Slashdot Mirror
Penn State Students to Get Free Music From Napster
Mr. Show writes "Napster and Penn State have unveiled a deal to give faculty and students free access to music beginning next spring. The deal would give students only limited access to downloads, so presumably most of the free music will come through the streaming service that would otherwise cost a monthly fee. Will this help curb piracy on college campuses?" It might, except for students that don't run Windows.
At least in this case. The students (and taxpayers to a degree) will be paying for it as part of their tuition.
It's only illogical policies that make it appear not so. They are getting information in its natural state.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Students without windows? It must be tough being cramped up not being able to look outside from the dorm room.
It might, except for students that don't run Windows.
Oh wait...you mean those crazy linux people. Right. That's true, but those people are left-wing commie pirates and there's no stopping them anyway, so what does that matter?
What about those people who have no interest in downloading music legally or otherwise? Why do they have to have this cost come out of their tuition?
I say leave it up to each individual student.
Umm, let me get this stright. If you're a student at Penn State part of your fees go to pay for this music service. However, to take advantage of this music service you must own a Windows 2K/XP machine. So if you don't have a 2K or XP box you're paying for other people to listen to music? What about all the students who are still running NT/95/98/Me or Mac/Linux/Solaris/ect? While I'd bet a good 80 to 90% are running 2K or XP what is the school doing about the rest? If I was a student at Penn State I'd be asking for a partial refund of my fees. How do you Penn students feel about your fees going to this?
Ahhh I can smell the stream rippers now. Smells like Napster Marshmellows all over again :)
i though that was a prison ? they giving inmates free music now that they have finished fighting fires for california ?
Hopefully someone will come up with a multi-platform interface for the new Napster service. If not, you can bet that I'd be knocking on the door of the CTO, demanding matching funds for iTunes!
***
I've heard about this on CNN all day...Other schools are supposed to follow suit, which is a VERY good move IMO. Rather than closing even more ports, which colleges love to do, they buy a liscence for their students to get music legally. Even though you still have to pay normal price (99 cents) to burn these songs, its still awesome, and done without raisings tech fees.
For those who read a little more closely, the service is not being offered for free. The cost of the monthly subscription is covered by the $160 service fee that on-campus students are required to pay if they want to hook up to the network.
Presumably, Napster offered a steep discount on the $9.95 monthly fee, but I'm sure it's not free.
... students at every university in the U.S. have gained free access to as much licensed material as they can cram through their network adapters, via special traits students have called "initiative" and "imagination." Regents and legislators have not approved this system, but it is nearly universal.
From the article: the program will be funded under a $160 information technology fee paid by students each semester
The poster of the story assumes that a majority of the students at this University run Linux as their desktop operating system. One simply need to look to Slashdot to find out that even among nerds this is not the case. The vast majority of hits that Slashdot gets comes from Microsoft Internet Explorer.
This is a good deal for the students of this University. They will be able to legally get access to quality music in an open format while probably just paying a minute increase in their tuition. Who wouldn't want to do this.
Any of the minority of the students that use Linux should just stick to pirating. The RIAA hardly cares enough about their OS fo choice to waste their money going after them.
Since the newest version of iTunes lets you share music across the network, a large number of students have simply opened up their lists for perusing and playing. (Downloading, as far as I know, is impossible.)
Because no one is downloading the files, so clearly is just benefitting from sampling the music (that is, some people will almost definitely purchase CDs when they find themselves deprived of permanent access to songs that they like. -Ideally. I realize I am a bit optimistic), I feel that this should be legal, even though I realize that it's probably not. However, I find it amusing that even though iTunes warns you that you should only share music with yourself -presumably when on some other computer on the network with iTunes- it allows multiple users to be logged in at the same time, and doesn't require that you set a password. So the system has essentially set itself up to be abused.
It wasn't me, it was the one-armed
SS# is a key. Music is content. Got it?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
"There will be no additional costs to students for this service," Spanier said, adding the program will be funded under a $160 information technology fee paid by students each semester that Penn State already had in place.
The fee was $160 before they added napster, and its still $160.
