupid enough to sign it then that's on them. They'd better hope they are in a month to month or have a lease that lets them leave without having to pay the rest of it even if they do. That's the point. When you sign a contract, however unreasonable to you a stipulation of that contract is, - and if they don't tread against the warranty of habitability and that stipulation doesn't break laws,- then most courts are going to look at you and hold you to what you signed. And there is no law saying landlords HAVE to allow gaming systems.
I pay rent means I can use the property however I wish within the confines of the law. If I want to fuck eight horny cougars in my apartment while I drink a gallon of beer and puke up on the wooden floor the landlord has no say in the matter, providing I stay within the confines of the law while I do it.
In the UK, the law differs dependent upon which type of contract you have. I imagine the same is true in the Unites States. The law needs to be tighter when dealing with college dorms because clearly it would create problems if every college student decided to do what you just described.
What you do in your own private space is nobody's business unless it breaks the law. No contract can place a ban on sex, and no contract can place a ban on the excretion of bodily fluids. Providing you clean up and cause no permanent damage, and have a reasonable concept of silent hours, you can do whatever you want.
This is the point. In the UK, a rented home is the tenants home, for the duration of his contract. It is no different than an owned property in the sense that a tenant can enjoy it as such. He can utilize its utilities in whichever lawful way he chooses, as though it were is home, which, funnily enough, it legally IS.
Some dinosaurs on here don't like the idea of giving freedom to the young, but that doesn't take away a student's housing rights, or anyone's housing rights for that matter.
When you already pay extortionate rent for single bedrooms, which UK students often do, it only strengthens your case further.
What you do in your own private space is nobody's business unless it breaks the law.
Yes, but that spectacularly avoids the point I just made that the law differs dependent on the situation you are living in.
No contract can place a ban on sex
Not sex itself, but some of the associated factors are illegal such as excessive noise, prostitution etc...
and no contract can place a ban on the excretion of bodily fluids
You are mad if you think it is contractually legal to use your dorm as a public urinal.
Providing you clean up and cause no permanent damage, and have a reasonable concept of silent hours, you can do whatever you want.
In the UK the notion of "silent hours" is a legal myth. The reality is that noise which irritates someone else is illegal any time of the day or night.
People here just love to change goalposts. Vomiting up some booze and cleaning it up is far removed from using your home as a urinal.
The legal framework governing housing rights provides certain inalienable rights to all tenants regardless of circumstance. One of those rights is the freedom of peaceful enjoyment. The use of gaming consoles (the issue in question on the thread) certainly fall within that definition.
Myth? Wrong. Statutory nuisance isn't just about noise that irritates any hours of the day at any time. It's sustained noise above a certain decibel threshold for a significant period of time where it interferes with a tenants right to peaceful enjoyment. If it were as you say, that any irritation constitutes illegality, then roadworks would never be done anywhere: coupl a would never be allowed that occasional loud fuck; music would be banned; new parents would have to soundproof baby's bedroom. Ludicrous.
I can make noise above the specified threshold without breaking the law, providing it is not at an unreasonable hour, not for an extended period of time, and is not a gross breach of decibel limits.
“...if you brought it to a judge...” Do you not understand that a disagreement with your college over this would never make it to a court room? It is the college’s dorm. Your disagreement with their rules would never make it to a court. You would be disciplined by the college, potentially even expelled, and that would be the end of it.
It would, and it should. Charging students for their living space and their internet connection in areas quite capable of fibre-fast speeds (which all universities have the disposable income and infrastructure for), and then telling them they can't use that internet to run a gaming console is ridiculous. If it isn't outright extortion then it's certainly an unfair demand.
Especially in this day and age.
I went to university in the ass-end of nowhere and they had upwards of 50 meg connections in dorms. You only need 3 or 4 for a console game. It's no more intensive than watching a high Def film.
If the university can't provide internet capable of that, then they're fucked when they try to do any kind of bandwidth intensive research. No university is THAT hard up.
Each college makes its own choice whether it will be ahead of the curve, or somewhere equivalent to others, or let's say "old fashioned". The fact the community, or other colleges, offer such perks doesn't mean that the one in question has to or should.
What I don't understand is if as you say it is so easy to get all that you need off campus then why don't you just go off campus? It's really not all that different than if you hate the coffee the food service vendor puts in the college cafeteria. You can complain to the college but they'll likely say that's the vendor they've chosen (and it's probably based on how they chose to spend their resources). If you don't like it, then go to Starbucks or wherever else you do like it.
Go to a university this week and look at how much money is invested in these institutions: the new computers. The clean decor, the leather seats. The usb plugs everywhere. The lighting. The vending. The restaurants and eateries. Have a gander how much money the average student pays to his or her university per term. Do an internet speed test on your phone while you're connected to their visitor WiFi network. Look around and see how many macbooks and smartphones are out on desks and in hands. How many Facebook feeds and YouTube videos are being played at any one time.
Then consider that an online console game needs about 3 mbps to run.
Then come back and tell me some universities like to be "old fashioned" and consoles are an unnecessary drain on bandwidth. I can tell you now, that they really, really aren't. They're no more intensive than most other things the average person does on their phone or computer.
If you're that rich why not use the same loan/cash to rent elsewhere? Nearby unis/colleges there's always a few "one room per person" mass rent type places where you're as free to game as the scumbag living on the next room is to play on it, jack it and sell it while you're out and about. :)
So you don't watch films, read books, or listen to the radio then? No?
Oh thats right, you spend your free time on internet debate sites pretending to have a job and no free time, hating younger people for having free time.