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Universities Mull Official Role In Music Distribution
An anonymous reader writes "News.com.com is reporting that Universities are considering ways to bring legal Internet jukeboxes to dorm rooms, including entering deals with commercial service providers that would see online music charges included alongside tuition fees or picked up by the schools themselves." Reader ajkst1 adds that "meetings were held between college representatives, music industry reps, and online music services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, Pressplay, and Listen.com. The discussion wasn't about why they should do it, but about how they should do it. Per-user licenses or a general fee to students were discussed to make it look like the music was free. I'm broke, so free is good. Paying more to go to school is bad."
I think the real question is, what does this really buy anyway?
I'm sure the RIAA will continue to happily sue college people running big mp3 servers. I don't see how this would change that.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
This is just another example of "all students pirate music, so let's charge them for it".
It's not the university's responsibility to take all the students' money and then provide all kinds of services. The university should charge for and provide essential services (these days that could include internet) and let the students' spend their remaining money as they see fit. Universities should not dictate the entertainment of their students.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okAs much as I'd like to see legal distribution of music... a situation where my college tutition is going to something I don't want to use. (Maybe I support indies for example) Then by merely going to college I am supporting and giving money to the RIAA whether or not I will use their product.
This program should include an opt-out option, at the very least.
Furthermore... it will be interesting to see if the files they feed the students (which they will have paid for) will be useless due to DRM. There is an increasing number of college students running linux. If they have to pay for something they can't use... they are not going to be happy. And neither will I... and my tax money helps fund the public universities and I would prefer to not have my tax money going to the RIAA, seeing as they may not pay for it all with tutition increases. Even if my tax money doesn't go to the RIAA, a government sanctioned organization should not be forcing it's students to pay (in their tutition) for a monopilies product... although there are plenty of examples of them already doing that...
I touch computers in naughty places
I can't believe these schools are seriously considering making a deal with the music industry. What if I simply don't care about all that commercial crap they throw on the market year in and out? Who's next? Drug dealers? It's bad enough that students get bombarded with credit card offers the day they start college. Nothing like getting into dept and starting off the 'American way of life' - now the music pushers want their cut too? Not to overreact here, but does anyone else feel less and less like a citizen and increasinly just like a f....ing consumer? There is someting terribly wrong with this picture - commercial entities should stay out of academic organizations as much as possible - basta! Just my 2 cents - things are really getting out of hand out there...
Yeah, you would. Most (or I daresay, ALL) colleges have publicly accessible computers, or at least accessible to all students, and if they were paying for the services, they'd be likely to have the client installed on such computers.
One possibility, though, would be for students to waive the fee, either because of financial or moral reasons. Such an individual would need to sign a waiver of some sort, but this is the system that the Univ. of Arizona uses to put a lot of small -- but non-mandatory -- fees on all the students' bills. Students have the choice to not fund things like the Rec Center and Student Body, but virtually all of them do. It works pretty well, keeping the naysayers from making a huge issue of the fees, while still providing almost 100% of the funding that a mandatory fee would.
I thought the reason to go to college was supposedly to learn things. Silly me. Now everyone who goes to college will be paying extra so they can have access to music they probably don't give a damn about.
This reminds me of the Internet tax, by which everyone would have to pay extra money for their Internet connections so a few dolts could get free music legally.
I already get free music legally: I compose it. Necessitating that I pay more for something unrelated so I can have the opportunity to get something I don't want or need is absurd.
Fortunately, I'm not in college anymore. For the sake of everyone who still is, I hope this proposal dies like the Internet tax one did.
Of course, if a college offered "free" DRM'd music, and people continued to share unencumbered music, maybe they'd get a clue. I can guarentee free music in open formats would kill P2P at a college.
Litigious bastards
Exactly, except I think the colleges should be a little more agressive in their negotiations. Students should not have to pay for the music, if a) Not all students will use the service, (so not all should pay) and b) if it is in a streaming-only format. The record companies should provide high-quality streaming services for free, since most students will want to listen to the music in their cars, walkmans, etc, and at that point they will (hopefully) pay for it. But high-quality, free, streaming audio on demand is exactly what the record industry is missing: A try before you buy option.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
the students should not be forced into a subscription via tuition. I just finished my first year of college and I did not once download music from a peer to peer network. Assuming that all students do is a blunder. I would be very upset if I was locked into a plan to purchase music "legally" when I'm not breaking the law in the first place.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch."
Maybe this is just my gut reaction, but maybe colleges should be spending their time working on EDUCATION and not SELLING MUSIC. Leave that to the music companies, stores, etc.