ITMS is DRM-based as well. Besides, the typical student won't give a damn. Free is free.
The gay is strong with this one.
Because college profs are lazy, and they hate grading papers. So everything on a college campus is done as a "group project" now, which conviently promotes socialism and removes individual responsibility. It also helps affirmative action students from immediatetly failing out because they have someone to lean on. Anyway, all these group projects are usually worked on through email, using MS Office. No one wants to be the lone dissenter and say "Oh, I use Linux!" And don't say "OPEN OFFICE" because all OpenOffice does is fuck up the formatting of the document and then ruins it for everyone.
I barely listen to any RIAA music. Why should I pay them for a limited selection on a crippled service that is likely unfair to artists?
It's not the most logical one, but humans latch on to catch phrases, so we might as well run with this one.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Perhaps I'd see access to music as a critical component of college attendance if the college attended were Juilliard.
But in general, public colleges obtain 75%+ of their funding from the taxpayer, not from tuition.
So I'd like to see the students dedicating as much time, effort and money to LEARNING as they do to downloading music.
It is simply a matter of priorities, and the priority at college ought to be education.
And for those who would ridicule the above because you happen to also like music, consider the waste of money because the vast majority of college freshman show up requiring courses so rudimentary they ought to be considered "remedial". Basically, what they spend the first year or two doing, they should have learned in Junior High.
This lack of focus on EDUCATION, which is really what college is for, costs everybody money whether you are a student or not.
The Reason I don't like it, Is The school is paying for it, That means that tuition fee's are really the ones paying for it. (or added in to some other fee Which is what it looks like they did)
If you are going to do something like this make it a fee not something that is included that I can't opped out of.
I get distracted easily. I don't want to have to pay for something that is potentialy going to distract me. To those that say Oh but its included. Yes it is But the school has to pay for it somehow. The article stated that it would be paid for with a "$160 information technology fee"
Now what else does this fee include? That the student would have to have for a class, but lets say the student doesnt wanna use napster. OH well.
The way I would like to see it setup is for the school to make a deal that would make the music cheaper but without having the school shell out anymore money. (and thus the student) Or for napster to say support a music club on campus. The more music people buy, The more money the music club could use for such things as concerts for any local bands. This would work out for napster and the school. Napster gets not only money for music but they also get publicity and the school gets money too. Both happy.
Of course there are more details but thats the jist of it.
WINE MOTHERFUCKER DO YOU SPEAK IT
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides By the inequities of Microsoft Windows and the tyranny of Bill Gates. Blessed is he who, in the name of open source and good will, Shepherds the newbie through the screens of blue, For he is trulely a computer scientist, and the finder of lost productivity. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger Those who spread virii and worms throughout my networks. And you will know my name is the Guru when I lay my code upon thee."
----
Squirrel
Free as in it will cost them $10 a month and they have no choice about purchasing it? That's not the kind of free I like.
Free (as in beer): ok
Free (as in speech): great
Free (as in Penn State Napster): crap
If you have two computers and one with line-in you'll have an instant high quality copy of the original without the DRM. The average consumer probably wouldn't go to the trouble. On the other hand, computer-savy and penniless college students most definitely WILL. Can they not see this?
So, instead of turning on the FM radio and listening to pre-programmed top-40 tripe, now you can turn on your copy-protection-riddled Napster app and listen to pre-programmed top-40 tripe?
The only real difference I can see here is that the radio is "free", whereas the Napster deal costs the school money.
Schwab
In a curmudgeonly mood today.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
We are Penn State!!!!
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
students that dont use windows also dont get laid
/. users (from another human, that is, this place is full of other inclinations)
I use a Mac... Something that many females find attractive. I bet I get more leg than you, and I single-handedly (no, not in that way, you perv) probably account for 25% of the sexual relations by
This sounds like a move to inflate subscription numbers by Napster. Some slick marketing exec (BMG) probably thought this up while reading that iTunes got 1 million sales.
This is a pretty clever idea though, who better to "give" services to than college students who are already going to download. Lure them in with the streaming, then watch as the viral marketing infects their non-college associates.
