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University Sponsored Music Services?
Amy's Robot writes "The president of Penn State University is urging colleges to start their own digital music services. The schools would pay the licensing fees, and pass the charges on to their students. His logic is that paying for the school's service is an incentive not to use an "illegal" service. Supposedly, there will be some pilot programs this fall, but it seems like there are a lot of obstacles to overcome before then."
Well, let's say a million. If the colleges and universities pay a licensing fee for each student, say $1000, that's $1 billion! All for doing little more than allowing students to listen to music.
It's amazing that all of the SlashNerds are coming out on this with guns blazing. "We shouldn't have to pay for other peoples downloading!" "The university is trying to profit!" Yadda, yadda, yadda.
For some reason when I read this I assumed that most people would be glad a university is thinking of ways to help their students "needs" and reduce their overhead as well. Wow was I wrong. While there are a few people that like the idea, it seems as if most are finding one reason or another to complain. If a university is willing to license music from a record company and offer it to the students at a small rate, I think it's a great idea. Sure, they're not going to have every artist or album known to man licensed, but at least it's a starting point to fixing an out of control problem. Maybe people would have a better perspective if they were the one's being singled out by the RIAA and being forced to pay a fine PER SONG.
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Id support this, poor people who cannot afford music, we will get financial aid and it will pay for it, and rich greedy people who can afford it but who choose not to, will be forced to pay.
This so far is the best idea/solution to the problem yet.
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