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."

Comments

Re:Seen somewhere before.

[GigsVT]

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.

Not a good idea.

[Erick the Red]

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.

Re:Not a good idea.

[carpe_noctem]

Although I don't attend college there, I come from Colorado. The University of Colorado a few years ago decided to launch a rather risky proposal which is kind of along the lines which you are discussing here. Basically, they had a problem, which was that following football games, makeshift armies of liquored-up frat boys would tear through the city, celebrating the victory of their said sports team with a wave of destruction.

The city of Boulder was not pleased, and they passed the so-called "couch law", which forbade residents from keeping couches and other indoor furniture outdoors (during the riots, couches were a very frequent and ready source of burning material). However, most of the couches didn't come from student housing, and the city residents got pissed. The school, in turn, reacted by raising tuitions for a so-called "riot tax", which would help to reimburse the city for the cost of riot-cleanup.

Naturally, students were now pissed. But since the school had no foolproof way of singling out specific individuals responsible for the crimes, they had no choice but to bill everyone. Given that most rioters were students (but most students were not rioters, mind you), this seemed pretty fair, imho.

Now, the only difference I see between this, and the present situation is that a riot has a fairly undisputable price tag. You can find out exactly how much damage was caused, and there's really no arguing the numbers. However, with "stealing" music, the damage isn't so concrete. It's a matter of potentially-lost-income, which is a debate I dare not redrudge up on slashdot.

So as a student, I would be willing to pay a bill to my school in the event that my school were actually sued in court for damages caused. But, I have no intention for paying a yearly bill which essentially boils down to the music industry shaking the good old money tree and seeing what falls out.

Bad thing...

[djcapelis]

As 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...

RIAA tuition fee?

[teutonic_leech]

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...

How the U of A handles this kind of fee

[melete]

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.

As my econ professor said...

[SuperBanana]

I'm broke, so free is good. Paying more to go to school is bad.

"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...

Pushing Pop Music?

[aSiTiC]

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.

Which colleges/universities?

[program21]

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.

Just call it extortion, why don't you?

[Schlemphfer]

This idea is so incredibly backwards and wrong I don't know where to begin. Predictably, the article provides absolutely no level of detail about how such a service would work. But it sounds as if this will amount to giving students limited access to some half-broken and incomplete service whereby DRM-crippled files would be downloaded.

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've got a better idea...

[Angry Pixie]

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

Re:Not first post but close

[zangdesign]

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.

Pay the RIAA Nothing

[Phoenix666]

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.

Re:Not first post but close

[StikyPad]

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.