Hammer of Truth
As a Penn State Student and a Mac geek, I did my part to write in complaints to the administration and the school paper about how this isolates people using other platforms. Well, other platform anyway - iTunes is certainly the lesser of the evils - but I fear Linux simply won't be supported by any major online music store [that uses DRM].
It's funny that just yesterday our paper ran a feature on how much students here like iTunes and then today say "Napster!" Similarly, last week they had a feature on how a lot of the labs are going to Mac OS X.
Hopefully my writein as a "computer science graduate student" will perk up some ears...
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
The music industry obviously considers students (and anyone) that don't run Windows (or Mac) to not be part of the market they are trying to sell to. There could be many reasons for this. One might be the cost of developing a media player for Linux, BSD, or whatever other stuff even fewer people might be running at home. So it's probably not cost effective to make the effort to market to that group, given the lower revenues from such a smaller group. So since they aren't expecting any revenues from Linux and BSD users, they surely have no basis to claim a loss of revenue from any piracy by people in that group.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
And people like the usual slashdot crowd are usually in favor of it. Deal with it. Hypocrisy can be a bitch, huh?
It might, except for students that don't run Windows.
Oh no, so that translates to 0.0001% of the student body. Ooooh, so that translates to 0.0000000000001% of the online piracy problem.
Linux people, you run a minority OS BY CHOICE. Quit bitching when you're not included.
"Insightful"? What, are you fresh out of "Funny"s?
What about people like me who listen to international bands? We're left out in the dark, and therefore we still must illegally download music to get our fix one way or another. And to make it worse, I'm a Mac user, so WINE won't even run on PowerPC architecture. Honestly, I don't think Napster nor Penn State even took into consideration the people who don't run Windows, since most kids honestly get sucked up at the local Best Buy "$600 Steal--perfect for college student" "deals" that include XP.
Oh yes, I'm sure you get laid because you use a MAC. I bet the girls you bring to your rooms decisions are solely based on the computer you use.
I want free music, give me it, this is discrimination, I`LL SEE YOU IN COURT NAPSTER!
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
Instead of being subject to Napster's DRM when you actually want to download/buy the song, why not just download iTunes. Assuming your university network is one subnet, like many are (and many too are not), you have access to dozens of shared music libraries.
So join and work with the Penn State Linux Users Group to help put together proposals, petitions, and if necessary, protests, to pressure the school administrators to consider the needs of non-Windows users.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
LOL! Please mod up!!! (^_^) :D
Quentin may find this amusing if he's reading Slashdot....(fat chance probably =/ )
I think I'll go out and make mod my PC case to look like a Mac...
:)
I'm so gonna score!
Renowned Slashdot journalist Michael Sims has died yesterday as a result of long-term abuse of greased-up yoda dolls.
His contribution to journalism reaches far beyond any words to describe it.
Where others would send away contributors with their story un-posted, Michael would post any shit available.
I am sure the online-gay-community will miss him. Truly an American Idiot.
the two users not running Windows.
There's a member of the RIAA's board on Penn State's Board of Trustees.
That's the reason this is going on. They're charing all kinds of fees to a bunch of students who can't even USE the service on their Macs, and providing shitty DRM'd technology to those who have PCs just so a member of their board can buy another yacht. I think it's rather dispicable.
Penn State Strikes Deals with Napster, Budweiser
I was looking at the screen shots for Napster and I felt revulsed and giddy at the same time. Its actually sick when you think about it: The record companies brain wash us into thinking that the canned crap on the radio is good music and that we want it (need it!). Then after the free starter sample (radio) they make us buy it for astronomical prices (they're more like pimps really, whoring the artists and cleaning up - maybe prostitutes get better cuts though). Finally when it comes out for free from alternative sources (legit or not), they have a freak-out and start throwing tantrum-lawsuits around, convincing us that we are all bad people and should be paying them for the honor of being brainwashed and fed shit. And what happens? We do pay them. We pay them $10/mnt (or whatever it is) just to see the crap advertising in their app and listen to their corporatized bottled music, the same crap we were fed on the radio.
Oh well, we wouldn't want to 'steal' now would we?
