Recently the filtered website list got a new addition that has jolted the community. Many St. Paul Academy and Summit School students were disappointed or angry about the change but it wasn’t a random or meaningless alteration. In reality the Netflix block was necessary for many reasons. “Netflix’s user agreement is written such that you cannot project their videos other than for personal use,” Upper School Technology Coordinator Chris White said. Any use of Netflix in a group is technically illegal, even if it’s for educational purposes. “Teachers that were showing [Netflix videos] in class were inadvertently not following that user agreement,” White said. Though Netflix cannot be watched in groups, individual use is legal anywhere, so why was Netflix added to the blocked sites list? The reason mostly lies with SPA’s bandwidth capabilities. Streaming videos takes up a large amount of space on the bandwidth so when multiple Netflix videos are streamed at once, the bandwidth can fill up very quickly. This in turn slows the internet speed which prevents access for those using it for educational purposes. “When teachers were getting bumped off the network, the number one reason was people using Netflix for personal enjoyment,” White said. There has been no internet crashes since the use of Netflix was banned, which supports the point that Netflix was a major issue when SPA’s internet would crash. Though it will be missed, Netflix needs to be blocked to ensure that the internet is always useable and that everyone in SPA continues to operate under legal terms.