Napster and Colleges

[bobw]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/te...-NAPST.html?hp

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) - In a move aimed at stemming widescale online piracy on college campuses, Penn State University on Thursday reached a deal to offer thousands of students free access to the Napster music service.

Penn State President Graham Spanier said in a statement the school will offer students free access to digital music and limited downloading from Napster's newly relaunched music service at no cost.

Students can also buy permanent downloads that can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices for 99 cents each, the company said.

Napster, the song-swap pioneer that revolutionized online music and turned the music industry upside down, was bought last year by Roxio Inc. in a bankruptcy auction.

A new legal version of the service was officially relaunched late last month which offers individual songs for 99 cents each, albums for $9.95 or unlimited monthly subscriptions for $9.95.

"There will be no additional costs to students for this service," Spanier said, adding that the program will be funded as part of the information technology fee that Penn State already has in place.

How much Penn State, which has about 83,000 students on several campuses, paid was not immediately known.

A number of universities are expected to launch pilot studies similar to this with various digital music providers in the coming months, Napster and Penn State said.

The deal is significant in that the song-swap revolution had its roots on university campuses, where Napster first took hold in 1999 and turned the record industry on its ear.

Penn State was one of several universities which banned the use of Napster on university computer networks in the midst of the record industry's legal battle that eventually shut down the service.

"This will be the first step in a new, legal approach designed to meet student interest in getting extensive digital access to music," Spanier said.

Penn State said it had already set up student focus groups who have been testing the service. In the spring, it will provide access to Napster for about 18,000 Penn State students and plans to make Napster available to all eligible students, as well as faculty and staff, next fall.

At its peak, Napster attracted over 60 million users before it was idled by copyright infringement litigation in 2001. Several similar unauthorized services, like Kazaa and Morpheus, have sprung up in its absence.

The music industry has blamed such file-sharing services for its sharp decline in music sales over the past three sales.

[mr. k]

Ok, so students at psu can access a iwde range of streaming songs through napster. The thing is, they can already do this on iTunes, using the rendezvous sharing feature. You get 500 kids in a dorm with iTunes sharing on and boy you got big catalog of music. I wish apple put internet sharing of music back into iTunes, just plugged up all the possible file transfer issues. That would be awesome.

[Arden]

Yes, but this way they get to keep all the music they listen to, not just stream it. Streaming is fine for living in a dorm, but when you graduate you'd want to take that music with you.

I'll apply if they make the same deal with Apple.

[mrfluffy]

Students can download - or stream - all the songs they like for free but can only use or play the tunes while at Penn State. After their four tuition-paying years are up, their tethered downloads disappear.

from http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/33864.html