Also, the term "intellectual property" is bogus. Copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret laws are hardly more alike than any one is to real property.
... PENN STATE
Need Penn State propaganda?
A hundred thousand voices strong,
On their feet and raised in song,
All in unison as if by fate,
They were all shouting, "We are PENN STATE!"
bingo! the most probable unstated agenda here is that psu wants to avoid anything vaguely looking like liability here. the approximate $1 mil a year this would cost is a great way to say to the riaa hordes "don't blame us, we tried to dissuade our students from evil copyright theft - sue the students directly"
2 1337 4 u!
How long before the service is limited to Windows users and you get thrown from campus for using Linux.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You (probably) don't have the equipment to effectively use the tampon dispensing machines either, bet you won't ask for a refud on that one though.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
One of the things they do is make sure that the "goodies" don't fall into free software. They and their friends are constantly inventing new formats and encryption schemes. When people actuall do break these schemes, as in the DeCSS case, they make sure it's against the law. The media players are all there, if they chose to use honest formats. The honest formats, such as ogg-vorbis, are royalty and patent free so they are also cheaper and should be chosen for ALL platforms if they were worried about the cost of software.
At the same time, they have to offer some kind of reward to those who would follow them into slavery. These gifts never amount to what free people can have, but big dubm companies can make some people feel special with small perks like "free" Napster subscriptions. The promisses are larger and less likely to apear as the demands become more constricting. The "heavenly jukebox" has been promissed for 10 years, but will never be. To get an idea of where this is going, see this page and start reading from " 'Lady Venus, if I may kiss this boy, so that he know it not, tomorrow I will present him with a pair of doves.'"
The promise and it's maker are dishonest, so is this deal.
There is only so long they can pull of their silly reactions. Eventually, the middle men in music will be eliminated. Radio and hard copy publishing are obsoleted in a reasonably networked world.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah, that's right. It's a little warm in here...isn't it?
You were once the mighty and powerful.
Now you are the wannabe.
All your base are belong to iTunes!
I got nothin'.
It might stop some downloaders, but at this point it has become political for me.
I want to bankrupt the bastards. They had every opportunity to replace their outdated failing business model with a new successful model. Now after 5+ years, Draconian laws, and plenty of lawsuits, life is a bit worse and Apple brought them kicking and screaming into a successful form of on-line business.
Let them fail.
Let a more successful business rise in their place.
It is not called piracy
It is called capitalism.
It is a bit more work than downloading, but ...
Oh,come on, give me a break. If you're a Linux user you should be use to this by now, get over it. Us Linux users are not a market, no one really cares about us, we are on our own. Do-it-yourself solutions is what makes us Linux users in the first place. Feel jipped, ripped-off,treated unfair if you want. If you can't accept the fact that corporations and retailers view you as a second rate free-loader, then use an OS that better suits your needs (as well as theirs). What ever happenned to that copy of Windows that came with your system anyways?
It might, except for students that don't run Windows
now there's some irony for ya
What difference does it make if the university provides "proper" software like XP to students at no cost? If your computer did not come with that bug ridden trash, it won't be able to run it. There are very few places where you can get hardware without an OS that's really cheaper than the same hardware with an OS.
If you have not gone through the "hell" of desktop configuration, how can you be a long time linux user? If you knew much about free software, you would know that a distro like Knoppix configures itself on just about any computer and that you can coppy the config files it makes into a shiny new Debian install, pain free. OK, there's some possibility of you being a long term linux number cruncher with no time for fooling with XF86Config. In that case, Merry Christmas, go get Knoppix 3.3 and quit using "proper" software today.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Frankly I find it assinine that a college that has been complaining about bandwith wasted on file sharing programs is willing to actulay pay for it.
Euro is a subset of International. Euro cannot be equated to International.
Their albums are available at Tower. Don't like the fact that imports cost $32? Oh, boo fucking who, you clove-cigarette smoking Eurotrash wannabe.
Troll. Many Japanese CD's are only released for a year or two. Then you can't get any more copies. EVER. Unless you buy ripoff SonMay versions. (Since Taiwan is not a signatory to the Berne Conventions, it's actually legal within Taiwan to rip off foreign material at will.) Your choice, buddy. Pirate, or pirate.
