Saturday, November 08, 2003
Penn State Univ and Napster
In an unusual twist to the digital download tale, Penn State and Napster have signed a unique agreement, whereby PSU pays Napster to let its students download music legally. This is an interesting development which, if it works, will probably lead to more Universties tying up with the numerous digital downloading services that are cropping up all over the place. This way, the Universities are spared the bother of dealing with RIAA's threats and students get to access music easily (despite the constraints). The problem, of course, remains that you can only access 1/10th the number of titles through these legal services as you can through Kazaa and so on. Whether students will really abandon the peer-to-peer networks, given the constraints and not-so-comprehensive catalogues, for the ease and the legality is the million-dollar question.
The service will allow students to listen to an unlimited number of songs as often as they want. They will be able to download the music to use on three personal computers as long as students are at Penn State. If they want to keep the songs permanently or burn them to a CD, though, they will have to pay 99 cents each. Dr. Spanier said the university will pay for the Napster service out of the $160 information technology fee students pay each year. The cost to the university is "substantially less" than the $9.95 fee that individual subscribers pay for the Napster service, he said, though he declined to disclose the precise terms.
Some students criticized the Napster service, which uses copy-protection software to prevent files from being copied to more than three computers or burned to a CD without paying the 99-cent fee.Why, asked Penn State's student newspaper, The Collegian, in an editorial last month, "must the proposed program be so limited?" The editorial predicted that students would still copy music without paying for it over services like Kazaa, adding that the Napster service wasn't "truly free," because student funds would be diverted from other services to pay for it.
On another note, I did try out Napster. Though it's a very decent service (claims to have 100,000 songs more that Itunes), I think the Itunes interface is easier to navigate. Of course, the problems with Itunes are a different story.
The service will allow students to listen to an unlimited number of songs as often as they want. They will be able to download the music to use on three personal computers as long as students are at Penn State. If they want to keep the songs permanently or burn them to a CD, though, they will have to pay 99 cents each. Dr. Spanier said the university will pay for the Napster service out of the $160 information technology fee students pay each year. The cost to the university is "substantially less" than the $9.95 fee that individual subscribers pay for the Napster service, he said, though he declined to disclose the precise terms.
Some students criticized the Napster service, which uses copy-protection software to prevent files from being copied to more than three computers or burned to a CD without paying the 99-cent fee.Why, asked Penn State's student newspaper, The Collegian, in an editorial last month, "must the proposed program be so limited?" The editorial predicted that students would still copy music without paying for it over services like Kazaa, adding that the Napster service wasn't "truly free," because student funds would be diverted from other services to pay for it.
On another note, I did try out Napster. Though it's a very decent service (claims to have 100,000 songs more that Itunes), I think the Itunes interface is easier to navigate. Of course, the problems with Itunes are a different story.
