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Universities Begin to Ban Napster

Posted by emmett on from the no-music-for-you dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "CNET's News.Com has a story about universities beginning to ban access for Napster users. The schools cited excessive use of bandwidth (with 5% of total bandwidth going to Napster) and the RIAA's lawsuit as reason for it. Take a look at the story here."

2 of 458 comments (clear)

  1. As a college network administrator ... by Frater+219 · · Score: 5

    I am the primary network administrator for a small college. Last term we had a serious problem here with one student consuming huge quantities of bandwidth moving bootleg movies in VCD format, so we've been doing a lot of thinking about this issue.

    Let me tell you this: I have zero interest in wasting time blocking you just because you happen to be bootlegging. I won't even notice that you're bootlegging unless you're being a bandwidth hog in doing so: one FTP session looks much like another from the outside.

    If you are being a bandwidth hog, you're harming your neighbors, and I will stop you from doing that. Everyone on campus should be able to get a fair share of the bandwidth, and if you and your pals are hogging it all, I don't care if you're moving VCDs or Linux ISO images; I'm going to raise a fuss and, if necessary, happily shut you down.

    If I get a note from the RIAA saying you're bootlegging, I'll do what's necessary to keep them from suing the college's pants off, because it's damn cold in Massachusetts right now and we can use all the pants we can get. But if you're bootlegging without hogging, I honestly don't give a damn.

  2. Here's how one musician feels about this: by Rimbo · · Score: 5

    Do you have any clue how TINY the percentage of profits a musician actually makes off of the sales of his/her album?

    I think most musicians, even a lot of the big-name stars who have the most to lose from mp3 piracy (as opposed to freely releasing an mp3 themselves), support the mp3 revolution. Tom Petty and (in a big way) David Bowie come to mind as examples of people who have really embraced the new medium.

    For a brief, freakish time, recordings as a medium were intensely profitable for a very few musicians (but never so much for them as for record companies). Those days are over. MP3s represent a brand-new way to use recordings for their original purpose -- a marketing tool to sell either the live performance or the sheet music.

    The beauty of it is the beauty of the internet -- I no longer need to grease the palms of radio DJ's, I no longer need to get an "in" with a major label -- many of the barriers that formerly blocked new musicians from "making it" are now gone, and a band can even be from Midland, TX or The Netherlands and a guy like me could stumble across them. Or even Italy. (Just three of my favorite bands that I never would have heard of through the standard radio play / movie soundtrack / local bar circuit methods.)

    The recording industry is corrupt. (Duh.) Most of us musicians, even those of us who are in the system, have seen it as a necessary evil. MP3's are a way around them!

    (Braveheart mode on)
    FREEEEEEDOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!
    (Braveheart mode off)

    One band I know of is even using mp3's to give fans who are musicians the opportunity to make their own remixes!

    All in all, mp3's are pretty cool for those of us who are artists. Most musicians are NOT whores to the music industry (much as they've tried to be) and lose almost nothing; many of those who are tied in with big labels have already embraced the new medium.

    MP3's aren't going anywhere, and those who fight against them will only lose their money in the end.

    just my 2 zorkmids