Oh, and *sometimes* (rarely) you can get your hands on a used version. (Kinda tough in the US--I would have to travel to a city 300 miles away to do so, or throw money at eBay until I got lucky, but obviously no sacrifice is too great for Brad the Informer, right? So it shouldn't be for me, either.) Trouble is, RIAA considers that to be a form of "stealing" too. (Too bad it's (still) legal.) Fortunately, most of the Japanese CDs I want weren't released by the RIAA--and never will be. BWAHAHAHAHA!
Actually, a lot of the Japanese CD's that were eventually sold in the US, were only sold because fans here traded their mp3 tracks of those particular artists. In other words, without filesharing, there never would have BEEN any US sales. How's that for dramatic irony?
Reduccing piracty? The pirates are in charge!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Another difference is that radio adds are less intrusive than the pop-ups that will surely jump out of the new Napster. I can imagine trying to write term papers while popups cover my screen. I'd first turn the music service off. Nope, still comming. Then I'd unplug the network. Nope still there from a 200MB spool you can't erase. Then I'd drop a knoppix CD in and listen to my oggs in peace. When I got the time, I'd reinstall Windoze without the Napster service for those poor pathetic teachers who have just grasped their Microsoft shit and are pushing it in ignornace. I'd also learn how to put Debinan on it and run it as my main OS.
Oh wait, I've already done that, so I would not be tempted by the new fake Napster rip off. Take the above scenerio as advice for how to get out of the pit when you realize you are at the bottom. It's getting easier all the time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm a Penn State student, and the tuition there is already attrocious, and has been rising steadily year after year since the State continues to cut funding (technically we are only state affiliated, but the money recieved was still enough to keep tution reasonable.) There have been initiatives at many of the campus to cut costs, and then they go and do something like this? It is bull shit.
I don't know if they realize this (and they may not), but free software (and free file trading and copying) actually benefits them once they switch to an encrypted pay-per-play (and other package deals) type of marketing. The key (pardon the pun) to this is that the media rendering device (sound card, USB headphones, whatever) itself decrypts and decodes the music. Sound files (and other media) will just be encrypted blobs with some attached cleartext properties that don't need to be hidden (like titles, checksums).
This model of music marketing (which could also apply to movies) would allow people to download, copy, shared, and trade, all the music they want. But they can't actually play it from these files unless they first get a DRT (digital rights token). This would be purchased usually for a specific playback device (won't work on others), usually for a specific time frame (a month), possibly for a lot, or any, music. DRTs could be sold for one song forever (effectively the model we have now), or sold for all music (that vendor can sell for) for a fixed period of time (essentially a subscription model). The DRT is merely a right to play and doesn't include an actual copy. You could have (and maybe eventually could buy on the market) a computer juke box that contains all music produced in the last 20 years. Your one-month DRT lets you play anything in that collection for that month.
One thing I have seen in many people who trade is the desire to be leet by having huge collections so large they couldn't possibly ever listen to it all. The goal obviously isn't to massively listen to more than 24 hours of music a day. The goal is to have handy choice (for themselves and their friends). Eventually, as bandwidth availability makes this practical, you'll be able to access music online to be played as you want to play it. If the DRT system is used, it won't matter where you get the encrypted blob; you still pay the music industry to play.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is an absolute waste of time and money. What the students are recieving access to is, essentially, internet radio. Why would that be any more appealing as an alternative to Piracy than regular radio, or independant internet radio. Sounds like the school is paying for the opportunity to market a legal option to their students.
Having music in a stream selected by someone else is little or no substitute for managing a playlist and a substantial music collection. Do you really think that the average Penn student is too lazy to throw together a playlist, and will settle for someone elses?
What a waste. Free internet radio. Pfeh.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
Actually, yeah. Chicks do dig Apple.
Sore because your ex called your custom-built Linux machine a "PC"? Awww. Poor baby.
Who wants to bet Napster 2 has died before then?
The State Penn is located next to Penn State.
And just be a sheep?