Stuff like this is symptomatic of a (youth) obsession with music. Personally, I'm completely sick of hearing about music[companies,sharing,piracy], and I think that both the music companies and media(inc. slashdot) continuously overstate the significance/importance of music. You can rape 'em at the voting booth(if they even show up), you can make it nearly impossible for 'em to travel without the government massively invading their privacy(on the assumption hijackers will use real names, birthdays, etc)...and they won't even lift an eyebrow. Tell 'em they can't "share" their music, and they get absolutely RIPSHIT.
God forbid we should worry about the important things, like who is going to pay for our parent's medical care, our environment, our rights as individual citizens, our massively corrupt politicians, overpopulation, corporate greed...
Please help metamoderate.
As a student that dislikes the common pop music (i.e. Top40, Top200, TopAnything) I don't want to pay for the RIAA POP music agenda. If this program however would introduce indie bands and struggling musicians on the Jukebox I'd be all for it. I think that all the general student population needs is a little exposure to some alternate choices. However I maybe to generous to the tendencies of undergrad students.
Where the Music Matters
But if they had such a "jukebox", couldn't college administrators take funds from expanding their network infrastructure's bandwidth pipeline and pour it into this new venture?
My reasoning is that colleges continually have to spend money for network maintenance and improvements because of KaZaA and its counterparts. If the adminstrators were financially smart, there wouldn't be any added cost at all.
www.firastudios.com
Anyone have any idea which colleges/universities are involved with this? The article doesn't mnetion any, and I'd like to know if mine (or any of my friends') schools are involved so that I can get something together to express my opinion on (against) this.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
Everyone seems to ask this, as if this is a totally novel concept. Look around, people! This goes on all the time. People who don't have cars, or who only drive locally, pay taxes for interstates. Vegans pay taxes that pay for meat inspections. Creationists pay for research on evolution.
When things have a small marginal cost, so that individual monitoring and charging is not efficient, and they benefit most of a group, it makes sense to fund them via a tax, and let the public use them as much as it wants.
Digital music plus high speed networks plus large hard disks have made it so music is one of those things where the marginal cost is low enough for this to make sense.
However, it is important that they include some good system to figure out what is getting downloaded, so that small musicians can get their cut if their music is popular. It shouldn't just be split up among a few big labels. This is especially true on colleges, where a lot of independent music is listened to.
Here here!! You hit the nail on the head with this one. I am not a lazy person. I chose to be an efficient person. In my industry (automotive) efficiency is our livelihood. I don't want to spend a minute more of my free time at work than I do want to spend it perusing the shelves at my local RIAA store. If I find something in one of my Mozilla tabs or elsewhere that I want, then I want it now. I will PAY for the convenience of being able to get what I want while I am using my laptop or PDA at home, playing with my cats.
The higher, the fewer.
The music services, along with a representative from Universal Music Group, explained that difficulties in licensing would make a Kazaa-style service impossible, however.
And thus, it will fail. College Students tend to have the most diverse of music tastes, and from what I have read about the various music services, most of what is available is the more popular current music. Beatles and Rolling Stones tunes are next to impossible to come by.
We all want the best, not some half assed attempt at pretending this is better. If I can't get my music from their legitimate service, I'm going to get it elseware.
Also, from my understanding of state laws, State owned (and funded) schools would likely have a difficult time getting something like this started, "A mandatory fee for a commercial service not provided by a university" wouldn't look very good on a budget itinerary for a cash strapped (all) state.
The article mentions that initially the universities wanted a "Kazaa-like" system where students could get any file they wanted. This idea was shot down, so that means the music selection will be limited to whatever is included in the agreement. So students will have to pony up money for a service that has limited selection.
The article doesn't talk about DRM controls, but I would assume that the system would prohibit burning CD's and limit copying to portable devices. Excuse me, but isn't this already available to students (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.) who want to pay for this service?
The music industry will get lots of revenue through these contracts, and the universities will get some legal coverage to avoid being dragged into court. The universities will probably even take on a service charge to whatever the music industry charges.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
This allows the RIAA to get paid, but what about artists?
I dont want to pay the RIAA anymore.
I think the real question is, what does this really buy anyway?
I'm sure the RIAA will continue to happily sue college people running big mp3 servers. I don't see how this would change that.
Yes, they would continue to sue them, because this is a seperate system. They are trying to play off the people who claim "if music was available for a reasonable price online, I would pay for it". Well, if you use the universities system (which may appear to be free to you, but still legal) you can still get your music, but legally. IF you continue to use Kazaa to illegally download music, then yes, they can and will still go after you. But if what everyone claims is true (people would pay for music if they could), then this system should shut down Kazaa and others on campus.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
It also sounds as though colleges will pay a set fee per student, so they can use the service, thus supposedly freeing up the college of legal liability.
