Pity the poor fool who tries to ban his or her underlings from using Skype.

This week’s prize luddites are the bigwigs at San Jose State University, who (like some UK universities, lest we get too smug about this) want to ban their staff and students from using Skype.

The big-wigs, it seems, are concerned that “outsiders” can communicate using the university’s computer network. Or could the real reason be that they don’t want their staff and students chatting on Skype while they should be working? Kevin Schmidt, campus network programmer at the University of California in Santa Barbara, gave the game away: “What we wind up with [when students use Skype] is a fair amount of traffic that has nothing to do with university business.”

What, like when they use email? Or when their friends come to visit? Atrocious behaviour.

San Jose State University students and faculty members have responded with a wealth of angry blog posts. Steve Sloan, who teaches journalism and has been a member of the IT department for more than 20 years, wrote a particularly eloquent piece entitled ‘Why our students need Skype’.

Skype, he points out, is used by educators all over the world. “We are putting our university at a competitive disadvantage [if we ban Skype], both in terms of our ability to collaborate and to use emerging technologies,” he said. “I use Skype every day in my work at San Jose State University. I have collaborated with fellow educators world wide using Skype.

“If Skype is so evil, why is it allowed inside IBM and, I am told, Yahoo and other major corporations? If it is such a terrible evil bandwidth hog, why does my ISP route it?”

Luddite bosses are not confined to big Californian universities, and nor are they only bothered about Skype. A friend of mine once had the job of implementing IT projects for a big transport company. My friend suggested that an internal email system might be a good idea. This was 2003.

The bosses refused, arguing that the minions would never get any work done. Shortly afterwards, my friend ran screaming from the building, never to return. I think the company now uses pigeon post.