Two words: Sheep vote. In other words, the way to get regulators to recognize our admittedly complex opinions is to boil them down to catchphrases that the voting sheepulace can understand.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I cant help but wonder... If the deal does, in fact, refer to the streaming service, why not just use iTunes' free equivalent? I am quite a fan of it, myself. Not only is this a free option, but it will also support Mac users (of which I know at least a few at Penn State). Either Penn state is really out to lunch...or something is afoot, methinks.
caritj.org
Then what's the free and legal alternative to piracy of the Microsoft Windows operating system that interoperates with a free and legal alternative to piracy of sound recordings? I'd claim that Vivendi's MP3.com is a free and legal alternative to piracy.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Penn State students blast Napster deal
To this day I cannot hear the name "Penn State" without instantly thinking that they are a menace to everyone on the Usenet.
And then, I realize that I would kill for those days, before AOL turned on their Usenet gateway.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
On Microsoft Windows 2000, ME, and XP operating systems, only WHQL-signed audio output drivers can play DRM'd audio tracks through the Secure Audio Path. In order to get signed, audio output drivers must not mix the Secure Audio Path into cleartext digital outputs.
Nevertheless, s/Total Recorder/line out, line in/g and your method still works.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So the money saved by reducing network traffic is probably more than the 130,000 that this deal requires of the school. Furthermore, I'm sure Napster charged them less than that because it opens the door to other schools. So, the school is banking on less money spent on IT, better protection against the RIAA, and gets great publicity as a "technologically advanced" school. It's more like Penn State is saving money by giving it's students a free lunch.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
According to some, it's easier than that to get laid. Just die and be reincarnated as a reptile, bird, or monotreme. According to this page, "[f]ifty million eggs are laid in Britain every day."
Will I retire or break 10K?
I submitted this earlier today, but was rejected. So here's what I had to say. It contains a bit more information.
After the University of Rochester announced last week in its school newspaper that students there would be offered legal music downloads starting the spring semester, Penn State President Graham B. Spanier announced today that his University has signed an agreement with Napster to launch a program in which Penn State will make Napster's Premium Service available at no cost to its students. This comes from the annual EDUCAUSE meeting of thousands of information technology administrators from universities around the country. Most notably are the panelists who are part of a P2P file sharing disscussion. They include, Cary Sherman of the RIAA, Jack Valenti of the MPAA, the Provost of the University of Rochester, and the President of Penn State. Too bad it's Napster and not iTunes.
they are working on legislation to make free software impossible
Won't fly. The web site of the CEO of the United States runs Apache on Linux.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Lets not allude that non Windows users steal music. I happily pay for software and music when I feel that I need to purchase it..
I go to penn state here is my problem with this service, I am not interested in crappy sounding music at 96 kbps! I would rather just go download it at 196 kbps elsewhere. Its a good attempt you want to curb me from downloading copyright music with this service? Offer me a quality product. You were asking what the 160 technology fee goes to? It goes to the computer labs, the liscencing for all the software they provide free, our room ethernet connections... the list goes on, but, i think ive covered the big ones.
Working with mac and windows is certianly not cross platform. I've never understood why itms needs to be platform dependant at all desides a play to play DRMED AAC files. You essentially browsing a web site .
For something more useful and gasp educational than providing a crappy streaming music service. Like for instance ssl/pop or maybe ubiquitous campus wifi.
This subject hits pretty close to home here in Rochester, NY right now...a week ago there was an article in our school newspaper that the administration here might be planning a similar setup. I don't think it was through Napster however, but they may not have mentioned where the music would be from... What I was worried about is if they're opening this legal (but not free) alternative to downloading as usual, are they cutting off the old methods? I'm afraid that they're opening one door and closing another behind us...after all, what does the RIAA care if we can get music at school? They just don't want us stealing any, so the closing of the old routes is what they'll be hassling the school for. If my school gives me free music downloads, are they going to start plugging up my ports and strangling the network? If so, I'm not looking forward to it.
So if you use Windows you're admonished of guilt and if you don't you're automatically guilty and have to prove your innocense ? Not a good way to advertise alternative OSes. Those tables need turning methinks!