But wait, what happens if the college-affiliated jukebox doesn't carry, say, Rush's CD catalog? As a broke college student who already indirectly paid my $30 extra in tuition to subsidize this program, what am I likely to do? That's right, go onto a Kazaa and pirate those Rush CD's. And then we're right back where we started. And at that point, you can be sure that both my college and I are back on the hook, as far as the record companies are concerned.
More to the point, I think the most pressing concern is how much money from these college jukeboxes would be passed to the artist. The article makes no mention of this. And I'm inclined to think that when I download my DRM-crippled music, at this cut-rate University special fee, the artist is going to get shafted even more than if I had purchased a CD. And to me, the whole point of buying music is to support the artist. If a big chunk of my dollar doesn't support the artist, then piracy seems a moral option. I can always go to the artist's concert later, paying for tickets and t-shirts.
So to sum up, there's plenty of reason to be distrustful of this. It looks like a way for record companies to take $30 or whatever for each college student, and then to continue going after these same students, when they resort to piracy after realizing the college jukebox sucks.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
How about this... universities instead focus on improving their curriculum or improving the general state of student life on campus. How about investing more in improving general quality of living in dorm rooms, open up campus bookstores to the free market instead of monopolizing vendors like Follets. There are many worthwhile things universities SHOULD be doing for students instead of getting into the music business! Students WILL find a way to get their MP3s without the help of the school.
There are a lot major universities in dire straits financially, and of the ones I've observed, their problems are owed to very poor decision making by presidents and boards that don't know how to run universities as a business. If universities want to increase profits, they should reengineer their existing business processes
There are a lot of things universities pay for and pass the bill on to you that you may never use. You may never go to the library, it's still there and it got paid for and it draws funds. You may never go to a football game, chances are the school has a team and the facilities for them and you pay for a chunk of that. The list goes on, deal.
Is it just me or have unis forgotton that they're in the business of providing education? This is getting ridiculous, with a capital 'iculous'. I'm not saying this is one of those "in my day we walked uphill to school" kind of things, but this sounds like something that has absolutely zero to do with furthering human knowledge.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Paying more and having it go to the RIAA, or to some RAP artist who you would never support or listen to is even worse. Making all students pay for this, directly or indirectly, on the assumption that some will illegally copy music, is crazy.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What on earth makes anyone think they deserve our money? The great music they promote? The way they gently nurture budding artists? How about how they promote honesty in our government? Bah!
Pay them nothing. Let them starve the way they let their artists starve. How on earth did we ever get to a place where a company can claim to own our culture, and even worse, have a lot of average joes believe that's the way it has always been?
Folks, we the people own our culture collectively. Yes, artists create, but without people watching/listening/enjoying the creation, it don't count for diddly squat. It's a conversation, you see, and twisting it into a monologue is just nuts.
So get up from the keyboard and do something about it. I personally am working hard on the Howard Dean presidential campaign, but take whatever approach you like. Just do something.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
This sounds like one of the best ideas I've heard to take market dynamics out of music distribution.
Let me put it another way: Do any of you remember banalty tax from History of Western Civ 1?
Simply put, these are royalties due to an entity in exchange for a service, even if you don't use it. How do you "vote with your dollars" when you can't choose what your dollars go towards, or if your dollars can go at all?
On the flip side, this is a great deal for the music industry: They get a garunteed revenue stream for doing nothing. Hell, they can completely quit producing new or interesting works and continue getting paid for 95 years, with that back-library of theirs.
This also sets a great example for the economics students. Who needs all those complicated supply/demand and market dynamics theories? All you have to do to get rich is convince someone you deserve a tax revenue. This can be a private institution (Universities, in this case) or the Federal government (place a media tax on something and funnel the money back to you). Why work for hard-core capitalism when you can have the much simpler capitalistic socialism?
Cue the banalty song.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
College isn't just about furthering knowledge, it's about influencing and molding society as well. From fraternities, to "student" credit cards, to sports, it's all about societal integration, be it business, social, or competitive -- none of which is exclusive of any other.
Aside from that, there's always been an effort on the part of many universities to make school (appear to be) more affordable. Dorm rooms, meal plans, student IDs which can be swiped in a vending machine, cable, internet access, and healthcare are all examples of services which do not directly provide education or advance human knowledge.
So, in conclusion, it's just you.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Schools already do this with long distance. They pay about 2.9c/minute and charge students between 10 and 25. I know the school I worked at really hates that so many students are using cellphones with unlimited LD... it's really cut into the bottom line.
They'll just yentz you where they traditionally yentz you...on textbooks. I have gotten a rude awakening about the markup school bookstores take on books. We're talking about a premium above list price, folks! That's upsetting.
Of course, you can always go on the Internet and find great deals on textbooks. Stick it to Da Man! :P
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.