The newly re-launched Napster aims to solve the issue of dealing with illegal music downloads and sharing within colleges and universities by providing students with unlimited free streams and downloads. They have announced a deal withPennsylvania State University to offer this as a trial beginning in January while using student's fees to fund the service. Around 18,000 students will have access to this service in January and the school aims to provide full access to all its students and staff by fall.
Users of this service will only be able to play their tracks on a few PCs and unlike the regular Napster service the music cannot be recorded to CD. The downloaded tracks will also expire once the student cancels their Napster subscription. They must pay 99 cents per song that they want to keep permanently or record to CD. There also has been some criticism from people who say that the educational fees should not be used subsidise entertainment pricing. Both lawmakers and music industry executives have praised Napster's plan in aiming to give students a legal alternative to file swapping. They expect that if students use legal music download services such as this, they will likely keep the habit once they leave college and can afford to pay by the download when they start working.
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The trial project is the first of what will likely be a number of similar efforts over the next year, as colleges work with online music services and record labels to offer students authorized alternatives to networks such as Kazaa. "This will be the first step in a new, legal approach designed to meet student interest in getting extensive digital access to music," said Penn State President Graham Spanier. "With the stepped-up enforcement efforts of the (Recording Industry Association of America) and concerns that students have about the legality or illegality of what they're doing, we think students will be excited about this." Since last spring, that quest has focused in part on finding ways to provide students with alternatives to downloading music through services such as Kazaa. Representatives of several major universities met with the leading music services May in an attempt to start a discussion between the two communities, and colleges issued an official call for proposals not long afterward. Spanier and the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Cary Sherman, served as co-chairs of a joint industry-university committee formed to evaluate music services for campus use, among other activities. By offering free access--or access funded by school fees--labels and music services hope that students will develop habits that continue when they leave college. Read the full article here. |
This looks to be a good plan for students as most students cannot afford the over-priced albums and thus download their music instead. I assume that when Napster says that students can play back their tracks on a few PCs that this includes their own PC and not just the PCs in the college or university. With Napster's very strict DRM restrictions on the student's downloads, it is likely that some would go back to their old habits if they wish to play their tracks on a portable player or get around the DRM restrictions. I am sure that many of the smarter students will find ways to convert or re-record their downloaded tracks into MP3 or some other unrestricted codec.
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Source: CNET News