Apparently you're paying for digital DRM'ed radio.
Start an on-campus movement! Get everyone to start using radios again! Make analogue cool! Demand your money back!
Thats a pretty cheap excuse for protection money to the RIAA. Most students i know couldnt give a crap about music downloading morals, they've just got out of school and after rent, food and drinking they have no money because the government that used to give them free housing and look after them now gives them nothing and wants them to pay for even more, most students cannot afford overpriced data therefore the product isnt aimed at them, therefore the RIAA is not loosing sales. This might seem like a selfish and even trolling view but it goes to show that people need to see what they are paying for - if you buy a computer you can see that your paying for all the labour and parts thats gone into that computer and even though you know theres a profit being made it makes you more comfortable handing over the money knowing that your paying for a real world object. If you buy a CD or song on the net however is very hard to see what your money is doing, you know some of it is going into pressing the CD and some to packaging and shipping and sales wages but thats only a fraction of the total, all you know is that you dont want your money to go into the pockets of big suit RIAA coke sniffers and then theres the rest for the band, which in most cases are spoilt little girls who think they are all that. They sing the song ONCE and then it gets processed to make them sound in tune and copied 1,000,000 times onto CDs! then in allot of cases its used in their concert as mime material!! what are they asking me to pay for here? pop-idol etc has just prooved that they are not special there are millions of people in this world that can sing cheap covers and manufactured songs just as well but no, the record company charges just as much for them aswell.
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going to something better than napster. with the money they are paying napster they could possibly setup a file server with mp3s encoded from albums bought from stores and allow students to stream music continously for free. i am still in the state of mind if i here music i like, i go buy the hard copy. i dont really like the idea of dling off napster and burning it to one of my cool cdrs, your missing out on the artwork included in buying the album. i mean come on if you downloaded the TOOL albums "aenema" your truly missing out on the picture of california falling into the ocean or even worse on of the band members giving themselves head. when will ppl learn
"... It might, except for students that don't run Windows."
Oh why don't you SHUT THE FUCK UP. You can't please everybody all of time. OTOH, most Linux weenies run Windows anyway so they can use Photoshop. Office. Premiere. etc etc
What about the novel idea of forbidding file sharing in campus and using the computers for academic purposes?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh well. I guess the AC who posted this doesn't believe in his arguments enough to post as a user, so I guess they're not worth a response.
Eurotrash? FYI I just like J-pop. Anonymous above is right--the Philly Tower, stretching a full block long, doesn't sell ANY decent imports. I can't afford $50 to get something shipped from Japan, so I must steal illegally.
In 1999, when the original Napster came out, it was the network administrators at our university that panicked and started blocking it because our network was saturated enough that they didn't need to start having students using more of our precious bandwidth, that could have been used for research/educational purposes instead.
I didn't see a mention of an on-side mirror/caching proxy or expansion of internet transfer capacity (except maybe part of the $160 a student pays goes towards "modems"??), unless this university already has bandwidth to throw away? (must be nice)
Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?
We've gotten some big tuition increases at PSU lately (thank god I graduated last year), and the the computer fee has gone up dramatically too. I think when I started in 1997, it was like $40 or something.
... you have to pay it.
1. I know lots of people there, and they've taken pretty hardcore to iTunes at Penn State. I don't know how much they're buying, but they like it, and they want to keep using it for playing. They *don't* want music that won't play on it.
2. That being said, I think most of my friends are technologically more "in the know" than the average student at Penn State.
3. This only affects students who live on-campus. At Penn State, that's only like 12,000 undergrads out of like 35,000. On-campus grad students get this too, but who cares about them? Dorms are for losers with no friends and freshmen.
4. Mac and Linux users are going to flip as well. Part of their $160 going to pay for music they can't even listen to? PSU has rioted over less in the past.
5. Just for clarification, this doesn't come from taxpayer money. The state legislature has been a real bastard about giving Penn State money over the last few years, and they've never funded the computer fee... that's why it's a "fee"
6. My prediction: People will use it, but I doubt there's much on there that they want and don't already have. This only affects a portion of the students anyway. Nobody's going to stop using Kazaa/Poisoned/etc, the off-campus people especially.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
OK, so no more yearbook committee, no more school social dances
Uh... your university had a yearbook? And social dances...?
Sounds like high school to me. Maybe it was a Southern university. Who knows.
The tech fee has been useful to me in the past in that we get Norton free. There are other discounts on software that they give PSU students as well. However in this case they are making it impossible for a large percent of students to be able to take advantage of this.
"Most interesting how often you humans seem to obtain that which you do not want" -Spock
Windows doesn't run natively on all hardware. What's the free and legal alternative to piracy of the Microsoft Virtual PC emulation software that interoperates with a free and legal alternative to piracy of sound recordings?
Will I retire or break 10K?
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---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
That means the college kids will download the music, Post that on their Fserves for the rest of us to enjoy. Give me a break, People have no brains, This is not going to help anything.. Why don't they give the kids food instead.
AcmeShells.com The cheapest Eggdrop
Well, here is how this mess happened:
....also, I should mention that universities are big on developing revenue streams/models. (see cell phones, student long distance programs, etc) I am sure they see music as a revenue opportunity as well. Who knows what kick-back PSU gets from every download Napster sells.
1. Universities, who usually have more bandwidth than most small countries, were being hammered by Congress (yes, the US Congress!) for allowing all the illegal downloading of copyrighted materials by the students. [music, video, etc] They were told to either "clean it up" or Congress via the RIAA lobbyists would do it for them.
2. University bandwidth was also getting slammed by the P2P stuff to the extent that legitimate educational efforts (distance learning, etc) were getting compromised. Students who signed for distance ed courses couldn't get consistent access and were complaining and/or withdrawing from classes. Not a good thing for an educational institution.
So something had to be done. Napster was the main culprit but Kazaa, Morpheus, etc are the next steps.
This agreement at PSU solves #1, but it doesn't solve #2 if downloads (now legit) rise to the level they had before.
I think that "picking a vendor" like PSU is not the way to go. Let the market pick the vendor. PSU should concentrate on QOS's its network and shaping its traffic.
This is just plain wrong. Why should all of the students have to subsidize music fans' hobby? This is tyranny of the majority. I bet they are not going to use university money to subsidize other "minority" hobbies. Community resources should only be used for things that benefit everybody or the community as a whole: public education, roads and bridges, national defense, etc. Transferring community money to the RIAA to allow Johnny to "freely" download "Oops I Did It Again" by Britney Spears is not something that benefits the community as a whole.
Good point, but can we please stop pretending that iTunes doesn't sell DRM'd music, too? Why should the school help out Apple in selling shitty DRM'd technology?
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Must be a mislabled marketing major.
I also have been using Linux since 1995, that would be 8 years... since I could only be a "number cruncher."
Anyone using any free GUI for half a year would know better than you seem to. I'm not sure how you can think of Windoze install well but poorly of Knoppix. Non of it really matters to me, though, if you want non free you deserve it.
in Knoppix puh-lease ... How about just getting my damn thumb button on my mouse to perform the "Back" function in any browser?!? Oh, wait that requires changes in EACH configuration file for EACH browser,
Hmmm, sounds like you should just use IE, maybe get yourself a Mac with one mouse button. I don't know, but I doubt setting up your funny mouse buttons in IE would translate to Mozilla. You sound like someone who'd like to have their choices made for them.
I'd like to be able to use the tools I need to graduate... and amazingly some of them are Windows only,
From what I've read about Penn State, I'd be surprised if they did not have search and destroy teams armed with spears for anything that's not Microsoft. I'm not sure why you'd bother with and bitch about WINE when you have a working Windoze installation you seem to prefer. Be a good boy for your teachers and forget all about this free software stuff.
I'll take the dll hell of Windows over the dependency and library hell of Linux anyday on a desktop PC
You've made your preference obvious. You'd take shit on a stick if it had M$ on it. Free software has been much easier for me to do things with than M$ ever was. Keep on keeping on, you make yourself misserable and there's nothing more anyone can ask of you than that.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.